Asbestos audit case study

Background

BIACS is a provider of safety services ranging from IATP-audited training, to nationwide asbestos surveying. Founded by Paul Beaumont, BIACS embodies more than 30 years’ of experience within the asbestos industry. The business is focused on being impartial, independent, but fair when assessing progress, procedures and compliance.

Challenge

When building his business, Paul drew on his extensive experience of operating licensed asbestos removal companies to design consistent and comprehensive audits for his clients. As the demand for audits increased, it became more obvious that much of the auditing process relied on set procedures and questions. Paul realised that gathering information in a structured and repeatable way would help BIACS to improve the consistency of its work, and further raise the quality of the audits it delivered.

In early 2020  BIACS began using Assure360’s auditing capabilities to support and enhance its work. Among the benefits, the simplicity of the Assure360 Audit app meant that Paul could turn up on site armed only with an iPad – doing away with the need for pens, paper or clipboards.

Results

BIACS’ adoption of Assure360 has proved a boon for its auditing business. Offering guided support through a comprehensive site audit process, Assure360 Audit ensures that Paul can capture detailed information on site with the minimum of fuss. By implementing a structured data-gathering process, the app ensures that no checks are missed and that the audit is thorough. Widespread and simple support for photo evidencing means that all findings can be backed up with images, helping highlight both shortcomings and good practice.

By following a consistent process, the app guarantees extremely high consistency between audits. This helps ensure that no checks are missed, but it also supports higher quality analysis and comparison between audits. Able to demonstrate a highly consistent approach, BIACS is often asked to audit alongside LARCs’ own internal auditors, providing a benchmark and comparison.

Repeated auditing with Assure360 allows BIACS to produce detailed training needs analyses for its clients. Where those clients also use Assure360, the data can be pooled to ensure the most complete understanding of training requirements. As an IATP-audited provider of training, BIACS can use its deep understanding of clients’ needs to provide tailored and highly targeted training.

What the client said

There’s a benefit to auditing based on a consistent process. Fundamentally it means you can’t forget to do something – either on site, or when writing up the audit. The flip side of that is I’ve done audits for other organisations where you’re literally given an A4 document with tick boxes on it, and you go down and tick them. You’re limited to ticking the box. And you’re also inheriting any blind spots in their system.

It’s not like that with Assure360. You’re going through the boxes and you’re saying: “yes, the guy has got training, yes he has got a medical, yes he’s fit-tested”, but you can comment on anything. With Assure360 it’s got that consistency: the layout’s the same, the information is the same.

It’s easy to follow and it’s easy to identify needs in operatives as well. When I deliver training for clients who use Assure360 they can present us with information to say, for example: “We’ve got three guys who aren’t that good in this particular area. Can you cover that in the training?”. It lets us focus the training more – makes it more valuable.

Back when I was personally getting trained as an operative, we’d turn up for mandatory training every 12 months and go through the same training course we’d had the previous year. What a proper training needs analysis allows us to do is to tailor that course, not only to make it informative, but also to make it interesting so they’re actually learning something, rather than just sitting there going through the same old stuff they did before.

Client name

• Paul Beaumont

Client role

• Proprietor