Sustainability & Risk / Hazard Abatement / Environmental Hazard Manager
Sustainability & Risk / Hazard Abatement / Field Assessor
Sustainability & Risk / Hazard Abatement / Abatement Worker

Updating Hazmat Assessment Items as a Project Progresses

Once you initially survey an area and complete basic information in an assessment item record, the assessment project will progress and staff will make decisions on how to address the issues you found during an assessment.

At many points in a hazmat project, you may need to update fields to change their values or complete fields that you left blank during your initial assessment. For example, after sample materials are tested for hazardous substances, you may need to complete the Material Condition, Friability, Contains Hazardous Substance?, and Recommended Action fields.

Tracking Status and Pending Actions throughout the Process

One field that you (or other workers) will frequently update throughout the abatement process is the Hazard Status and Pending Status fields. By carefully completing these fields as the project progresses, you will be able to use the application's filters to focus the views on only items requested, needing approval, currently being worked on, and so forth.

Pending Action

Use this field to describe the next planned step in the management process of this item. For example, you might initially complete this field with "Perform Assessment." Later, in the process you can change it to "Perform Abatement" or "Perform Re-Inspection." This field is validated by the Hazard Problem Types table.

Use Pending Action and Hazard Status (below) to help track your workflow. For example, the Hazard Status may be “initial survey in progress”, and Pending Action may be “estimate inspection” or “perform inspection”, depending on the unique workflow that each organization chooses to follow.

Hazard Status

Holds the current status in the hazmat management process of managing this item. As the process flows from a problem being reported, to investigated, to further testing, to resolution, users involved in the process will update this field with the appropriate value.

For example, you can choose from Reported, Initially Assessed, Assessed, Verified, and so on. The exact values from which you can choose are determined by your site.

Note: The Hazard Abatement application does not enforce a particular workflow or process. The above fields enable you to implement a flexible workflow that meets the needs of your site. All filters include the Hazard Status field so that you can restrict by status.

Procedure to Update Several Items at Once

To aid you in updating your hazard assessment items, the system provides an Update Selections button which presents a form focusing on the fields that typically need updating once testing results are returned or other events occur in the project. Use this feature when you want to update multiple records at one time with the same value. For example, if you have completed a project, you can update the Date Abated field for all assessment items at one time. Or, you can update the Status of multiple assessment items at one time.

Note: Depending on practices at your site, an environmental hazard manager or other professional involved in hazard management (such as an inspector or abatement worker ) may also update assessment items. Whether you are a field assessor, an inspector, an abatement worker, or an environmental hazard manager, you will enter information using one of the following tasks:
Manage Assessment Items
Manage My Assessment Items
Manage My Hazard Abatement Items
Depending on your role, not all fields listed below will be available for you to edit.

To update your hazmat assessment items:

  1. Select the Manage Assessment Items task, which is available from the Field Assessor, Abatement Worker, and Environmental Hazard Manager roles.

  2. Select the hazard assessment project to see a list of existing assessment items for this project. If you are a field assessor or abatement worker, you will see only items assigned to you.
  1. Scroll through the assessment records and select the records that you wish to update by choosing their check boxes.
  1. Choose the Update Selections button.
  2. In the resulting form, enter the values with which you want to update all selected records. Since current values may vary for the selected records, the system shows no current values (even if they are the same for the selected records).
  3. Choose the Update button.