In this podcast, HSE experts discuss the legal obligation to manage asbestos in non-domestic buildings, highlight where asbestos is likely to be found and explain why it is dangerous.
In January 2024, HSE launched the Asbestos – Your Duty campaign, featuring updated web guidance, including new templates and explanatory videos. The steps to the legal duty to manage asbestos in buildings, and the importance of the campaign, are discussed by Tim Beaumont, HM Principal Inspector Health and Safety, Asbestos Cluster Lead and Samantha Lord, Chartered Occupational Hygienist & Principal Specialist Inspector both from HSE.
They are joined by Craig Barker, Group Property FHS & Asbestos Manager at Marks and Spencer. During his 11 years with the company, Craig and his health and safety team have established robust ways of working to manage asbestos containing materials, developed training for employees, and put controls in place to ensure that the duty to manage asbestos is upheld and the processes are followed when any work is carried out on its buildings.
For more information and to download HSE's free asbestos management plan template, visit: https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/duty/index.htm
HSE Podcast - The duty to manage asbestos in buildings transcript
Welcome to the HSE podcast, the latest in a series designed to help and support you because whether you are a business owner, a manager, or a worker. Health and safety is for everyone. In this episode we're taking a look at a hazardous material that has been banned in the UK for the past 25 years, but which still claims the lives of about 5, 000 people a year, more than the number of people killed on our roads.
I'm Mick Ord and we're talking about asbestos. What it is, why it still causes so many deaths, how it can be managed properly and efficiently in the workplace, and what you can do to ensure that you or your employees are not exposed to it. This is all part of HSE's campaign, Asbestos - Your Duty. And, as I'm bound to mention a few times today, you can find the relevant information to help you on the Asbestos pages of HSE's website, https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/duty/
With me are three people on the frontline of asbestos awareness from very practical points of view. Tim Beaumont is HSE's Principal Inspector and a Senior Policy Advisor on asbestos. He's been with HSE since 1999 in a variety of operational and policy roles. His main work right now revolves around coordinating the delivery of the recommendations arising from the Work and Pension Select Committee inquiry into HSE's management of asbestos regulation.
Samantha Lord is HSE's Chartered Occupational Hygienist and Principal Specialist Inspector. She's been with HSE for 15 years. But has been working in the area of asbestos for more than 26 years. She plays an integral role in supporting and enabling HSE's asbestos-related inspection programs, as well as their asbestos campaigns. And she also regularly engages with external partners about HSE's work on asbestos.
And we're delighted that Craig Barker from Marks & Spencer has joined us too. Craig has 20 years of experience consulting and advising on asbestos, with the last 10 years in the retail sector for M&S, where he's the Group Property, Fire Health and Safety and Asbestos Manager. Since 2013, M&S has completely overhauled its approach to the management of asbestos-containing materials. Sixty per cent of the estate was built before the year 2000, meaning asbestos must be considered as a potential hazard. Craig and his health and safety team have established robust ways of working, developed training programs for employees, and put controls in place for any work carried out on the building's fabrics to ensure that the duty to manage asbestos is upheld, and the correct processes are followed. Craig will talk us through their approach to managing the risks of asbestos across their estate.
Tim, can you explain in layman's terms what asbestos is? And how it causes so many deaths.
Well, thanks, Mick. That's a really important question. Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral.
When we say asbestos, actually there are a number of different types of asbestos. They're all found in the ground naturally and over many years we've been removing it. It has a number of different qualities that make it rather useful. First of all, it's cheap, it's widely distributed across the globe and easy to get to.
Secondly, it's a really good fire retardant. Thirdly, it's a really good insulating material. So, for those three reasons, it has been used widely in construction, particularly over the last 150 years or so, but most of all, the second half of the 20th century. It's got these wonderful attributes that meant that it was cert to be used in a huge range of structures and properties to insulate and to prevent the spread of fire.
The final thing about it, it's really easy to manipulate. You can weave it, you can turn it into a kind of cement, you can add it to other things, you can put it into other products that you're making. All of these things make it an incredibly attractive and useful material. The massive, massive downside. It, um, forms tiny, tiny little shards, little fibres that are really easy to breathe in.
