In an asbestos surveying business, your most valuable employees should be doing what they are trained and paid to do — inspecting sites, assessing risk and applying their professional expertise.
Yet in many businesses, experienced occupational hygienists, asbestos consultants and surveyors spend a significant part of their working week entering data, transferring site notes, organising photographs, updating registers and preparing reports.
That is an expensive use of specialist expertise.
And with the right technology, much of it can be avoided.
How Much Are You Really Paying for Administration?
Consider the cost of an experienced asbestos consultant or occupational hygienist.
Their value comes from their technical knowledge, field experience and ability to identify, assess and document asbestos-containing materials accurately.
But what happens after they leave the site?
In traditional workflows, the consultant may return to the office and spend hours transferring information collected onsite into spreadsheets, registers, Word documents or reporting systems.
Photographs need to be matched to locations. Inspection information needs to be re-entered. Recommendations need to be incorporated. Registers need to be produced and reports assembled.
You may effectively be paying a highly qualified professional to become a data-entry operator.
The Problem Is Entering the Same Information Twice
One of the biggest inefficiencies in asbestos surveying is duplication.
Information is collected onsite — and then entered again back at the office.
Apart from consuming valuable time, every additional manual step creates another opportunity for information to be incorrectly transcribed, omitted or associated with the wrong location or material.
The better approach is simple:
Capture the information once, at the point of inspection, and use that information throughout the reporting process.
That is one of the principles behind Lupin AuditPRO.
From Site Inspection to Asbestos Register
AuditPRO is designed specifically to improve the efficiency of asbestos surveying and reporting.
Rather than treating the site inspection and report preparation as two separate processes, AuditPRO allows information captured during the survey to become part of the structured data used to produce the required asbestos documentation.
Survey information can be recorded electronically while the consultant is onsite, reducing the need to reconstruct the inspection later from handwritten notes, photographs and spreadsheets.
The result is a much more streamlined workflow:
Inspect → Capture → Review → Report.
Less duplication. Less administration. Less time spent behind a desk.
Faster Reporting Means Greater Capacity
Reducing administration isn’t simply about saving salary costs.
It can fundamentally change the capacity of an asbestos surveying business.
Imagine a consultant who spends 20 hours each week conducting inspections and another 15 hours preparing reports and entering data.
If better technology substantially reduces that administrative component, those recovered hours can be used for additional inspections, client consultation or higher-value technical work.
Multiply that across a team of consultants and the impact can become significant.
You may be able to complete more surveys without increasing headcount.
That means improved productivity can translate directly into greater business capacity and potentially improved profitability.
Your Best People Should Be in the Field
For many consulting businesses, experienced technical staff are also the hardest employees to recruit.
Occupational hygienists and experienced asbestos professionals aren’t unlimited resources.
So why use their time performing tasks that software can help automate?
The objective of AuditPRO isn’t to replace professional judgement. Quite the opposite.
The software is designed to allow professionals to spend more time applying their judgement and less time administering it.
The consultant identifies the material.
The consultant assesses its condition.
The consultant determines the appropriate recommendations.
AuditPRO helps manage the information and streamline the process of turning that expertise into professional asbestos documentation.
Data Entry Also Creates Opportunities for Error
There is another cost associated with repetitive administration: mistakes.
Every time information is manually transferred from one location to another, there is an opportunity for error.
A room number can be entered incorrectly. A photograph can be associated with the wrong item. A material description can be mistyped. Information can simply be overlooked during report preparation.
Removing unnecessary re-entry can therefore deliver more than productivity improvements.
It can help improve consistency, traceability and data quality.
For an industry where clients depend on accurate asbestos information to help protect workers, contractors and building occupants, that matters.
Don’t Just Measure Software Cost — Measure Labour Cost
When comparing asbestos surveying software, it can be tempting to focus on the annual licence fee.
But software cost is only one part of the equation.
A system that appears inexpensive can become very expensive if consultants subsequently spend hundreds of hours each year working around its limitations.
The more useful calculation is:
Software cost + consultant administration time = true operating cost.
If one system saves each consultant several hours every week, the difference in software subscription costs can quickly become insignificant.
For a business employing multiple surveyors, the productivity difference can potentially be substantial.
Turn Administration Time Into Billable Time
For asbestos consulting businesses, there is an even more important consideration.
An hour spent unnecessarily entering data isn’t simply an employment cost.
It can also represent an hour that could have been billable.
Reduce five hours of administration per consultant each week and, across a team, the additional productive capacity can quickly add up.
That is why improving the efficiency of site data capture and report generation should not simply be regarded as an IT decision.
It is a business profitability decision.
Let AuditPRO Handle the Administration
Your most experienced asbestos professionals should be inspecting buildings, advising clients and applying their expertise — not spending their evenings preparing reports from handwritten notes and spreadsheets.
Lupin AuditPRO is designed to streamline asbestos site data capture, register generation and reporting, helping surveying businesses reduce administration and make better use of their most valuable resource: their people.
If your consultants are spending almost as much time preparing reports as they are conducting inspections, it may be time to look at a more efficient way of working.
How Much Consultant Time Could AuditPRO Give Back to Your Business?
Talk to Lupin Systems about AuditPRO and discover how a more efficient asbestos surveying workflow could help your business complete more work, reduce administration and improve profitability.