For many businesses, especially hotels, schools, gyms or any other location with a high level of traffic passing through on a daily basis, conducting water hygiene tests is an absolute must. Water hygiene is an area where preventative measures are necessary to avoid potentially disastrous events.
An outbreak of a disease such as Legionnaires’ could result in multiple deaths. Not only would this constitute a massive tragedy, but also, a failure to illustrate during the investigation process that sufficient measures had been taken to prevent such an outbreak, could have disastrous ramifications on the future of the business in question.
For further advice and insights, we recommend reading the guidance on the Water Hygiene Centre website.
Experience
Water hygiene isn’t something that you want to play around with – stick to looking for savings when buying stationery, the health and safety of your staff are worth more than that. Look for a water hygiene company with experience in your niche, with good reviews and years of direct industry experience.
You don’t just want a piece of paper that says your premises are safe, you want an informed opinion on how you can best mitigate any potential risks, to be signed off as genuinely safe by an expert.
Detailed feedback
What’s absolutely not helpful is to be told you have an issue, but not how you can solve that issue. Some companies will provide reports on a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ basis – either you’re safe or you’re not in their eyes.
Water hygiene is never this simple, and if your water systems aren’t safe, you need to be told what remedial measures you can take to make sure that they are safe. You can often ascertain how detailed the report will be from the water hygiene company’s website, on their services page, but you can also directly reach out and ask if that information doesn’t seem clear.
Availability
While water hygiene reports should never be something that is urgently necessary – they should be carried out long before any potential issues occur – sometimes emergencies do happen.
In these cases, it’s imperative that you can have experts out to analyse the situation as soon as possible. If there’s any danger of an event like a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak, you’ll have to close your business until the threat has been dealt with. If you have to wait weeks for the tests to be completed, the prolonged closure of your business could have massive consequences.
Ongoing assistance
Water testing is never a one-time thing. Water hygiene threats pose an ever-changing risk profile, which means that water storage and delivery both need to be tested and analysed on a regular basis. Choose a water hygiene company that can provide that help in a reliable manner, potentially one which can provide incentives for a long-term partnership.
Once you’ve got that relationship established, they’ll be able to come in and do their tests on the required dates, and you won’t have to organise and liaise with a different company each time you need your tests conducted.
