Any building put up or refurbished before 2000 may contain asbestos, and a refurbishment is the moment it gets disturbed. The paperwork answers four questions before the first wall is opened: what is there, who is managing it, what kind of work touching it is, and how the area comes back. Written from the side of the desk that receives the survey and stops the job when it is missing, here is what has to be in place and why.
The duty to manage, and the survey it rests on
Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 puts a duty on the dutyholder for non-domestic premises — the owner, the occupier, or whoever holds the repairing obligation — to find out whether asbestos is present, record the conclusions and, where it is or may be present, write a plan for managing it and put the plan into effect. Regulation 5 is the other half: no employer may start demolition, maintenance or any other work liable to disturb asbestos without a suitable and sufficient assessment of what is present, or else must assume it is there, and not chrysotile alone.
A management survey does not satisfy either duty for a refurbishment. The survey before refurbishment or demolition is a refurbishment and demolition survey: intrusive, done in an area vacated for it, locating every asbestos-containing material within the area where the work will take place. The surveyor goes where the works will go — into the voids, behind the linings, under the floors — and samples rather than presumes. Under CDM 2015 regulation 4(4) the report is pre-construction information the client must give every designer and contractor, which is why a principal contractor will not price, let alone start, without it.
The survey is only as good as its brief. A surveyor told "survey the second floor" and not told the ceilings are coming down will not open the ceilings. The brief says which rooms, what works, how far in, what access is arranged, and what is excluded and why.
The register and the plan
The register is the site copy of what the survey found and what was decided about each item: location, material, condition, extent, the survey and sample reference, the action, and the date it is next looked at. It goes out with the pre-construction information, is shown at induction, and sits where the fire and rescue service will find it, because regulation 4(9) requires the information to reach everyone liable to disturb the material and the emergency services.
The management plan is the document behind the register: who holds the duty and who runs it day to day, the priority assessment the dutyholder makes on top of the surveyor's material assessment, the action for each item with an owner and a date, how contractors are told, and the review regulation 4(10) requires at regular intervals and whenever the plan may be out of date. On a refurbishment the principal contractor runs the plan for the area it controls and hands it back at the end.
What kind of work it is
The Regulations split work with asbestos three ways. Licensable work — defined in regulation 2, licensed under regulation 8 — is for a licensed contractor, notified to the enforcing authority fourteen days ahead under regulation 9(1). Non-licensed work that meets every condition of regulation 3(2) — exposure sporadic and of low intensity, the control limit clearly not exceeded, and one of the four kinds of task listed there — needs no notification, no designated asbestos area and no medical surveillance. Everything else that is not licensable is notifiable non-licensed work: HSE is notified before it starts under regulation 9(2), the area is designated under regulation 18(1)(a), and regulation 22 requires medical surveillance and a health record kept for forty years. Whichever way it falls, regulation 6 requires a risk assessment, regulation 7 a plan of work and regulation 10 training. The decision is made on paper, in that order, with the reasoning written down.
Handing the area back
For licensable work the analyst carries out the four-stage clearance — the preliminary check, the visual inspection inside the enclosure, the air monitoring, and the final assessment after the enclosure comes down — and issues the certificate of reoccupation; regulation 20 requires the employer who appoints the analyst to use one accredited for it. For non-licensed work there is no certificate, and the contractor's visual check stands in for it. Then the waste has gone on a consignment note, the register is updated, the plan is revised, and the area is handed from the removal contractor to the principal contractor and on to the occupier.
What a template does not do
A register gives the columns and a plan gives the headings; neither knows what is in your ceiling void. The survey is the surveyor's, the clearance is the analyst's, and the decision that a task is non-licensed is a competent person's, made on the figures in front of them. No document makes anyone compliant. Why we will never call a document "compliant".
Documents for this work
- The asbestos management bundle — all six management documents
- Refurbishment and Demolition Survey Brief and Scope — the brief, and the checklist the report is read against
- Asbestos Register — Site Copy
- Asbestos Management Plan
- Non-Licensed Asbestos Work Assessment and Notification Record
- Asbestos Worker Exposure and Health Record Index
- Asbestos Removal Handover and Reoccupation Record
- Asbestos Disturbance Area Permit — the permit before anything on the register is touched
- Asbestos Interface — Stop-Work and Discovery — when something not on the register turns up