Why do I need another survey?
So, you have your asbestos management survey, it is probably part of your asbestos management plan *tick* - but now you want to renovate or demolish your property.
Or, you have an asbestos refurbishment survey for your project *tick* - but now your scope of work has changed and the survey doesn’t cover all the works you will be carrying out.
Asbestos is often hidden in the structure of the building or in items so won’t be all found during a management survey. We would only investigate accessible surfaces since you don’t want your property damaged!
Your asbestos management plan should detail that further survey work is required prior to refurbishment or demolition to investigate the hidden surfaces. Moreover, the law states you must get an intrusive survey prior to demolition or renovations.
Here are some reasons why:
A lot of asbestos containing materials were manufactured for fire protection. This means they were installed in the fabric of a building. Sometimes the products were prefabricated, like this fibreglass/asbestos insulating board wall panel, and sometimes they were concealed by non asbestos products like GIB or timber.
Pipe insulation is another example of why we need to thoroughly investigate through all the layers down to the actual pipe. So so often we find non asbestos lagging on the surface and asbestos beneath. Furthermore, with wet applied lagging, we ensure we take full thickness core samples down to the metal as we do find non asbestos lagging covering asbestos lagging.
Even items installed into a property may contain hidden ACMs. This log burner is a great example. Another key point is the amount of damage we have to cause to find ACMs. We absolutely would not get this level of access on a management survey as we would have very disgruntled clients!
So bear in mind when you manage a property that you will need to consider asbestos and asbestos surveys for the entire life of the building. Think about what could be hidden and call us in before you start work. There is no substitution for knowledge and experience - waiting until you start work and discovering suspect materials is not only going to slow your project down and cost a huge amount to get sorted out, but people's lives will be put at risk.