GMS Services is one of the UK’s main water hygiene companies and as such, complying with all legionella legislation is essential for them. Carl Ollerton, Technical Director, is responsible for all staff and general operations.

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Since May 2022, Carl has been partnered up with LegionellaDossier to digitise GMS’ legionella risk assessments and control. Via the LD-Inspect tool, they have been able save a lot of time on risk assessments. In this interview we ask him how the digitisation process went, what it has brought them and how they see the partnership with LegionellaDossier developing in the future.

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How did you come across LegionellaDossier?

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"One of the LegionellaDossier salespeople contacted me via LinkedIn. He had a friendly face. We used to work with another company, they turned risk analyses into electronic files. The work with this other company hadn’t gone smoothly, it took them a while to set things up and to address issues. Therefore, we were looking for something new. So it was good timing that LD came around and I liked the product they showed me.”

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"With LD everything can be done on-site directly, without having to download or tag photos"

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What do you like most about the LegionellaDossier product?

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"The best thing is that 95% of every risk analysis is captured and completed on-site, which means our risk assessors spend much less time in the office. They can keep assessing on-site and don’t need to come into the office much."

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"It’s a change from them spending half of their time in the office to now only 5%. Having the ability to add photos to risk analyses made the process a lot quicker and easier as well: before, an inspector had to take a picture on his phone, download it and then individually tag and add it in the office. With LD everything can be done on-site directly, without having to download or tag photos."

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"Also, the system is connected, which means that changes are passed on automatically, and there’s no double work. The fact that everything is automated means there’s not much manual administration involved, but our colleagues can rest assured that everything is in the right place.”

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How did your colleagues find switching to digital legionella control?

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"Management noticed the possibilities in terms of time-saving straight away. Our risk assessors were a bit more resistant at first. Some of them liked that they could work from home for their office tasks, which they preferred to always be on-site. There are still some office tasks they need to do, but much less than before."

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"However, they see how much easier their work has become and how much time they save. Everybody now sees the positives of working with the LD system. We’re still looking at how many more risk assessments our people are doing, we will review this in August. But we have already noted that the time from completion of site visits to the finished report is much shorter than before."

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"In the end, the entire risk assessment process has become much smoother and easier for everybody. At the moment, we have seven or eight people using LD-Inspect, including me. It is really easy to use. It has taken a bit of time to customise the system, but at least it is customisable. If it was rigid it wouldn’t be as good.”

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"Once you get the hang of it, it saves you time doing risk assessments"

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Was it easy to learn how to use and customise LD-Inspect?

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"Team LD came in to train us on using the system. Our managers had some sessions with them where everything was made really clear and all features of the software were demonstrated. Then, the managers went out on-site to train the risk assessors. Everything had been explained well and it was easy for our managers to train the risk assessors."

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"You have to get used to the system, so the first time you visit a site, it takes a little more time, but once you get the hang of it, it saves you time doing risk assessments."

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"In the future, we see more possibilities as a result of this partnership. For example, some of our people may want to take up additional tasks now that they have more time on their hands. We are looking into that now. For example, they could do training or consultancy work. It certainly opens those doors."