They go right into the very depths of your lungs, and that's the point where it causes ill health. These tiny little shards, these tiny little fibres, so small that you need incredibly strong microscopes to see, end up causing cancers, lung cancer, but particularly an unusual cancer called mesothelioma.
And it's this cancer that is absolutely linked to asbestos exposure. So, really useful, but also really deadly.
And mesothelioma, I believe that causes two and a half thousand deaths a year in the UK. I mean, that's astonishing, isn't it?
That is a very high number. It's one of the highest causes of death, particularly in men.
The thing about mesothelioma and lung cancer caused by asbestos is the time delay between being exposed and actually developing the cancer. It can be a number of decades, around about 40 years or so, between being exposed to the asbestos and developing the cancer.
Tim, is there a safe level of asbestos exposure?
Well, what we're not able to say, we're not able to establish a line In exposure above which you're going to be exposed and it's going to harm your health and below which you're going to be safe That just doesn't exist for asbestos because of the nature of its fibrous exposure type What we are trying to do is ensure that Any material that contains asbestos does not give rise to fibres, and that's the crucial thing with asbestos, the breathable fibres that you might be exposed to.
So that's the focus of our attention when it comes to asbestos management.
Also, Tim, what buildings may contain asbestos and where can it be found?
Asbestos can be found in any building that's been built, particularly in the 20th century, leading up to 1999, when it was banned from use in construction.
But particularly the period from 1920s, 1930s, up to the mid-80s, you're most likely to find asbestos. And it can be found in literally any building or structure that was built in that time period. So, offices, Schools, hospitals, shops, warehouses and homes may all contain asbestos in different ways. Now on our website, we've got an excellent little picture of a property that shows you where you might find asbestos within that property.
But I just want to be clear, for the benefit of this conversation we're having, we're talking about non-domestic setting. That's because there's a very specific set of legislation and standards in place to for working with asbestos in the non-domestic setting. So, everything you're going to be hearing us talk about today, we're thinking about workplaces in particular.
And that is the focus of the work of the Health and Safety Executive. We want to make sure that in workplaces, exposure to asbestos is properly controlled so that when you go to work, you are not going to be exposed to asbestos fibres.
Sam, what are the steps to managing asbestos properly? What advice say would you give to a new duty holder operating in an older building?
Essentially, if you've got an older building, the first thing you need to do is establish if asbestos could be present. Then what you've got to do is identify the risk from that asbestos. And the reason why I say that is that all the asbestos materials don't have the same risk. So as Tim sort of alluded to, there's a range of different products, but their risk is to do with their inherent properties.
Some materials are quite what we call friable, and they easily release fibres if they're disturbed, or if they actually deteriorate over time. But some are much sort of hard-wearing, such as floor tiles. And you're really going to struggle to get fibre released from those. So, it's important to understand the difference in risk associated with different products.
The other thing that's going to affect the risk is how people processes, maintenance and cleaning sort of happens within that building. So, all the activities that potentially could what we call disturb the asbestos. Because once you disturb asbestos, that is where you'll break down the material and release those fibres.
So, once you've identified the risk, then you've got to manage those risks to make sure no one is exposed. And that's really what we're all here to do. What's Duty to Manage is essentially for. So, I've started off just introducing almost the objective of what Duty to Manage is. But what we've got on our website is a series of steps which actually offer sort of the practical advice which you can follow.
And I can explore those if you want next, Mick?
Yeah, let's talk about then.
So firstly, you need to check if you actually have asbestos in your building. So as Tim said, if you've got a building that was built before the year 2000, then it could contain asbestos. Now the peak use of asbestos and particularly the highest risk materials, those that contain a lot of asbestos fibres and were very friable, that was very much in the 50s to the mid-80s.
So, whilst we say anything before 2000 could contain asbestos, you need to be particularly careful if you've got a building that was built or refurbished in that sort of what we call a high peak usage window. So, how would you go about doing that? You may already have had an asbestos survey. or an asbestos register.
That basically is where you have a report, a bit like a house building survey, where a surveyor will come, come along and inspect the internal of the building. Now there's something called a management survey. Now that is a survey of areas which could be disturbed during the normal occupation of the building.
