Introduction

Past economic activities have left the UK with a substantial legacy of land which is contaminated, for example by past industrial, mining and waste disposal facilities. Unless adequately addressed, this contamination can pose unacceptable risks to both people and the environment.

Although standards in the land contamination sector have improved greatly over the last two decades it is acknowledged that the quality of gas protection installation and verification work remains variable. Thus, installers and verifiers came together to develop this accreditation scheme to improve the quality of gas protection verification and increase the knowledge of staff involved in this industry.

Raising the quality of gas protection installation and verification will result in economic benefits by ‘getting it right first time’ avoiding time consuming repairs that are the consequence of poor installation or poor understanding of follow on contractors that can result in damage to gas protection systems.

This scheme also helps demonstrate to a Suitably Qualified Person (SQP) under the National Quality Mark Scheme (NQMS) for land contamination management, that the gas protection verification work has been undertaken by competent personnel.