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The Tools for the Job

Editorial Type: Review     Date: 01-2014    Views: 4554   










Compliance Data Management is a complex subject, and requires a complete software solution to give Compliance Managers the right tools to handle it - like Ai Solutions' ToolKit Compliance System for CDM and Asbestos Management

You might think that we have only become compliance aware within the last couple of years, as standards, regulations and legal obligations and requirements proliferate, but the need to comply with set procedures for doing things has been around for quite a while - prompting the Leighton Buzzard software company, Ai Solutions, to develop an aide to Construction, Design and Management (CDM) compliance way back in 1995.

It's certainly true that the adoption of Building Information Management (BIM) by many companies has brought with it the need, and also the means, to manage the vast amount of documents associated with the construction side of building projects, but this only covers a small part of the problem.

For a project to proceed smoothly from initial inception right through to post-completion management, many more documents have to be shared between people beyond just those involved in the construction process. In addition to that, each single maintenance task can be assessed as an individual project, bringing with it a requirement to fill in forms, produce reports, and record progress, all complying to specific formats and needing completion within a set time scale - or before further associated tasks can be attempted.

The number of documents that have to be read and understood, the current regulations that have to be kept up to date, and the network of people who need to be involved pose significant problems to organisations that need to keep track of work in progress - particularly the Works departments of regional councils who can have hundreds of individual projects commencing every day.

Hence the development of CDM ToolKit CS, Now a web-based tool that provides all of the tools, templates, diaries, supporting information and document management needed to keep compliance data management on track. Crucially, with all documents and data available at any time, ToolKit CS also provides the ability to create management summaries that can give Compliance Managers at any level a snapshot of the status of all projects under their control - showing those that are in progress and indicating the numbers of documents that need to be acted upon as completed, in progress, not completed and behind schedule.

CDM ToolKit CS, therefore, looks at key legal requirements for every building or maintenance project, focusing on four key document areas. These cover Health and Safety; the Pre-construction phase of a project where information is required about how a building is to be built; what materials are to be used, and what constraints the project has; the Construction Plan, which includes building information and showing which way the building is to be built, and F10 documentation - the notification to HSE that CDM work is being carried out.

Every step of the process is recorded for audit purposes, even down to activity times, individual workstations and access details, so that log-ins and searches, even for the demonstration that I was given, showed in the audit trail.

CDM TOOLKIT CS AND ASBESTOS TOOLKIT CS
There is another major benefit to ToolKit CS, highlighted by the fact that Ai Solutions is able to offer a comprehensive compliance data management solution for the rigorous control of asbestos. Asbestos building products are still widely installed in many older buildings, and it is up to councils and other bodies to know exactly where they are, what state they are in, whether they need dealing with, how frequently they need to be surveyed, and whether they need to be removed altogether.

Asbestos comes in a variety of forms - paper, felt, cardboard, sprayed or as a friction product - and each type has specific assessment recommendations, and, therefore, compliance procedures beyond the core requirements for the material. Faced with such a proliferation of material lists, risk assessments, procedures and documents (6 different asbestos lists and 5 CDM lists) users, with the help of Ai Solutions, are able to refine the lists, and then from the drop down lists select the ones they need to work on.

The basis of this facility is the core ToolKit CS modules, customised to deal with all of the statutory requirements for handling asbestos. Asbestos is obviously of critical importance, hence the stand alone application, but CDM can be customised to suit every client's needs. In fact the first steps that need to be taken by Ai Solutions for new clients is to analyse a client's specific requirements and working practices, and to set up a system that fulfils those needs.



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