So that's by the occupants themselves, those that are maintaining the building or cleaning in the building, so any surfaces or hatches or doors or rooms, anywhere where those people could inadvertently disturb asbestos. Because they need to know where it is. If they don't know where it is, then they could inadvertently disturb it and expose them and others to asbestos fibres.
You may already have a survey, but if you don't have a survey, then it's important that you do get one. If you've got a very simple building, however, like, uh, Tim mentioned farm buildings. If it's literally just a farm building with corrugated asbestos cement, you probably don't need to get a surveyor in to tell you that. You can actually presume that it is actually asbestos cement if you know it was built in that time frame where asbestos cement was used.
The other thing I would say is also don't forget about plant and equipment because asbestos was used very much as an insulation product. So, things like ovens, boilers, pipes, asbestos will be associated with that equipment, plant and equipment too.
So, it's not just structure or the construct of buildings. As I said before, you might have existing information in existing asbestos surveys. You may have building records, particularly something which we call system builds. Um, these buildings were very much almost built according to a plan that actually, I've seen them actually, they'll have asbestos indicated in terms of the materials.
You may be fortunate to still have those records, but you're probably less likely to, given that there's quite a period of time since these buildings have been constructed. You may have had asbestos in your building, but it may have been removed. So, you should have documentation that will tell you about that because one of the other things that we find is certainly in the early 80s, there was what we call bad removal, poor strips is sort of the term we use, particularly where you're looking at lagging in boiler rooms.
So, people that were removing asbestos weren't as diligent as they are today, or they should be today. And so, you often get residues left on walls or pipes. Now, it's important that you know about those because they still can present a risk to health if people are going to be working in those areas or drilling through those walls.
So, any documentation that you've got about previous removal of asbestos is also an important source of information. And finally, you may see in your workplace’s signs saying warning asbestos present or little labels with a red 'A' written on them. You know, again, it’s not mandatory to label every single asbestos item, but people did used to label them.
So again, that might also be something which you could use or look for to inform whether asbestos is present.
So, once you've got an asbestos survey, what do you do then?
Oh, we say the asbestos survey is a survey of the building at a point in time. So, the day the surveyor visits your premises. The thing with asbestos, as like any other building material or piece of equipment, it will change over time.
And because it's quite an old material, it is important that you continually monitor the condition of that and manage it. And this is what the duty to manage is. It's about managing the asbestos to make sure it doesn't deteriorate. But equally, the surveyor may have identified you've got some materials that are in a bad condition, and they may actually recommend that they need to be removed.
So, it's about, once you've got the asbestos survey, it's about acting on those findings of the survey. The best way to do this is actually to make a register, almost like an inventory. And we've got a really good template on our website now, which gives you an idea of what an asbestos register looks like.
It can include photographs, which again, these days are much, much easier to come by, and that gives you a record to help you find where that asbestos is, but also you can use it to give you a record over time of what it looks like, so an ongoing digital record, if you like.
The asbestos register is basically a list of all the materials. It will give you the condition of it. how much of it is there, then it will give you that risk assessment that I mentioned earlier. The assessment of risk, which involves the inherent risk of the material, taking into account its condition, but also where it is, the likelihood that that material where it is could actually get disturbed by what goes on in the building.
And it's important actually that as a duty holder, you inform that part of the risk assessment because only you will know what happens in a particular room or in a particular area or if the room or the place is perhaps rented out for other external activities. The surveyor won't necessarily know that unless they have a discussion with you.
So, once you've got the risk assessment, that will then inform what actions you need to do to manage the risk, to make sure no one is exposed. Now those actions could be a range of things, so it could be that you've got a very quite low-risk, good-condition asbestos material, such as a floor tile. All you need to do with that is probably just monitor it over time. If it's in good condition, that's a demonstration that what goes on that floor isn't going to deteriorate it. But if you've got material that's damaged or looks like it could get knocked because of where it is, you might want to think of maybe a short-term measure to look at maybe protecting it by perhaps putting a box around it.
In the long term, you might want to think, well, actually, it probably is good next time you need to do any refurbishment in the area or if there's a change of activity in the area you might want to think about removing it. Removing asbestos is quite a big undertaking so it's very important that you probably need to plan any work to remove asbestos quite in advance and link it in with other maintenance and refurbishment work because you can't just work or drill holes necessarily on asbestos. Sometimes it is better just to remove it.
