Four unannounced site audits each year for ARCA Members

ARCA and Members commit to taking another step to demonstrate high standards

Today the Association reinforced its commitment to continue supporting high standards across membership.

That is, the Site Audit Accreditation Scheme requirement will be increased from three to four unannounced site audits each membership year from January 2023.

The Association’s Rules of Membership set out the requirements of the ARCA Site Audit Accreditation Scheme (SAAS), which has been established as a requirement for asbestos removal contractor membership for over 20  years. Currently the scheme requires members to undertake three satisfactory unannounced site audits every year to maintain membership

“Audits undertaken by an external resource are seen across the industry as a strong indicator of performance," stated Steve Sadley, Chief Executive of ARCA.

“ARCA has seen members maintain high standards of performance over the five years site audits have been unannounced.  Now this increase in the number of unannounced site audits is a further step in our commitment to support members’ maintenance of high standards. It will also enhance the level of reassurance to end-clients.”

Being unannounced (no prior notice), ARCA membership audits give a realistic view of a contractor’s usual performance on site and are also an indicator of the effectiveness of management arrangements of the contractor. These audits have become recognised by third parties, such as the HSE and end-clients, as an excellent independent assessment of a contractor’s performance and standards.

“As I have said in the past, undertaking unannounced⁽ⁱ⁾ audits is an expensive strategy as sometimes when our auditors arrive at a job it is not at a stage reasonable to audit or may have finished early⁽ⁱⁱ⁾. We still believe this to be a cost worth paying to ensure ARCA audits are truly unannounced. Also, to meet our commitment of four audits a year we will be recruiting another auditor to join our in-house team.”

Steve concluded; “I feel that this announcement today confirms our on-going commitment to provide a strong level of reassurance of our member contractors’ competency to all parties.”

ARCA is the association taking initiatives to continue to raise standards.

(i)audits became unannounced, that is no prior notice, from January 2017, excluding Ireland

(ii)ARCA receives limited information from the HSE which is used to schedule unannounced audits