If you are planning to refurbish a building, strip out an office floor or carry out major works to a block of flats, asbestos needs to be dealt with before the contractor starts, not when the first ceiling comes down. Finding it halfway through a project stops work, adds cost and can expose people to harm.
Two kinds of survey
Health and Safety Executive guidance, HSG264, describes two types of asbestos survey.
- A management survey locates asbestos that could be disturbed during normal occupation and maintenance. It is the basis of the asbestos register most non domestic buildings and the common parts of blocks should already hold.
- A refurbishment and demolition survey is needed before any refurbishment or demolition work. It is fully intrusive within the area of the works, which can mean lifting floors, opening voids and breaking into structure.
A management survey is not a substitute. It deliberately avoids the hidden places that building work will reach. Under regulation 5 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, work that could disturb asbestos must not start until a suitable and sufficient assessment has been made of whether asbestos is present or, where there is doubt, until it is assumed to be present and the work is planned on that basis.
Which buildings are at risk
Asbestos was widely used in buildings for much of the twentieth century and was not fully banned until 1999. Any building constructed or refurbished before 2000 may contain it, in places such as ceiling tiles, floor tiles, pipe lagging, textured coatings, panels and roof sheets.
Planning the survey into the project
- Commission it before tender. The findings should be in the tender documents so that contractors price removal properly.
- Allow access. Intrusive surveys usually need the area to be vacant. In occupied buildings this takes careful planning.
- Allow time for removal. Licensed asbestos work must be notified to the enforcing authority at least 14 days before it starts.
- Keep the records. The survey and removal records belong in the health and safety file for the building.
Our Building Surveys and Major Works services build asbestos surveys into the programme from the outset. See how we approached the refurbishment of a 1912 block in a conservation area.