ARCA and Members commit to a third unannounced site audit each year
ARCA takes another step in maintaining high standards, by increasing the membership requirement from two to three unannounced site audits each membership year from January 2020.
Today the Association announced that, to continue supporting high standards across membership, the Site Audit Accreditation Scheme requirement would now be increased from two to three unannounced site audits each membership year from January 2020.
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 18 years. Currently the scheme requires members to undertake two satisfactory unannounced site audits every year to maintain membership (both audits became unannounced, that is no prior notice, from January 2017(i)).
“ARCA has seen members maintain high standards of performance over the two years site audits have been unannounced. Now this increase in the number of site audits is a further step in our commitment to support our members’ maintenance of high standards, and a further step in providing reassurance to end-clients,” stated Steve Sadley, Chief Executive of ARCA.
“ARCA is the association raising standards.”
Being unannounced (no prior notice), ARCA membership audits give a more 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 more recognised by third parties, such as the HSE and end-clients, as an excellent independent assessment of a contractor’s performance and standards.
Steve concluded; “As I have said previously, undertaking two ‘unannounced’ audits of every member, every year, was 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 believe this to be a cost worth paying to ensure audits are truly unannounced.”
“This announcement today confirms our on-going commitment to provide a strong level of reassurance of our member contractors’ competency to all parties.”
(i) Excluding Ireland
(ii) ARCA receives limited information from the HSE which is used to schedule unannounced audits