So, the asbestos register is something which really, um, I try to tell people that it's like a day-to-day register, a bit like, um, a class register at school. Things might change, you know, even on a day-to-day basis. So, we have had a lot of bad weather in this country, flooding, high winds, That can actually cause damage to asbestos, so that's why it's important that you continually are aware of anything that could affect that asbestos.
And if there's any change, you need to update your asbestos register. And that includes any work to seal it up or remove it. And also, regularly monitor its condition. Typically, people do it every year, but it really needs to be informed by the nature of the material. So, if it's something that's not going to get damaged, like I mentioned earlier, a vinyl floor tile, then you could possibly leave that for every couple of years.
But if it's something that's very vulnerable to damage, then that might need to be monitored even some more frequently, maybe every three months. But it's really for you to understand that and work out what's going to be good for, for that particular material.
The asbestos register then forms part of the asbestos management plan. Now the asbestos management plan is something which typically a lot of people don't do. Often, we see just people having surveys, they may have a register, but they don't have the management plan. The management plan Basically tells you how you're going to manage your asbestos, all those arrangements that are in place to make sure no one comes to harm from the asbestos in your building.
So, it'll set out a number of roles and responsibilities, who needs to know about where the asbestos is, the arrangements you have in place for monitoring it, as I was just explaining. What happens if you have to have some work done on your building, you have external contractors come in, you know, how would they told about the presence of asbestos because that's vitally important because really that is where we're going to get the highest exposures these days which is tradespersons inadvertently damaging asbestos. So, for example if you're fitting a fire alarm system in, they need to know whether or not What they're drilling into in the wall contains asbestos.
So, you may actually also need to have arrangements to have a different type of survey, something called a refurbishment survey. And that survey really starts to look inside the fabric of the building because the management survey will only have looked at the surfaces. So again, arrangements for putting that in place. What happens if there is an incident, you know, someone breaks a panel or scuffs a wall? How do they know? And they're not sure if it's asbestos. There should be an incident procedure that's in place that kicks in and people should know who to contact and again Sometimes what we say is um, it's really good, certainly if you're a large organisation to have what we call an appointed person for asbestos. So that person acts as that key contact anything to do with asbestos would go through them Um, but they also must have a deputy but if you're a very small business, perhaps you probably won't need that sort of level of organisation, but you still need to have those arrangements in place.
For the management document is very much a live document, isn't it?
That's right. Yeah, much like the asbestos register. And again, we've got a template, which is part of our new asbestos web pages. So, there's a template management plan, which I say to people, the management plans are going to be different depending on the complexity of the organisation. So, you might look at that and think, gosh, that's quite a lot, but it will fit everyone, but you might not need to necessarily fill it in that extensively.
But I think it will act as a really good checklist to make sure that you have covered everything. There's also one that's been completed for a fictitious business. So again, I think that will help people get an idea of what they need to look at or consider in terms of responsibilities.
You mentioned Mick, about it being a live document or an active document. It very much is that, and much like the asbestos register, there is a requirement to review the management plan annually. This is because things change, personnel change. Also, what I tend to say to people, it's really good to try and test your management plan. So, maybe with a fictitious scenario that's likely to – so I mentioned about floods earlier, you know, what happened if there was a flood, or a leaking pipe and it went through some asbestos. Have a little scenario exercise and test your management plan to work out that if that did actually happen, you would know exactly what to do. Because that is really good for identifying where you've got communication breakdowns or problems or who to contact. You'd be able to identify those things by doing that.
Great, thanks Sam. Craig Barker from M&S. Can you tell us about the asbestos management at Marks & Spencer, please? What were the key considerations given the size of the estate of your buildings?
Yeah, thanks, Mick. So, I think, it's probably worth me starting back on the journey that I've been on since 2013, really, to put this into perspective. Just take us through how we got to the position where we actually maintain the status quo. So, obviously, I started working for M&S in 2013. I think the first piece of work that I undertook was to understand where responsibility actually sat in the estate, who was responsible for different disciplines and what the building profile looked like.
