How Asbestos Can Halt Your Office Refurbishment Plans and How You Can Avoid This Disaster
Asbestos is a naturally occurring material that has excellent fire retarding properties, and has been in use since early Greek times.
It was a very common building material in the period up to the 1970 and 1980's although as the health risks of inhaling the very small fibres became apparent it was banned in many countries, including the UK.
Because of its wide spread use before the ban, there are a great many buildings, both residential and commercial, that will have elements constructed with asbestos containing materials.
Whilst these are usually perfectly safe in their solid, undisturbed condition, as soon as the materials are required to be removed, or cut or drilled into, then regulations come into force requiring special measures to be taken to protect the workforce and remove the asbestos materials.
If you are in the middle of an office refurbishment and your contractor identifies asbestos this can mean a number of things.
Firstly they will almost certainly need to stop work immediately.
This will probably have an impact on the length of time your office refurbishment will take to complete and may also result in additional costs to you for lost working time and the extended project period.
If you are working to a tight deadline, this of course can have a very serious impact.
It may be possible for work to continue in other areas of the property if they are free from asbestos materials, but if your contractor is unsure they should not continue working until a proper asbestos survey, including test sampling, is complete, a process that can take a few days to arrange and undertake, plus additional time for the test samples to be analysed.
The second impact will be a direct cost in removing and safely disposing of the asbestos.
For many asbestos materials this will need a specialist contractor, and however the materials are disposed of, you should be given a waste transfer note confirming that it has been safely dealt with.
If your project can continue with an alternative solution that does not disturb the materials then you are able to label them and leave them in-situ.
You will need specific advice though about what can be dealt with in this way.
But this scenario should not come upon you as a surprise.
Commercial building should have an asbestos register, a pre-compiled report, which has already identified potential areas of contamination.
And if it hasn't or you can not get hold of the register, your contractor should be advising you to have an initial, or Type 1, survey undertaken before they start works.
If they think appropriate a type 2 or 3 survey may be required, and these will include the testing of samples.
Whilst this will increase the cost of the project, it is a legal requirement to properly manage asbestos, and trying to cut corners may cause greater cost and delay if asbestos is believed to be present after the project starts.
It was a very common building material in the period up to the 1970 and 1980's although as the health risks of inhaling the very small fibres became apparent it was banned in many countries, including the UK.
Because of its wide spread use before the ban, there are a great many buildings, both residential and commercial, that will have elements constructed with asbestos containing materials.
Whilst these are usually perfectly safe in their solid, undisturbed condition, as soon as the materials are required to be removed, or cut or drilled into, then regulations come into force requiring special measures to be taken to protect the workforce and remove the asbestos materials.
If you are in the middle of an office refurbishment and your contractor identifies asbestos this can mean a number of things.
Firstly they will almost certainly need to stop work immediately.
This will probably have an impact on the length of time your office refurbishment will take to complete and may also result in additional costs to you for lost working time and the extended project period.
If you are working to a tight deadline, this of course can have a very serious impact.
It may be possible for work to continue in other areas of the property if they are free from asbestos materials, but if your contractor is unsure they should not continue working until a proper asbestos survey, including test sampling, is complete, a process that can take a few days to arrange and undertake, plus additional time for the test samples to be analysed.
The second impact will be a direct cost in removing and safely disposing of the asbestos.
For many asbestos materials this will need a specialist contractor, and however the materials are disposed of, you should be given a waste transfer note confirming that it has been safely dealt with.
If your project can continue with an alternative solution that does not disturb the materials then you are able to label them and leave them in-situ.
You will need specific advice though about what can be dealt with in this way.
But this scenario should not come upon you as a surprise.
Commercial building should have an asbestos register, a pre-compiled report, which has already identified potential areas of contamination.
And if it hasn't or you can not get hold of the register, your contractor should be advising you to have an initial, or Type 1, survey undertaken before they start works.
If they think appropriate a type 2 or 3 survey may be required, and these will include the testing of samples.
Whilst this will increase the cost of the project, it is a legal requirement to properly manage asbestos, and trying to cut corners may cause greater cost and delay if asbestos is believed to be present after the project starts.
Source...