Three Top Tips for Mastering Legionella Compliance

1 Mar 2019

Compliance is a never-ending challenge that all businesses are obliged to honour but it doesn’t have to be a headache or a persistent worry for them. With the right procedures and protocols in place, businesses can achieve round-the-clock compliance with added peace of mind. Using Legionella control as an example, the following steps can help businesses reduce the risks:

1. Assign Responsibilities

Assigning key responsibilities to competent individuals will ensure compliance-based tasks such as assessments and log-book management are fulfilled with the utmost care and detail. Where there is a lack of experience within the existing team, external consultancy firms can provide the skills and experience, from assessments to remedial work resulting from assessment findings.

2. Invest in Training

Any individual tasked with managing compliance should have undergone the relevant City and Guilds training. This can be provided on-site or a specialist training facility by an external firm. If opting to enlist an external firm to take on the management of compliance in your building or facility, it is crucial to ensure that the firm’s engineers are City and Guilds and have plenty of relevant sector experience.

3. Keep Assessments Ongoing

Legionella bacteria emitted from an ‘out of control’ cooling towers can travel several miles in the breeze, potentially affecting the wider neighbouring communities as well as you and your workers.

If these vital pieces of plant equipment are not regularly assessed in accordance with official Legionella regulations that ensure the safe control of Legionella risk, dangers are posed to both workers and people living and working in neighbouring properties.

Hostile elements such as scale or corrosion in a poorly maintained cooling tower can result in the growth of Legionella bacteria which can quickly spread throughout the water system, creating a potentially fatal risk to anyone who breathes in the Legionella bacteria contaminated aerosol (water spray).

When it comes to Legionella risk assessment, different elements of the entire water system need to be assessed on individual cycles. Cold water tanks are evident in most buildings but only need to be assessed on an annual basis whereas hot water heaters (calorifiers) must be monitored monthly.

Infrequently used outlets such as taps and shower heads must be flushed on a weekly basis to ensure that there is no opportunity for Legionella bacteria to breed in stagnant water that has built up between uses.

This is just a snapshot from an extensive list of requirements that must take place at different intervals to ensure compliance.

Stay One Step Ahead

While the challenge of maintaining compliance may seem overwhelming, businesses can move beyond the challenge and find peace of mind by relying on the right expertise. By investing in training such as City and Guilds accredited courses that will bring your nominated internal experts up to speed with compliance, or by enlisting the right consultants and working with either to develop a set of policies and procedures your business can remove the stress of consistent compliance.  In doing so, you will be safeguarding your workers, your customers, your brand reputation and your bottom line.