Many site owners and estate teams have assets they cannot fully account for. Equipment in service, in use, sometimes for years, with no paperwork behind it. At some point, someone needs an answer.
One of the UK’s largest water utilities companies was in that position. They had specialist access steps in service at one of their sites with no documentation behind them. The site team needed a confirmed safe working load and the certification to evidence it, and they needed it quickly.
After Altus completed the first site, the client brought three more into scope.
Equipment in service, evidence missing
This is a position many asset and compliance teams will recognise. Equipment is in place and in use. The records behind it are incomplete or absent. Someone needs an answer before the next audit, the next inspection cycle, or the next internal question about whether the equipment can stay in service.
The job itself was not technically unusual. It was logistically awkward. Permits, site access, scheduling and certification all had to come together at short notice, and the client did not have the internal capacity to manage every moving part.
The coordination Altus took on
Altus scoped the assessment, arranged the permits and site access, carried out the testing on site and issued the certification once the work was complete.
The client had one point of contact, one timeline and one set of paperwork to review at the end. That matters because the value of this kind of work is not only in the test itself. It is in not having to chase three suppliers, two diaries and a permit office to get to the same outcome.
A documented answer and a repeatable process
The client received documented confirmation of the safe working load and the certification to evidence it.
They also got something less visible but more valuable: confidence that the same approach would hold up across the rest of their estate. Three further sites were brought into scope on the back of the first.
Where the value actually is
For asset, compliance and facilities teams managing multi site estates, the hardest part of testing and inspection is rarely the test. It is the coordination around it. Booking the dates. Arranging the permits. Working around live operations and getting certification documents back to the client quickly.
When records are missing and timescales are short, that coordination becomes the job.
Altus helps clients account for what they already have, evidence it properly, and put a process in place they can repeat across the rest of their estate.