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UKATA Asbestos Awareness for Groundworkers
Half a day on asbestos in the ground rather than in a building. Made ground, buried demolition waste and contaminated soil do not appear on an asbestos register, and no survey of the building will find them.
About this course
Standard asbestos awareness teaches people to look at ceilings, risers and soffits. It is written around buildings. A groundworker spends the day below the slab, and the asbestos they meet arrives by a completely different route: buried demolition rubble, made ground, fly tipped waste, old service runs, and soil that was contaminated long before anybody owned the site.
None of that shows up on an asbestos register, because registers cover buildings. A management survey will not find it. The first indication is usually a fragment of cement sheet in a bucket of spoil, and by then the machine has been working the ground for an hour.
This course is the groundworks version. It covers the same health effects and the same legal framework, the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, but sets them in excavation, drilling, utility installation, remediation, fencing and waste handling. It works to the approach set out in the Joint Industry Working Group guidance on asbestos in soil, CAR-SOIL.
The practical heart of it is recognition and response. What asbestos containing material looks like when it has been in the ground for forty years and broken into pieces, why dry and dusty conditions change the risk completely, and the sequence to follow the moment somebody spots something: stop, damp down, keep people back, report.
We run it at our centres in Stoke-on-Trent, Derby, Manchester and Liverpool, live online, and onsite nationwide. Certification is UKATA.
- What asbestos is and why it ends up in soil and made ground
- Asbestos related diseases, latency, and the multiplying effect of smoking
- The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 as it applies to groundworks
- The CAR-SOIL approach to asbestos in soil and made ground
- Why an asbestos register and a building survey will not help you
- Where asbestos turns up below ground: demolition arisings, fly tipping, old services, historic fill
- Recognising degraded asbestos containing material in spoil
- Why dry, dusty and windy conditions change the risk profile
- Desk study, site history and what should have been checked before you arrived
- Stopping work correctly: damp down, exclude, cordon, report
- Decontamination, plant cleaning and not carrying it home in your boots
How completing this course helps you
- A UKATA asbestos awareness for groundworkers certificate, valid for one year
- Crews who recognise asbestos in spoil rather than working through it
- Compliance with Regulation 10 for groundworks specifically
- A response that protects the crew, the neighbours and the programme
Who should attend?
Groundworkers and excavation crews, plant and machine operators, utilities and highways teams, drainage and civils contractors, land remediation and demolition operatives, fencing and landscaping teams, and the supervisors and site managers responsible for them.
Entry requirements. None. No previous asbestos training is needed.
Ready to take the next step?
Choose a delivery option, compare dates and book with confidence, or ask MB and get an answer straight away.
Buildings or ground
Standard asbestos awareness does not cover the ground
Most asbestos awareness training is written around buildings, and a groundworker sitting through it learns to check a soffit they will never go near. The materials, the locations and the warning signs below ground are different.
That matters legally as well as practically. Regulation 10 requires training suitable for the work being done. Generic building awareness for a crew whose exposure route is spoil is arguably not suitable, and it certainly is not useful.
If your people work in both buildings and the ground, tell us. We can cover the combined ground in one session rather than sending everybody on two courses.
Excavation and groundworks
This course. Asbestos in soil, made ground and buried waste.
Work inside buildings
UKATA Asbestos Awareness, which covers building materials and the asbestos register.
Both
Talk to us. A combined onsite session usually covers it in one go.
Course content
What you will cover
Asbestos and health
- What asbestos is and the three main types
- Asbestos related diseases and their latency
- The multiplying effect of smoking
- Why exposure in the open air is still exposure
Asbestos in the ground
- How asbestos gets into soil and made ground
- Buried demolition waste, historic fill and fly tipping
- Old service runs and buried cement products
- Why registers and building surveys do not cover it
- CAR-SOIL and the industry approach
- Desk study, site history and what should be known before ground is broken
On site
- Recognising degraded asbestos containing material in spoil
- Dry, dusty and windy conditions and how they change the risk
- Stopping work: damp down, exclude, cordon, report
- Who to tell and what happens next
- Decontamination of people, tools and plant
- Not taking it home
Method of assessment
How Asbestos Awareness for Groundworkers is assessed
Assessment runs through the session, with a short written check to close. Certification is issued through UKATA.
Recognition exercise
Identifying suspect material in photographs of spoil and excavations, which is considerably harder than identifying a ceiling tile and is exactly the point.
Written check
A short paper on the health effects, the routes into the ground and the stop sequence.
UKATA certificate
Issued on completion and valid for one year, with annual refresher expected.
Ways to learn
How you can take this course
Every route covers the same accredited syllabus and the same support. Pick the one that fits how your people work.
Classroom
Tutor-led at one of our centres, with everything provided.
Ask us to open a classroom date →or ask MB nowLive online
The same tutor and the same timetable, joined from anywhere.
Ask us to open a live online date →or ask MB nowDates and locations
Arrange this course
There are no scheduled dates for this course at the moment. It is normally arranged around you.
Tell us roughly when you need it and how many people are going, and we will come back with dates and a price.
Also available
In-company training
We run this one to order, at your place or ours.
Onsite / in-company
Run Asbestos Awareness for Groundworkers at your site
We deliver anywhere in the UK, on your dates and around your shift patterns. For six or more people it is usually cheaper per head than sending everyone to a centre, and nobody loses a day travelling.
Tell us roughly how many people and when, and we will come back with options and a price, or ask MB and get an answer straight away.
What onsite includes
- The same tutor, materials and certification as our centres
- Your venue or one we arrange near you
- Dates and start times built around your operation
- One invoice and one point of contact for the whole group
- Content examples drawn from your own workplace
Asbestos Awareness for Groundworkers FAQs
Because the exposure route is different. Standard awareness training is built around asbestos containing materials in buildings, found via an asbestos register and a survey. Groundworkers meet asbestos in soil, made ground and buried demolition waste, which no building survey covers and no register lists.
The Joint Industry Working Group guidance on the management of asbestos in soil and made ground, published to sit alongside the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012. It sets out how asbestos in the ground should be assessed and managed, and the course follows that approach.
A desk study and site history usually give the first indication: previous industrial use, demolition on the site, imported fill, or a history of fly tipping. The course covers what should have been checked before ground is broken, and what to do when none of it was.
Stop, damp the material down if it is safe to do so, keep people away, cordon the area and report it. The course covers the sequence and, just as importantly, what not to do, which is keep digging while somebody rings the office.
One year, as with all asbestos training. Annual refresher training is the expectation under CAR 2012.
Annually. The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 require training to be refreshed at regular intervals, and UKATA and HSE guidance both point at twelve months for asbestos awareness and non licensed work. It is one of the few subjects where an annual refresher is genuinely the expectation rather than a nicety.
Yes. Acadame is a UKATA member and this training is delivered to the UKATA standard, so the certificate is the one a principal contractor or client is looking for when they ask for UKATA asbestos training.
Yes, anywhere in the UK, and it works well for a whole team. We can also run it live online where that suits a spread out workforce better.
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