JB Monitor - Asbestos Surveys

JB Monitor – Asbestos Surveys

JB Monitor serves the Anglesey area with asbestos surveying, testing, awareness training and consultancy work, operating from a main office in Colwyn Bay with a second base in Didsbury, Manchester covering the North West. In business for more than 20 years, the company works with landlords, councils, housing associations and contractors across the island.

Few parts of North Wales have shifted industry as many times as Anglesey has: a copper mining boom through the late 18th century, wartime airfield construction from 1940, and a nuclear-driven wave of growth from the 1970s onwards each left their own mark on the island’s building stock. Anything built or substantially altered before 2000 across any of those periods may well contain asbestos-containing materials, and there’s no reliable way to tell just by looking, which is exactly why a proper check matters.

Each of those industrial waves changed the island in a different way. The copper boom briefly made Anglesey one of the world’s largest producers of the metal, growing a small fishing settlement into a major exporting harbour within a generation, then leaving the surrounding buildings to be repurposed over and over as that trade declined. The airfield built during the Second World War went on to serve as a fighter base and later a transatlantic ferry terminal, bringing its own cluster of supporting buildings and housing. Decades later, the arrival of nuclear power brought a further round of construction, much of it falling squarely inside the period when asbestos-containing materials were routine in building and refurbishment work. Properties from any of these three eras can end up sitting side by side on the same street, which is exactly why a building’s outward appearance is such an unreliable guide to what’s inside it.

Services

  • Management surveys – a walkthrough of a building as it’s currently used, forming the basis of an ongoing plan.
  • Refurbishment and demolition surveys – a deliberately thorough check before work starts, opening up areas a routine visit wouldn’t reach.
  • Re-inspections – periodic follow-up visits confirming materials already identified haven’t changed.
  • Air monitoring – background sampling plus four-stage clearance testing once removal work concludes.
  • Bulk sampling and lab analysis – a quicker option for checking one specific material.
  • Awareness training – sessions covering the essentials plus the legal duty to manage under CAR 2012.
  • Consultancy – practical input on setting up or tightening a compliance system.

Credentials

The surveying side of the business holds UKAS accreditation 0294, and the laboratory holds a separate reference, 2075, both details that can be looked up directly rather than accepted on trust. Surveyors are BOHS-qualified, and survey work follows the HSE’s HSG264 guidance throughout. Testing takes place at the company’s own Colwyn Bay laboratory, with most results back within 48 hours, and that lab is itself subject to periodic review under the AIMS scheme.

For a duty holder based on an island, where bringing in specialist contractors at short notice can already take longer than on the mainland, having a survey backed by independently checkable accreditation removes one more variable from an already tighter planning window.

It also matters when the results of a survey get challenged, disputed, or queried by another party involved in a project, a funder, an insurer, or a contractor weighing up whether to proceed. A report built on accreditation that anyone can verify tends to settle those conversations far more quickly than one resting solely on the surveyor’s own word.

What Sets the Business Apart

  • Two distinct UKAS references, one for surveying and one for the laboratory
  • BOHS-qualified surveyors rather than an in-house-only standard
  • An in-house lab that keeps turnaround close to two days rather than longer
  • No removal division, so there’s no incentive to recommend more work than needed
  • Two decades plus of survey work spanning North Wales and the North West

Typical Clients

  • Private landlords managing individual island properties
  • Registered social landlords and housing associations
  • Public sector bodies, including local councils
  • Contractors and developers working on larger refurbishment projects
  • Facilities managers responsible for multi-site compliance

Coverage

Work extends across Anglesey from Amlwch and Holyhead through to Llangefni and Beaumaris, as part of an asbestos survey service covering North Wales and the wider region, alongside coverage of Manchester and the North West from the Didsbury office. Being separated from the mainland by the Menai Strait means booking contractors at short notice can take longer than elsewhere, so early planning tends to pay off more here than in most of the coverage area.

That coverage takes in a genuine mix of settlements rather than one or two population centres. Harbour towns with an industrial past, market towns further inland, and smaller villages scattered across the island are all part of the same patch, and each tends to have its own particular mix of older housing, converted commercial premises and newer construction built up around whichever industry was dominant at the time.

Scheduling tends to work better when a survey is booked in well ahead of a project’s planned start date, particularly for anything involving licensed removal or clearance testing afterwards, where sequencing the right specialists in the correct order tends to matter just as much in practice as the survey findings themselves.

Get in Touch

North Wales office: 01492 536 444
Manchester office: 0161 359 3684
Email: [email protected]