Asbestos management case study

Background

GreenAir Environmental is a Glasgow-based asbestos surveying and removal company. Founded in early 2016, the company has built its reputation on exemplary standards and competitive pricing, delivered through a partnership between experienced staff and cutting edge technology.

Today, GreenAir has grown into a leader in the asbestos industry, completing contracts of all sizes across the UK. Using technology from CCTV to drones, it prides itself on offering full transparency and accountability to clients and the Health and Safety Executive.

Challenge

GreenAir’s director, Graham Patterson, has pursued a clear strategy to distinguish the company in the marketplace. By using the latest equipment and systems, GreenAir aims to offer not only higher standards of safety and cleanliness, but to operate with streamlined workflows and agile working methods.

Graham has focused on the application of technology to achieve greater transparency and better results, for example by equipping all enclosures with wifi enabled CCTV which allows for remote viewing. At the same time, he has designed record-keeping and collaborative working systems that reduce paperwork, and support scalable, flexible teams. By minimising his administrative overheads, and reducing the need for him to be on site, Graham’s business can work more efficiently and offer more competitive pricing.

GreenAir chose Assure360 as a central component in its technology-led approach. By exploiting its combination of app-based, granular data collection and a secure, cloud-based dashboard, Graham has been able to cut paper out of his business processes, and improve his vision of what happens on site.

Results

Graham’s approach has proved a great success in normal times, but during the Covid-19 pandemic it became vital. Like many asbestos removal contractors, GreenAir’s protective equipment meant it could keep operating at the height of lockdown. Even so, restrictions on staff contact meant that the company had to devise new working methods that met or exceeded social distancing requirements outside the enclosure.

Assure360 proved fundamental to these efforts, supporting a completely paperless approach. “We wipe the iPad down and we can pass it to each other,” said Graham. “Having the iPad on site is transformative. We use date-stamped photographs to record attendance, and whether someone’s clean-shaven – our guys can take the photos from two metres away. We can pass the method statement round on the iPad, so everyone knows what they’re doing.”

This ability proved critical under lockdown, as partners and principle contractors queried multiple details in an effort to ensure safe working. “We got to the fourth revision of the method statement before we were allowed on one site,” Graham explained. “To be honest, not much had changed from the first revision, because they were trying to get us to implement things – such as face-fitting our masks – that we already do.”

“We wouldn’t normally mention face fitting in a method statement because it’s mandated by our licence,” he adds. “So we were having to add stuff that we wouldn’t normally put in, for their benefit rather than ours.”

What the client said

“Assure360 itself has streamlined the company massively, but it’s helped greatly under the lockdown. If it wasn’t for Assure360 I think we’d have a major issue. The supervisor’s doing all his checks and enclosure inspections on Assure360, so again it’s all done at the click of a button. If work needs updated we can do it remotely and it’s updated on the system – we don’t need to print anything off.

“We’re lucky that, while we’ve never experienced anything like the Covid-19 pandemic before, the precautions that they’re asking us to take are something we do on a daily basis without actually thinking of it too much. But if we were to go back to the old paper systems for actually managing jobs I think we would struggle.”

Client name

Graham Patterson

Client role

Director