This month sees us at the start of a number of new initiatives, software release dates and Interbuild. I hope you get value from the notes below and will come back to us with requests for more information where it is relevant to your own role.
Actually, we are on the hunt for the 1.5 million people who need to be aware of their duties under the new Asbestos Management Regulations. The regulations effect everyone involved in the day to day management of non-domestic properties in the UK including the building owner, building managers, health and safety managers, estate manager, maintenance manager, building occupier, employees, contractors working on site, planning supervisors and designers associated with the site, trade union representatives and a few more.
If you are one of these people, we would like to hear from you so that we can advise you how we can help you provide;
Please get your colleagues to register on our web site www.asbestostoolkit.co.uk so that we can keep you updated on these issues as the regulations come into effect.
The Asbestos ToolKit CS™ product will be on display at the Interbuild Exhibition 9-13 June 2002 at the NEC. We are being hosted by our European partner; Geo Instrument in the IT for Construction area of Hall 4 (stand 4F173). If you are planning to visit the show, please book a demonstration with us in advance. Geo Instrument are demonstrating their very successful GEO-Measuring system for digitising (construction) drawings and translating measurements into items, lengths, widths, heights, areas or volumes. You can apply for free tickets to the show on the Interbuild web site.
The HSE are about to provide their Awareness Campaign course material for registered partners, including ourselves. Brian Trevette, the HSE's Awareness Campaign coordinator, has again made his latest newsletter available to our readers via our web site.
We are setting up courses to deliver this material and taking bookings for late June 2002. Delegate rates will be £95 plus VAT for courses at our Leighton Buzzard headquarters. In house rates for delivery at your location are available on request.
Last month, we reported on the House of Lords ruling on a case that has become known as the Fairchild case. This has ended in a judgement in mid May 2002 by Lord Bingham in favour of the victims including Eddie Matthews. We understand that the so called 'fatal fibre' argument submitted by the employers' legal representatives has been thrown out and that the defendants will at last be paid the compensation that they won some months ago through court judgements. The press reports that this will open the floodgates to about 100 similar claims held up because of the judicial process outlined here. The average claim is thought to be about £100,000.
The Asbestos module of our new product is currently in beta testing with some of our selected customers. Asbestos ToolKit CS™ is due for release on 28th June 2002. The CDM module for new customers wanting to use our Construction (Design & Management) Regulations solution is due for testing in June and release at the end of July. Upgrade packs for existing customers are scheduled for release at the end of August. The new product gives users the choice of Microsoft's SQL or Access databases and comes with a completely redesigned user interface to make the health & safety processes involved easier to implement and manage. Please see New Product Briefings below.
We are currently working with a major Estate Trust to see how we can implement our integrated project management and software package for managing asbestos. The Trust has significant amounts of asbestos to manage and we are proposing to provide a really innovative approach to this that will save a great deal of time and money over time. The Asbestos Complete™ Fast Facts datasheet is available on our web site if you would like some more details, or simply call us.
Our new products (above) will be supported by our new asbestos knowledge base which will soon be available on a subscription basis on our web site. We are starting this as a trial to see what the market demand is, so if you are interested please sign up now for cdmUK.com it will only cost you £85 per year for individuals. For our ToolKit™ customers, the cdmUK.com site is currently free. Again if you need more information on this please sign up for cdmUK.com - and the initial sign up is entirely free to anyone - make your own review of the site and support us in our endeavors by taking out an individual subscription.
Our development work with Asbestos has led us into a requirement with local authorities to interface with existing property databases run by departments in the Council. Councils throughout the UK are busy converting their databases so that they comply with the new government led requirement for a consistent approach to naming conventions in property registers. Designed to comply with the new British Standard (BS) 7666, the use of standard, centrally registered Unique Property Reference Numbers is revolutionising how information about properties is stored, accessed and managed. We see this as part of our Microsoft .NET development plans so that third parties can access information from our applications linked to the property register and across the Internet.
To allow us to move forward and become a key player in that revolution, we have signed up as a business partner to one of the major players in local government software provision. Formerly known as CAPS solutions with their Uni-Form database applications for local government, ESRI - CAPS have worked hard to become the largest provider in Scotland and already have a substantial customer base in England.
We are keen to hear from ESRI customers to help us formulate how we move forward with our proposed Asbestos and CDM BS7666 Gazetteer interface. Please call us if this is a development area of interest to you.
Please note that our next seminar is booked for Thursday 3rd October 2002 at a very interesting location in the Milton Keynes area. Still 'under wraps', this will be a very special occasion for us and will major on our new product and our new partners. Please make a note of the date in your diary now and watch out for details to be released later in the year.
We are holding a series of open product briefing sessions for our new ToolKit CS™ product at our Leighton Buzzard headquarters. Our next session is on Wednesday 26th June 2002 at 2.30 - 4.30pm. Please contact us if you are interested in attending.