Chief Executive’s comment

Steve Sadley, Chief Executive

OUR MISSION

To give the best possible service and support to assist ARCA members and customers in providing safe, effective and ethical management of asbestos, thereby safeguarding the public.

OUR VISION

We envision being an essential strategic partner, through membership of ARCA and ATaC, to all companies providing asbestos management and licensed asbestos removal services, or services to those companies, by providing solutions which contribute to the overall success of their businesses and provide reassurance to their clients.

OUR VALUES

Our values define the culture at ARCA. The values of integrity, service, excellence, teamwork and responsibility guide the way we work, our behaviour and our commitment to support members, customers and colleagues.

Changing Times

It is a long time since I wrote my last piece for this column, back in March, just as COVID-19 was beginning to escalate and then the Summer edition of ARCA News was cancelled. Now we find ourselves in September having hopefully negotiated the worst of the crisis and trying to get back to some sort of normality.

ARCA continued to work throughout the lockdown period, providing help and assistance to our members, including almost daily email updates during the fast-changing situations our members found themselves in. Clearly some of the services we normally offer were unavailable during lockdown and some staff were furloughed. In common with many organisations ARCA has utilised available technology in the form of Microsoft Teams and Zoom to deliver many services remotely, in order to comply with the law, aid social distancing and reduce the possibility of infection. Remote training, remote meetings and remote member visits are now part and parcel of our standard service delivery.

The regional meetings in July were conducted remotely via Zoom and feedback from members attending was incredibly positive. The next round of ARCA member regional meetings will also be held remotely, with dates having been set for mid-November which are available on the ARCA website.

June 1st saw the resumption of ARCA site audits and ARCA auditors have been auditing continuously since then. A new version of the audit form is being used with one of the new criteria evaluating the COVID-19 precautions present on the member contractors’ site. We are delighted to see that COVID-19 safety precautions are being implemented very well across all the members sites we have audited.

On the 22nd June ARCA resumed faceto-face training in a COVID-19 safe manner. This involved marking out areas to ensure and enforce social distancing, providing hand sanitisers and enforcing good hygiene, taking delegates temperatures on arrival and amending lunch procedures to ensure a safe environment was provided.

Feedback is requested following our training courses and to date the feedback received has informed us that 100% delegates who have attended our face-to-face courses are satisfied with the COVID-19 safety procedures that are in place. Feedback from members prior to lockdown informed us that members wanted to see a greater availability of training venues, and since the country has opened up again after lockdown, we have added both Leeds and Southampton to our list of available training venues.

On the 1st September we launched ALFA, the Asbestos Labour Feedback App. This has been in development over the last 20 months and promises to be a game changer for ARCA members who use agency labour. The quality of short-term agency labour was overwhelmingly cited as the biggest problem experienced by our members. Working closely with the main labour suppliers within the industry ARCA has developed ALFA. The App now has 12 of the leading labour suppliers in the industry, over 650 short-term agency labour operatives and 138 ARCA asbestos removal contractors registered. Over 800 ratings have been posted and over 50 operatives have now achieved the minimum 5 ratings to generate their overall performance rating. The average rating of all labour agency operatives on the system over the last 12 months is 4.98 where 4 is generally satisfactory and 5 is good. [all stats as of the 10th Sept 2020].

This is a great starting point for ALFA, demonstrating that the problems experienced by ARCA members in relation to labour agency short-term operatives are now beginning to disappear. As more and more ratings are posted, and more and more operatives receive their overall performance rating after 5 ratings, ARCA members will have an advantage over non ARCA asbestos removal contactors as a result of having a detailed analysis of the short-term operatives competency. This will be based on multiple reviews, usually by multiple licensed asbestos removal contractors, therefore providing some reassurance of competency. 2020 has been a year to forget as far as ARCA social events are concerned. COVID-19 has meant the ARCA National Golf day and European Golf event were cancelled, however, we are holding the AGM, albeit remotely on 2nd October 2020. I look forward to many members attending.

Steve Sadley Chief Executive