Paperless asbestos site management case study

Background

East Coast Insulations was established in 1983, becoming one of the first licensed asbestos removal companies in the UK. Today the company provides asbestos surveys, removal, management and training, along with insulation, fabrication and reinstatement works.

In 2014, East Coast Insulations was a founding member of the Assure360 system. From the product’s earliest days, East Coast was able to benefit from features including training needs analysis, helping it to focus its investments only on the necessary training courses. At the same time, East Coast’s feedback was invaluable during Assure360’s early development.

Challenge

Despite being a longstanding Assure360 customer, East Coast Insulations was still using a paper-based system for its mandatory record keeping on licensed removal projects. With paperwork typically remaining on site for the duration of a project, managers needed to make frequent visits to monitor progress and check for issues. Given the very rural nature of the business’ operating base in East Anglia, this involved valuable time lost to travelling every day.

However, East Coast’s rural operating environment also presented a potential hurdle to the adoption of new technology. With much of its catchment areas prone to patchy mobile communications, the company was keen to avoid potential issues with unreliable data synchronisation in a cloud-based system.

Additionally, many of East Coast’s supervisors are industry veterans with decades of experience in using conventional paper systems. It was imperative that any solution to remove paper should be both reliable, and easy for workers with sometimes limited digital experience to learn and use.

Results

Towards the end of 2023, East Coast Insulations and Assure360 conducted testing to ensure the stability and reliability of the Paperless solution throughout East Anglia. With this successfully established over the course of the trial period, the company rolled out Paperless on Android tablets, transferring its supervisors from a paper-based system to the app in January 2024.

East Coast immediately began to see the benefit of moving away from paperwork. Supervisors were able to keep their site diary electronically through a simplified interface, designed to minimise the need for typing, and allowing photos to be taken and attached directly from within the app. Each supervisor now carried a tablet on a holster, allowing them to complete safety checks and update personal and job records while mobile on the site – rather than on paper in the welfare unit.

The introduction of Paperless also gave managers far greater oversight of their projects, seeing at a glance who was onsite, how the job was progressing, and whether there were any issues that needed their attention. In turn, this dramatically reduced the need for site visits, recovering managerial time that could be focused on income-generating work such as bid preparation. Managers are also now saving additional time at the post-completion stage of each project, as the Paperless solution also removed the need to recover, audit and file site paperwork when closing off a project.

What the client said

Some of the boys we work with have been in the game for 24 years and all they know is paperwork, so the new system is a bit of a jump for them. I’ve been an iPhone man since they came out, I’m not an Android guy, so it’s taken me a bit longer to get used to it. I wouldn’t say I’m the best at computers at all, really, but it is mega easy to get, really. And if there are problems you can text Rick [Garland] and he’ll get back to you in about 30 seconds.

Before, we had a folder with all the certs, your standard procedures, your licence, so that was always a nightmare to try and find one. It was all in a big folder, which wasn’t the best really.

Now it’s more being a supervisor than just doing the paperwork, because you can add pictures. It’s dramatically helped me time-wise, and also just the professionalism of it. Asbestos strippers aren’t known for their spelling or writing, but now if you have a visit from the HSE or anything someone can always read what you’ve written. They can go through the site diary and you’ve just got everything there.

Everyone agrees that it’s a better system, completely. I just keep the tablet round my shoulders on the little strap thing and then if anything comes up just add to it. At the end of the shift you haven’t got anything to fill out: just click all the buttons and sign it off.

Client name

• Joe Cooksey
• Supervisor

I’ve only been using it these last six weeks and I haven’t used it every day, but I do think it’s a good system, and it looks quite professional. And it’s easier managed than a load of paperwork.

In the early days – maybe sometimes if you got back late and then on the next day you had an un-notifiable job – your certs could slip, and before you knew you were getting on site and you had certs that were out of date. This, now, rectifies that problem, which is very professional, and quick and good.

It’s definitely saving time, and especially after the first day when you load it all up with everything, then it’s just a matter of pushing the buttons after that – it’s all been stored. I do think it’s a very professional tool, there’s no doubt about it – and easier.

Client name

• Adrian O’Neill
• Supervisor

With a paperwork system you spend a lot of money on paper, then you’ve got to audit the paperwork; you’ve got to file it. There’s a lot of post-completion work after the actual removal job has been done.

So it wasn’t that Paperless wasn’t appealing – it was really appealing to us because it would just save us so much time. But there are quite a few rural areas up here where it’s hard to get a signal, so we were a bit worried about how that could impact our operations. We did a trial period to check how that would work, and then we went with Paperless after.

It does save me a lot of time as a manager. For example, this week I’ve got three jobs running. I know I don’t have to run around to these sites because I can have a quick look on Assure360, I don’t have to go there and I can concentrate on seeing clients, preparing quotes. I can spend more time on the plan of works.

The industry’s so busy at the moment, but you can’t be everywhere at once – and you don’t get anywhere quick in Norfolk. Instead of doing a site visit and making sure everything is alright, we can actually do that from our office, which saves us a bit more time. 

And for the supervisors, they don’t have to come down to the seating area, the welfare or to the office to do paperwork – they can do it on the move. They’re loving it because it saves us a lot of time. The guys are more hands-on, so they’re better at managing the operatives, and it makes it easier for me to manage the jobs.

Assure360 Paperless does all that work for you as the job starts and progresses and finishes. So all I’ve got to do is just close jobs out in the end, then that’s uploaded and stored for the HSE’s audit for our licence renewals. So it saves us a lot of time with paperwork.

Client name

• Adam Lubach
• Associate Director

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