How Homeowners Can Play Their Part In Environmental Conservation

Critical Services to Look for in an Independent Air Quality Consultant

Air quality in a commercial facility is crucial to the productivity of employees. Therefore, it is the facility manager's responsibility to ensure the air in the building is safe. Hiring independent air quality consulting services is the first step to achieving this objective. However, you need to be careful with your choice of service provider because some do not offer specialised or critical services. This article highlights essential expertise that an independent air quality consultant must provide as part of their services.  

Compliance Auditing -- Air quality monitoring is not a one-time activity. Therefore, you cannot hire a consultant on a one-time basis and forget about consultations for the next several years. Unfortunately, this is precisely what most facility managers do because they believe air quality consulting only involves testing the air. However, nothing could be further from the truth because air quality laws and requirements change quite often, and firms must comply. For instance, frequent bush fires in Australia release a lot of particulate matter into the air. Therefore, facilities operating along the path of bush fires must adopt suitable technology to minimise the impact of particulate matter on staff. Independent air quality consultants offering compliance auditing services will ensure that you abide by the regulations.

Emission Inventory -- Information is power, and this could not be truer when hiring an independent air quality consultant. Therefore, you should focus on getting all the information you can about the quality of air in your facility. Questions such as why, what, where, and when should rank high during consultation meetings. This is what an emission inventory achieves. An air quality consultant offering emission inventory services can account for the pollutants in a facility. The catalogue helps to answer critical questions such as sources of the emissions, identity of the contaminants, the scope of pollution coverage, and the duration of the pollution. Emission inventory helps companies develop timely policies and strategies to reduce or eliminate the adverse impacts of pollution.

Expert Witness Services -- Facility managers must be open to the fact that employees can file lawsuits if it is evident that the company does little to protect them from pollutants at the workplace. Such litigations can leave a severe dent on a company's reputation, let alone its bank account. In such cases, you cannot use your internal air quality department as an expert witness. Therefore, a serious company must hire an independent air quality consultant to act as an expert witness. The service provider will vouch for the steps your company took to ensure staff safety.

To learn more, contact an air quality consulting professional in your area.