You may have read about my recent experience in organising the Faculty of Asbestos Assessment and Management (FAAM)’s first four-stage clearance (4SC) workshop. The event produced a trove of information that we can feed back into the faculty conference, and ultimately into better, joint training for analysts and asbestos supervisors. But since the event, I’ve also been keen to use the insight we gained to make sure Assure360 is making the 4SC as straightforward as possible for everyone involved.

That’s why we’re embarking on a complete overhaul of the enclosure 4SC process on the industry-leading Assure360 Paperless app. The aim is to make it a lot clearer to supervisors and analysts, streamline the whole process, and use our learnings from the FAAM joint workshop to make it less confrontational and encourage team effort.

At the same time, we’re also starting an industry-first research project. By harnessing the power of the data management that comes as standard with Assure360, we’re trying to identify the underlying reasons behind whether an enclosure passes or fails the 4SC.

Our new-look process will record not just passes or fails, but the stage at which the enclosure failed:

• Stage 1 – this is the normal enclosure and assessment of scope completion
• Stage 2 (Initial Assessment) – this is a little-understood stage where the analyst enters the enclosure for their preliminary review. The analyst only looks at main / obvious areas, which might result in an early failure
• Stage 2 (Full Inspection) – this is the normal analyst’s visual that we all know
• Stage 3 – the air test
• Stage 4 – the post-completion test, decontamination unit and transit / waste routes

Assure will also include a statement from the analyst as to whether they were familiar with the scope and project in advance. This should help with understanding the impact of involving or not involving them in the planning stage.

Crunching the numbers

These are all fairly routine data points to collect, but where Assure360 can go further than any other is by cross-referencing them with other data. Examples of where we can do this include:

• People – the system knows which individuals are working on a project, and whether they’re full-time employed or short-term workers (STW). It also knows the year they started with you, and the year that they started in their role (supervisor or operative). We can therefore investigate such factors as the percentage of STWs on the project team, and the team’s overall experience, tenure with your organisation and so on.  
• Distance – again the system knows where the project is, so analysis could reveal whether distance from home base has an impact.
• Anticipated duration of work in the enclosure – this will let us examine large projects down to micro ones, and compare the plan with how long it really took.
• What were you removing? – the type of ACM, fixing and the task could all have an impact.
• Management influence – everything can obviously be cross-referenced against the supervisor and the contracts manager.

Like everything we do at Assure360, the number crunching will all be done in the background, and the insight presented to you in handy and easy to use reports. There’ll be absolutely no additional effort needed on your part.

We’re particularly keen to harness the vast expertise of our community of users, so please let us know what other factors might have an impact on the success of a project. We’d really appreciate it if you email your input to us on enquiries@assure360.co.uk

Assure360 is the industry standard – if you are yet to experience the only productivity tool designed specifically for the asbestos removal industry, please contact us here, or email us on enquiries@assure360.co.uk