So, when I say building profile, I refer to stores that we have that with the, the duty order for distribution centres, vacant premises, and some buildings where we have some shared responsibilities. So that was, the outset, probably the first thing that I needed to establish. And then the second part probably links back to something that Sam alluded to, just around the RAG status of a building. So, understanding the risk profile. We have 700 buildings or circa 700 buildings. They vary in age. So, we've given them a red, amber, green status based on an age bracket. And that age bracket links to the prohibition dates for the use of certain types of asbestos and materials. So, green being post 2000, amber being a building between 1985 to 2000, and a red building being anything that predates 1985. That allowed us to establish kind of where our riskier buildings were, based on date, but also based on size. I think the next key point to basically get me to a journey of understanding actually categorically where the asbestos was, and developing our management strategy and plan, was to review the existing data.
So, what did we have? Was it sufficient? what other information was available, and what current asbestos information was at our disposal. From there, we tackled that framework. So how did we need to set up internally to manage asbestos? What resources did we need? As the appointed person for M&S, who was going to be my deputy, and did I need the support of external consultants?
We formed something called an asbestos management team, which is essentially the custodian and controlling party of everything that takes place. on an M&S property. We have then partnered with a surveying analytical partner. So, we utilise one surveying analytical partner to keep consistency across the country.
We've been partnered with them now for eight to nine years, and we established a framework of removal contractors. And I suppose the key message to that is they are partners. So, they are partners in our asbestos management strategy, and they are partners in our asbestos management plan. We then embarked on a surveying strategy, which included an element of re-surveying and an element of understanding how our data fitted into our asbestos register.
I think I do just want to touch on the importance of an asbestos survey. We spoke about management surveys, we spoke about pre refurbishment surveys and demolition surveys, but the most important thing about the survey is that if we're doing a management survey, we ensure that areas are accessed that are occupied and that we ensure that areas are accessed that are going to go through routine maintenance because that's a fundamental point of the management survey. That supports us with our day-to-day operations in the building, keeps our colleagues safe and provides information to maintenance engineers when they need it.
From the surveys that took place, we have gone on to develop an electronic interactive asbestos register, which is disseminated to those that need it. So that's store colleagues, FM partners, construction teams.
The importance of the data and the QC and so the quality check or quality control around the data is of a vital importance to me. We have quite a robust check in mechanism from survey organisation, through to our asbestos management team, through to me prior to the data being published from the survey into the asbestos register. And then once we've established that status quo, we've reviewed the data for the estate, we'd done some resurveying, we arrived at a position where we had an electronic asbestos register, per property type and building that could be disseminated to those that needed it. But we could also update when we needed to in a very, very simple and efficient, effective way. So, we're providing data to those that need it very, very quickly.
That's going to lead me on to how we now maintain our current position. The simple way I describe asbestos surveying and an asbestos register is We might do lots and lots of surveys over time. We might do the initial management survey, then we might do various different refurbishment surveys for a variety of different schemes. It might be a renewal of a cafe. It might be renewal of some staff quarters. It might be the renewal of a whole M&S store, but we will do a variety of surveys for different reasons over time.
The key point is all of that key information from them surveys need to be presented in a live document for those that need it. So, we try and manage everything around the asbestos register, and data for me is the most important part. If you control your data, asbestos management for me becomes a lot, lot easier.
So, we control all the work that we do within M&S, whether it's the day-to-day operation of the stores, whether it's our facilities management teams, whether we're doing planned preventative maintenance, whether it's a reactive task, whether it's some planned maintenance work, or whether it's a full-scale construction project. We start with the data that's in the asbestos register, and then the asbestos management team, me and the deputy, we support our project teams with saying what are the next steps. So, we advise against the register. So, if the store has an issue, for example, or we pick something up on a re-inspection, it will be me and the asbestos team that give the advice on what we need to do next.
Same with the maintenance colleagues, same with our construction teams. We've tried to tighten, over the years, who is allowed to work on the building and who is allowed to work on the fabric of the building. So, it's controlling contractors, that's a key part of this for me as well. So, we try and control everything and every process that we have links back to the asbestos register itself.
