Newsletter October 2008
Another Successful Quarter
We are delighted to report that our business continues to progress at a steady pace.
We have completed an important upgrade at Transport for London so that they can now benefit from the on-line Health & Safety File that they have been working towards for so long. This has been a necessarily carefully managed process with their very large CDM database. We are delighted to report that the installation of the software took place without a hitch and that users can now gain permission-ed access from anywhere in their domain including web access.
The East Riding of Yorkshire completed their purchasing plans for our Asbestos product. Steve Taylor told us that he selected us because he both liked the ToolKit™ product and the way we worked as a team. We are delighted with the result and look forward to completing the implementation plan on time for this another 'hosted solution'.
New Postings for the HSE
We learn from the SHP magazine that 'the HSE has been busy shuffling and promoting some of its senior staff'.
In particular, Stephen Williams will be moving from Head of Construction to the new post of Director of Field Operations for London and the Olympics. We have known of Stephen for many years because of his and George Ventris' involvement with the CDM process in the early 1990's.
We understand that Sandra Caldwell is retiring from the HSE and that Kevin Myers will be taking up the post of Deputy Chief Executive in mid October 2008.
Asbestos Awareness Campaign
The HSE have regenerated their Asbestos Awareness Campaign program starting on 13th Oct 08. The campaign aims to encourage trades-people in particular to learn more about asbestos and how it should be handled.
The HSE's web site www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/hiddenkiller/ includes information about advertising, videos, posters and case studies available for those interested in more information.
Hounslow Leads the Way Forward
The London Borough of Hounslow (LBH) took part in a recent presentation at Transport for London to show the benefits of their Health & Safety File based CDM Management system.
LBH have now agreed to host a seminar in November to demonstrate more detail on how the solution has been set up using our 'hosted solution' running on our servers. This is an important innovation. The benefits of the remotely managed system include the facility to provide our bi-annual updates as they are available and to provide first line support direct from us, the IT provider.
If you would like an invitation to this seminar, please contact us as places at the LBH facility will be limited.
Bradford Seminar
The now 'annual' Bradford seminar took place under the watchful eye of Bradford Metropolitan District Council's Asset Management, their CDM-C team and Health & Safety Officer.
The invited audience were given an update from the HSE's presentation at the APS Conference, a presentation by ourselves on how we are progressing with ToolKit CS™ and Joined Up Working with our Hosted Solution and a Case Study by our hosts at Bradford.
This was a really good session and well received by the attendees according to the feedback sheets, but more importantly, by the quality of the questions coming from the floor.
MARM - Our Major Account Review Meeting
Arrangements are in place for one of the more important events that we hold each year. We are very keen to encourage all our user account managers to get along to these reviews to share with us, by more importantly with each other, your joint thoughts on product development, training and support for ToolKit CS™.
These meetings are available for all our users. If you have not already done so, please get in touch with us to confirm your attendance on 23rd October.
F10 On-Line
We have had a number of enquiries regarding the on-line project notification, or the F10 as we fondly know it. We wanted to clear up any confusion regarding the latest HSE offering of the F10 'on-line'. When the offering became available we spoke with Andrew East directly; he was visiting our offices at the time. We asked why the HSE had chosen to offer this new facility. He stated that the reason for the new offering was to facilitate a way of providing the F10 in 'electronic format' for smaller organisations; many of whom still used paper and post to notify the HSE. They obviously dont want to store paper mountains!
With the new buzz words being 'sustainability' and 'green' we wholeheartedly agree that electronic documents are the way forward and, as our ToolKit CS™ customers know, we have been doing it this way for the past 12 years! We are very happy that others are seeing the benefits of a computer based system, and if you are not already one of our forward thining customers then maybe this is your opportunity to take the next step towards the 'paperless office'.
Another point regarding the on-line F10 from the HSE is the extra page; this asked you to tick various selections. It is there to provide the HSE data about CDM projects so that they can produce measureable information. This is not part of the CDM requirements or legislation.
The final question we asked Andrew was if the F10 within ToolKit CS™ was 'fit for purpose', he said he saw no problems with any current electronic formats. We hope this settles a few concerned people out there. We will, as always, keep you posted of any other developments. For more on this subject follow this link www.aisolutions.co.uk/blog/2008/04/new-electronic-f10
Simon ties the Knot
Many of our readers know of Simon Hanks, a key part of our development team; he presented at our last Annual Conference. He and Katie treated the entire Ai Solutions team to invites to what I can only describe as a spectacular wedding in late September.
Currently on honeymoon in Hawaii, I understand that the happy couple just can't wait to get back to our autumnal weather. We all wish them well for many happy years together.
More Information
We regularly receive updates from our customers and contacts about changes to legislation, the latest rumours and so on. We try to be selective with what we pass on and acknowledge our sources as appropriate. If you have information of general interest in the Health & Safety, and particularly, CDM and Asbestos Management arena, then please let us know by e-mail if possible.