Asbestos found mid-erection: the only correct next move

Scaffolding sits in an awkward place in asbestos management. The survey is commissioned for the refurbishment or demolition work, the scaffolder arrives before that work starts, and the things a scaffolder does to a building — drilling ties, fixing to soffits, working against eaves and rainwater goods — are exactly the things that disturb material nobody expected to be touched yet.

The result is a trade with real exposure potential and frequently no sight of the survey at all.

What to do when something is found

The sequence matters more than the identification. Nobody on a scaffold gang is expected to identify asbestos; they are expected to stop.

• –Stop work at that location. Not the job — that location.
• –Keep people out of the area and do not sweep, brush or clear anything.
• –Report it to the principal contractor immediately, and record the time.
• –Do not continue at an adjacent position on the assumption the material is local. It frequently is not.
• –Record who was in the area and for how long, because that record cannot be reconstructed later and may matter for decades.

That last point is the one gangs skip and the one that is irreplaceable. An exposure record written on the day is evidence; the same facts recalled four years later are not.

Before the gang arrives

Most of the control is upstream, and it is a CDM question rather than a scaffolding one.

• –Ask for the asbestos information for the areas you will be fixing into, specifically. A survey covering the areas being refurbished is not necessarily a survey covering the elevations you are tying to.
• –Treat an absent or silent survey as a reason to ask rather than a reason to proceed. Pre-2000 buildings are the default concern.
• –Make sure the tie positions in the design have been checked against the asbestos information, which is a conversation between the designer and the principal contractor that frequently has not happened.
• –Brief the gang on what to look for and, more importantly, on the instruction to stop — because the failure mode is a scaffolder who is not sure and carries on rather than hold the job up.

Tie positions are the sharp end of this. A tie has to go where the structure can take it, which is not always where the asbestos information says it is safe to drill, and resolving that conflict is a design decision rather than a decision for the person holding the drill.

What goes in the record

• –That asbestos information was requested, from whom, and what came back — including where nothing did.
• –Where tie positions were changed because of it, and who authorised the change.
• –Any suspected material found, with the time, the location, who was present and what was done.
• –The instruction given to the gang, and when.

An inspection report records the scaffold's condition. None of the above belongs there, and that is part of why it ends up nowhere.

Duties around asbestos are HSE's, specific, and not something to work out from a summary. Use the pages below before writing a procedure.