The asbestos management team have a really key role here, don't they Craig?
The asbestos management team are quite fundamental to everything that we do. They will give advice, so we operate a 24/7 365 service. A lot of the work that we do within our buildings will be out of hours. Yes, there will be some done during trading time, but a lot of the construction work that we do or planned maintenance work that we do will be out of hours.
There's a lot of advice that's given over the phone, so if there's a query with the register, if there's a query with Burst Pipe, etc, that all comes back to the asbestos team so that advice is given accordingly. They support us with writing scopes and specifications, so this includes both surveys and asbestos removal.
We don't just allow construction organisations or asbestos removal companies to make up what asbestos is going to be removed as part of a scheme. There's a thought process that's gone into it based on the scope of the construction work, what's being found on the survey, and trying to anticipate and understand what legacy we want to remove as part of that refurbishment project based on the opportunities that we have.
And then they are the ultimate custodian once that work has taken place to ensure that asbestos register is updated accordingly, which in most instances is either due to additional asbestos being found as part of a pre-refurbishment survey or some asbestos removal as part of some construction work that we've delivered.
A lot of this, that we've put into practice only actually disseminates to the end user if you engage people properly and you communicate properly. So very early on, we're putting all these nice processes in place. We've got robust QC. But what are we telling the contractors that are working on our estate? What are we telling our internal teams? So, we defined the need in addition to general asbestos awareness. That essentially said when you're working in a Marks and Spencer building, this is what you need to know. And we spoke about a management plan.
Obviously, our management plan is written down. We review it. We test against it. We audit it, but we've created some eLearning, which essentially brings our management plan to life. And before a contractor works for M&S, there's a prerequisite that they have to demonstrate that they've done industry-recognised asbestos awareness training, but in addition, they need to be verified on our portal as having completed this short 10 to 15-minute eLearning, which talks about the way M&S manage asbestos and essentially it goes through the headings in our management plan. So, what the asbestos management team do, what we do in an emergency, how we plan surveys. Our framework of removal contractors, our support system in terms of our asbestos register, how we disseminate information to colleagues, building classification, signing-in procedures, et cetera, et cetera. So that is a success story because it's very difficult to get the message to 12,000 plus contractors that work across the estate doing thousands, if not millions of maintenance tasks a year and thousands of construction projects.
So, I think that's a very, been a very positive step, but a very key call out in terms of our strategy for, I suppose, engaging and equipping our supply base. Our procedure for emergencies is another thing that we've had to do a little bit of work on over time to make sure that our maintenance partners, our construction partners, and our store colleagues understand the correct emergency procedures. But again, filtering that back through our asbestos management team keeps it tight. It keeps it consistent, and it means that we are delivering the same message and we can audit and test against how effective our emergency procedure is being.
We have an inept ability basically to get to site very, very quickly if there's been an issue raised by a store colleague. So, we can give them advice over the phone, but the framework work that we have set up means that there is a response within a four-hour SLA anywhere in the country. And I suppose just to finish, it is a moment of honesty for me. When I joined M&S, I was so focused on what do we need to do from a regulation point of view. And rightly so, but over time I've learned to understand that asbestos management has to be part of our overall property strategy. So, I now speak to stakeholders within the organisation at a senior level. And we are part of what our future building profile looks like. And that's been so important to me to help me understand what our asbestos strategy looks like for the next five to 10 years.
And Craig, in terms of the nitty gritty, can you give us an example maybe of asbestos management in practice? So maybe any particular challenges you faced and how you overcame them?
Well, I think the biggest challenge that we probably face is we are a retailer, and we trade seven days a week. Space is a premium. We want to sell things in a certain footprint and a certain space. My biggest challenge within my organisation was influencing the people at a senior level to understand that when we do this type of work, time and space needs to be afforded to the tradespeople so that they can do it in a safe manner.
If we have a large scheme on now, for example, we work through a hierarchy, and if the store needs to be closed to do that refurbishment, and there's asbestos removal work involved as the enabling works, then that decision is taken to close the store. If the building needs to be segregated by floor level. Or the building needs to be split on one floor in terms of hoarding that's considered and done. So, there's an appreciation with M&S now that the asbestos removal needs to be afforded the time and the space for it to be done safely. It's not just something that you can do, especially on a large-scale project in a very short time frame working around store colleagues and other contractors.
