Think of an R&D survey as your project's essential health check. Before any serious work begins – that means anything from knocking down a wall, stripping out an old kitchen, or a full building demolition – you legally need to know if asbestos is lurking. This isn't like a general asbestos management survey; an R&D survey is much more thorough. It involves intrusive inspection, looking beyond the surface to find hidden asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) that would be disturbed during your planned work. Without this vital information, you could accidentally release dangerous asbestos fibres, putting workers and the public at severe risk, and facing significant legal penalties. We make sure you meet your duties under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012.

Our dedicated team carries out a detailed, intrusive inspection of your building. This means we'll carefully open up walls, lift floorboards, access ceiling voids, and inspect structural elements that a normal visual survey wouldn't reach. Our aim is to find every reasonably accessible asbestos-containing material that could be affected or disturbed by your refurbishment or demolition plans. We use specialised tools and techniques to take samples of suspect materials, which we then send to a UKAS-accredited laboratory for analysis. This robust process gives you a definitive answer on where asbestos is, what type it is, and its condition, ensuring you have all the facts before work starts.

Asbestos was used in a huge variety of building materials right up until 2000. During a refurbishment or demolition survey, we’re specifically looking for those often-hidden items that could pose a risk. This includes things like asbestos insulating board (AIB) behind plaster or in fire doors, textured coatings like Artex on ceilings and walls, vinyl floor tiles and their backing, asbestos cement sheets in old outbuildings or soffits, pipe insulation, old boiler flues, and even obscure items like bitumastic roof felt or internal partitions. We know where these materials tend to hide and how to safely access them without causing disturbance.