Sustainability & Risk / Hazard Abatement / Background Data - Hazards

Hazardous Material Personnel and their Accreditations

In managing your hazardous materials, you will need to work with abatement companies, inspectors, assessors, and so on. Typically, these parties are accredited to perform their tasks because government's hazmat regulations require that only certified personnel work with hazardous materials. For example, in the US the Asbestos School Hazard Abatement Reauthorization Act (ASHARA), requires the use of accredited inspectors, workers, supervisors, project designers, and management planners when conducting asbestos activities at schools and public and commercial buildings.

Use this set of tasks to define accreditation information, and then associate these accreditations with the specific parties that handle hazmat at your site. Taking the time to define the accreditation of the parties that work with hazmat at your site will help you document that you have managed your hazmat according to the appropriate regulations.

Define Hazard Accreditation Types

Use this task to define the type of accreditations required to work with all phases of managing a hazardous substance. For example, you might define the accreditations for inspectors, abatement workers, project planners, testers, and so on. If you wish, you can define accreditation requirements for each particular hazardous substance (by completing the Hazardous Substance field), or you can keep the accreditation types more general by leaving the Hazardous Substance field blank. For each accreditation type, enter an identifying code, a descriptive name, and a brief description of the tasks performed by people with this accreditation.

Define Hazard Accreditation Sources

Use this task to enter the companies and agencies that accredit hazardous material personnel. If the accrediting agency is associated with a specific hazardous material, you can enter this in the Hazardous Substance field. Similarly, if the agency is associated with regulations set by a specific state or province, you can enter this state as well. For each accreditation agency, enter an identifying code, a descriptive name, and a brief description of the agency.

Define Hazardous Material Professionals (Inspectors, Abatement Workers, Planners)

With accreditation types and sources defined, you can now define the hazardous material personnel who work at your site and enter their accreditation and accrediting agencies. For each party involved in hazard material management, you will have on hand their basic information, their accreditation, and the agency that accredited them.

Since certifications typically last for only a set period of time, you should be sure to periodically review your list of professionals and update their data as they re-certify their credentials. Hazmat professionals typically include inspectors, abatement workers, and planners. The accreditation type field specifies the role of each hazmat professional that you enter using this task.

Note that if a professional has more than one accreditation or is accredited in multiple substances, you may wish to create two separate records, each focusing on the accreditation for the particular substance. Another option is store the major accreditation in the record, and use the Comments field to list other accreditations.

Note: System administrators typically define Archibus users using the tasks of the System /Archibus Administrator role. Once they define users, they can optionally synch them with Employee records. Therefore, if you want your inspectors, planners, and abatement workers (stored in the Hazardous Substance Professionals table) to be able to sign into the system, they must also be registered in the Employees table and you must create corresponding Employee records. See Synchronizing Users and Employees.

Hazmat professionals are stored in the Hazardous Substance Professionals table.

Hazardous Substance	Choose the hazardous substance with which this professional works.
Date Accredited Date Accreditation Expires	Complete these fields with the date range of the professional's accreditation. As time passes, be sure to review these fields and verify that your parties maintain current certifications. When you work with views for handling hazmat assessment items, these fields will be visible so that you can immediately see that you are managing your problem with accredited personnel.
Accreditation Type	From the available list, choose the role of this professional, such as inspector, planner, or abatement worker. These roles are defined as part of the Define Hazard Accreditation Types task, above.
Accreditation Source	From the available list, choose the party (such as agency, company, or regulatory agency) that granted this professional's certification. These agencies are defined as part of the Define Hazard Accreditation Sources task, above.
Accreditation Certificate # Accreditation License # Inspector #	Enter the numbers for accreditation, license, and inspectors, as they appear on the certification document.
Document	Use this document field to store a scanned copy of the accreditation certificate or other document, such as an image of the hazmat worker.
Comments	Enter any comments, such as secondary accreditations, about this professional.

Defining Field Assessors

Another important role in the hazmat assessment and abatement process is that of the field assessor, who assesses areas, estimates cost of abatement projects, assess risk ratings, and so forth. Although the inspectors, planners, and abatement workers may be outside contractors, the field assessor is usually an internal employee and therefore is already stored in the Archibus Users table and the Employees table.

If your assessment is not done internally, but is outsourced, you can track field assessors in the Hazardous Substance Professionals table, described above.