Well, sounds really, really thorough there, Craig. Tim, if I can come to you. Some smaller businesses, of course, may not know where to start, and they might be worrying when they're listening to Craig there. It could be a complicated and expensive process to set up an asbestos management plan. What advice would you give those duty-holders?
It is true that it can seem intimidating about knowing where to start and you may feel overwhelmed and a sense of dread. Like maybe there's a bill coming my way or maybe I'll discover more than I bargained for. There is something though that was very clear from what Craig said that still applies. Whatever size of business you are, it's all about getting the right information to the right people at the right time and acting upon it.
I think if you've got in mind, this is about finding out information about my structure, about my building. And if you've got that attitude, you probably will know where to start. If you are a small business owner, you will have a whole range of risks that you're keeping an eye on. And it's just a case of making sure that this asbestos risk is part and parcel of that, recognising the importance of this and allocating the right amount of resource for it.
So, you may start and discover that the building you're in was built after 1999. Well, that probably means that you are outside of the period of time when most asbestos was used, but you shouldn't be completely complacent because sometimes, as Sam said, you might find that people have put things into the building that contain asbestos. So, you still need to be aware of where you might find it, but it should give you a degree of reassurance.
Now, If you're in one of those buildings that was built in the 1970s, that's got a flat roof and all the rest of it, then if you have discovered that you've got asbestos in your building, the next thing you need to do is to put together your management plan that Sam was talking about. And like all plans, these are things that just basically set out your thinking in response to the risk that you've got on site. Now asbestos, if it is well managed and it's well contained and it doesn't give rise to dust is actually going to be, the risk is going to be manageable in that setting. And that's what you've got to focus on. So, we're not saying you found asbestos, you must get rid of it. The thing is, have you found asbestos? What is the risk associated with it?
And there is some great information on the HSE website. In addition to the video that Sam mentioned before, you've got all the templates as well. So, if you're really, really unsure, get onto the website. And that's a great starting point if this is something that's really new to you, isn't it?
Absolutely right, Mick. We've spent a lot of time talking to people who have to use the guidance to make sure it's as user-friendly as possible. So I'd really strongly recommend that if you've got any kind of doubts or concerns, that that's your first port of call, that you have a look and find out what it is you need to do to protect yourself, protect anybody who's using the building that you're responsible for.
Sam, documentation seems like a key element of effective asbestos management. Are there any areas where inspectors find issues that would require them to take action when actually carrying out those inspections?
You're right, documentation is a very important aspect. I mentioned earlier, one of the things I am trying to do is talk about the three types of documents that's required. So, I mentioned about the asbestos survey, I mentioned about the asbestos register, which is the day-to-day log, and I mentioned about the asbestos management plan. And so, some duty holders don't have all three of those. So often we find people without the asbestos management plan. They just have the survey, and they think, right, I've got a survey,
that's it. So that's one area of non-compliance. I think it's worth also mentioning about the quality of asbestos surveys because unfortunately there is a range in quality. So, there's some really good ones out there, but there's some really poor asbestos surveyors out there. And one of the things, um, the common things which inspectors find is surveyors that haven't accessed all the areas which they should be going to. I'll give you a few examples. Areas where of the building that perhaps are above Three meters. The reason they don't access them is they haven't got the right access equipment. Their ladder only goes up to three meters. Now that's um, they might put that in the in their limitations section of the report We haven't accessed anywhere above three meters. That's not very helpful to you as a duty holder because, you know, you're going to have to get someone that has got a longer ladder that's, and that's a surveyor to go up there. So, it's really, really important to make sure that as a duty holder, you don't just engage a surveyor thinking that they're going to give you a quality service. You need to test them and ask them some critical questions. And again, I'd encourage people to go on to our web pages because there is a section talking about selecting a competent surveyor. Because remember, if you think that your building has been surveyed for asbestos, those areas that may not have been accessed for a variety of reasons. Sometimes there might not be any key access, sometimes the building might be occupied by people, which might mean that the surveyor can't go in and survey.
