By sector
Health surveillance by sector
The duty follows the exposure, not the industry code. But exposures cluster by sector, and so do the gaps: every industry has a group of people who are reliably left off the surveillance list. These pages set out which programmes each sector usually triggers and who tends to get missed.
Manufacturing and engineering
Noise, vibration, metalworking fluids and welding fume, usually four or more programmes on one site. The sector where the surveillance burden is heaviest per head.
Construction and civils
A workforce that moves between sites and employers. The clinical picture is simple; keeping track of who is in date is not.
Food production
Flour and enzyme sensitisers, relentless wet work, cold stores and heavy night rotation. High turnover makes the cycle the hard part.
Logistics and warehousing
Night work at scale plus safety-critical plant. Two programmes, very large populations, and agency staff nobody is sure they own.
Facilities management
Dispersed teams on other people's sites, cleaning chemicals, lone and night working. Nobody sees the whole workforce in one place.
Not listed here
The check works from your exposures rather than your industry, so it answers the question for any workforce.
The pattern
Every sector misses the same three groups
Sector differences are real, but the gaps rhyme. Almost every surveillance population we would expect to see built by hand is missing the same categories of people, for the same structural reasons.
- People who moved into the exposureThe list was built once, from a role map that has since changed. Someone transferred onto the grinder, or into nights, and nothing re-derived their obligations.
- People whose exposure is intermittentThe maintenance fitter who welds twice a month, the supervisor who covers the line at short notice. Occasional exposure is still exposure, and it is invisible to a list built by job title.
- People who are not on your payrollAgency, contract and labour-supply workers. The duty follows control of the work rather than the contract of employment, and "we assumed the agency did it" is not a defence anyone enjoys making.
The fix is structural rather than diligent: derive the population from roles and exposures continuously, instead of maintaining a list. That is what the platform does, and it is why the population is right in month nine as well as month one.
Questions
Common questions
Does it matter which sector we are in?
Only as a shortcut. The legal duty attaches to the exposure and the pattern of work, not to your SIC code. Sector is useful because exposures cluster, so it is a fast way to reach a sensible first list, but two engineering firms with different processes can owe quite different programmes.
We are multi-site with different exposures at each. Does that work?
That is the case the platform is built for, and it is where the incumbent model breaks down first. Programmes, populations and completion are tracked per site, and the audit pack can be produced for one site or for the group. Multi-site employers are usually the ones who cannot answer "what is our coverage" today.
What about agency and contract workers?
The duty broadly follows control of the work rather than the contract of employment, so agency workers exposed on your site are usually in scope for you, whatever the agency does separately. They are also the group most often missing from surveillance lists. Workers can be held on the platform with their employment relationship recorded, so coverage reflects who is actually exposed.
Start here
Find out what your workforce is owed
Four questions about your people and their exposures, and an estimate of the assessments owed each year, by programme. No sign-up, no personal data.