But all that can be remedied by good, effective planning for the surveyor that arrives on site. So, you might want to arrange for the survey to be done out of hours. You might want to arrange for the surveyor to have access to a mobile elevating platform. You can have caveats or limitations or areas that weren't accessed, but you must clearly put those on your register and clearly warn people that they cannot access that area or do any work in that area until such time that it has been surveyed and inspected for the presence of asbestos.
So that would be one of my areas that I would warn duty holders about, just to be wary about what you get from an asbestos surveyor. And I would finally just say that we do recommend that you select a UKAS-accredited surveyor. Again, there's links on our web pages that will show you how to get hold of one of those. But that said, you can still have a competent surveyor that may not be UKAS accredited, but again, you need to check that they do have those credentials and that experience, particularly of surveying your type of property to make sure that they will do a good job.
Thanks, Sam. So, for a possible real-life example, say my company, we want to fit some new fire alarms in the building. We know that there is the potential for maintenance of an asbestos area. What do we do? What are our steps?
It's really important to undertake some pre-planning. It's not just the case that someone will rock up on site and you'll give them the asbestos register because they may need to do remedial works before they can do the work, or they may actually need to reassess the work and see if they can route fire alarm cables or fire alarm fittings in areas where there isn't asbestos. So essentially you almost need, the way I look at it, is you have the plans for the installation work, often drawings, and then you'll have the plans associated with the asbestos survey and where the asbestos is, how much of it is it., You almost need to overlay the installation plans onto the, where the asbestos is and work out if any asbestos is needing to be disturbed as a result of that installation work. And that really involves going, certainly, if you're fitting fire suppression systems or smoke detectors or cabling, anything like that to do with the system. You need to look at all those areas and particularly, I suppose, in the same way, you'd be looking for other sort of services and cables and to avoid those, you want to try and avoid the asbestos as well. But if it's not possible to avoid the asbestos, you then need to work out whether it's safe enough to actually work on that asbestos. And there's some tasks that you can do, what we call maintenance tasks. We've got this, uh, publication called Asbestos Essentials, and you can safely drill into asbestos for the purpose of fitting items, but in some circumstances, you may, as Craig alluded to, undertake remedial work to enable that work to take place. So, you might need to remove asbestos from certain areas because it's safer to do or easier to do that than manage the risk of leaving it in place.
So, I think the key point really is, that it's not a case of sorting the problem out when the contractor arrives on site. You really need to spend that time planning in advance and making sure you've got all the information that's accurate.
I mentioned before about needing to have a refurbishment survey. If that installation work involves going through and drilling into the fabric of the building, in areas which haven't been surveyed by the management survey, you're going to need to get another surveyor to come in, and often they'll do, they'll use like a core drill, um, certainly where you've got a partition wall that might have multiple layers within it, you need to know exactly what's in the centre of that wall and either side of that, so not just on the outside, which, which you already know, so they'll often drill a core sample and then you can have a look to see if there's any asbestos in that. So that might also need to be done. So, there's quite a lot that needs to be thought about before carrying out an installation work.
And Craig, what training do you give to your own teams?
In addition to the general asbestos awareness course everybody in our property department is required to go through, those that are involved in construction projects or defined as project managers go through the duty to manage asbestos training. That's similar for my deputy and obviously, from my perspective, I've got a little bit more training in asbestos in terms of duty to manage, but yeah, we grade it in terms of levels really.
Those in-store design will do general awareness, those that are involved in delivering projects and the intricacies will be doing the uh, duty to manage.
Well, there you are, everything you needed to know about Asbestos and how to manage it. And please don't forget to go on the HSE website, I'll give the details out in a second and they'll also be in the episode notes. Obviously.
The Asbestos Your Duty campaign provides duty holders with a range of resources to help anyone who's unsure of their legal duties or just need to refresh themselves on what they need to do. You can visit the updated web pages at www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/duty, where you will also find a free asbestos management template, asbestos register template, and a video that details the steps to the duty to manage asbestos in buildings.
A big thank you to our guests today, Samantha Lord and Tim Beaumont from HSE, and Craig Barker from Marks & Spencer. Until the next time, this is Mick Ord, signing off for now and wishing you a safe year, wherever you work.
