THE NOISE CHAP
Who are these fine people?
The folks wandering the highways of the UK in their lovely audiometry units, or waving noise meters around with reckless abandon.
New York ● Paris ● Dubai ● Hong Kong ● Rio ● Singapore ● Beijing
These are all places where we don’t have an office and have never worked.
2023 marks 30 years of our owner’s experience in providing workplace audiometry
(That’s a bit tragic to be honest…)
We are a teeny wee micro company of thoroughly marvellous and lovely types, specialist in what we do.
Our business ethos
Our business ethos is to develop ongoing relationships with a small number of clients, and provide high quality and reliable audiometry, spirometry, noise assessment and noise training services to them.
As we are a wee business with just a small team of in-house personnel, we have the ability to provide a level of service that other providers can only dream of, but as we have no back-office to support, it can be done at a price which is extremely keen. To do this we took the most modern technologies available and built the business from the ground up around the mobile audiometry units and the technicians. This means that it turns out we are basically modern-day psychics who can see the future as we decided to have no physical office so are achingly modern in these post-Covid days. The lack of an office to maintain and pay bills on, along with no sales staff or other admin staff to support, means we can keep the business lean and prices can be kept down.
As a small company where you are dealing directly with the owner, we have a vested interest in making sure every hearing test or noise assessment is done correctly, not just churning through them, and we stand-by every result we provide. We have no faceless corporate office to hide behind giving complete accountability for what we do.
We aim to be personable and as a company aim to enjoy what we are doing, but believe strongly that you can be approachable and even jovial, while providing a top-level high quality service.
How do we work?
We don’t tie anyone into contracts. A client books us for a job, for example 50 screening hearing tests. We will arrange a date with you and draw up a set of appointment times. The unit will rock up at the appointed hour, do the tests and disappear again. A report will then arrive which has been prepared by the Tech and then reviewed in-house (see below) giving our opinion on who is OK and who the client should be working with the employee to arrange a doctor’s review for. That part is then between the client, employee and any doctor. Once our report is sent to you we don’t hassle you or try to get involved in any deeper detail other than when your next batch of tests are due we will send a reminder of that. As you are not contracted to us, you are free to come back to us or choose a different supplier.
Basically, we sell a batch of hearing tests, or a noise assessment, as a service. The employer has someone in-house who is managing the process and you are renting a bit of kit which is quite complex so comes with a trained person to operate it and interpret the results for you. By the client effectively managing the process in-house you can ensure data is secure, stay on top of leavers and starters, etc.
Are we the biggest provider out there?
No, we are small and determinedly so. We are damn good at what we do though and we are specialist in it, which gives us enormous flexibility. We can do jobs from 2 to 2000 employee hearing tests at once so can cope with any size of job. The difference between us and the big guys is that the person doing your tests isn’t sending them back into some disinterested office, they go to the boss who cares about getting the results right, first time every time.
Adam
The Guv’nor
The Noise Chap himself, praise be unto him. Oversees and reviews all screening and undertakes noise assessments and training.
Janear
Senior Technician
Janear is based in Gloucester and does audiometry, spirometry and skin assessments. His other job is making Adam feel very old.
Steven
Occ. Health Advisor
A Registered Nurse, with a Diploma in Occupational Health, joining us in February to review all in-house screening data.
Zoe
Screening Technician
Zoe is based in Chesterfield and has the second of our audiometry units. She undertakes hearing tests (screening audiometry) for us.
We are not on the Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register (OSHCR), nor indeed are we on the similar thing for Occupational Health, SEQOHS. There is good reason for this; we are not general health and safety consultants or an occupational health company, we are specialists in noise-related risk management.
On the health and safety side of it we just do noise assessments, so all the other myriad areas of health and safety have no relevance to us, and on the audiometry side of it we just do hearing tests (and lung tests as they so often go together) but nothing else to do with any other area of occupational health. This narrow specialism means that most of OHSCR and SEQOHS have no relevance to us or what we do.
Think of SEQOHS as being like a registered builder. Builders are certified to do a lot and as part of it most do some plumbing, but if you have a plumbing job you get a plumber in. We are the specialist plumber.
Builders can do plumbing, but plumbers are not registered builders as they focus on one thing.
OSHCR and SEQOHS Schemes
Sam
Screening Technician
Sam is based in Manchester, and undertakes hearing tests (screening audiometry) using the third of our lovely mobile units.
Competencies for the work we do
Subject-specific detail of competency is given on each of the service pages - towards the bottom of each is a FAQ and you will see a competence link there. But as an overview.
On-site testing personnel
The screening personnel are all trained in-house for a minimum of a month on nothing but the screening. By this time they are excellent, but we then send them on an external third-party certification of competence course as well to get that independent verification.
All results come for review before finalisation.
Review 1: In-house Occupational Health Advisor (RCN)
All jobs done from February 2024 onwards will be first reviewed by our in-house Occupational Health Advisor. This person is an RCN Registered Nurse and holds the Occupational Health Diploma.
This checks over the recommendations from the Tech and amends or adds to them as needed.
Review 2: Final review
After that nurse’s review the final part of the system will be as it always has been before the nurse joined us, with Adam doing a final review to make sure everything is nice and consistent before going out. Adam has a list of competencies covering all of it, and extensive experience. As anyone who has employed a young graduate often knows, qualifications count for nothing on their own as proof of competence and someone can be degreed up to the eyeballs and still struggle to put their trousers on the right way round without help. Competence comes with time and experience. And more experience.
We think it is vital to have knowledge both both sides of the fence, the management of risks in the workplace and the health sides of it. You cannot advise on health controls without knowing about workplaces and having experience there, and it can be hard to manage workplace risks without fully knowing the health side of it. The two go together. (To be honest, that’s why after 30 years in this game we still vehemently disagree with the separation of Health and Safety and Occupational Health as two differing areas, it is the same thing and you need to know both to manage risks).
As everything goes through Adam, some of the key competencies for this review process are:
NEBOSH Diploma via University of Portsmouth.
A degree in biology via University of Glamorgan, which feeds directly into the audiometry and spirometry aspects of the work.
Certified as competent in audiometry, spirometry and skin assessments.
Member of the British Society of Audiology so stays up to date on the latest scientific research and testing protocols.
Was CMIOSH for years until we dropped all the health and safety work except noise so CMIOSH no longer applied as we don’t do 90% of that subject area now. If we ever do another job where an outcome is ‘wear high vis’ please feel free to shoot him in the head and put him out of his misery.
Certified in undertaking workplace noise assessments via the Institute of Acoustics.
Personally undertaken over 90,000 screening hearing tests, and around 20,000 spirometry tests.
Reviewed over 3/4 million screening hearing test results and tens of thousands of spirometry results.
Has trained Occupational Health companies, nurses and doctors in screening audiometry, covering how to do it, how to interpret results and what to do as follow-up actions.
Decades of experience in undertaking workplace safety including noise assessments, dust and fume management and measurement, and advising on safety controls and protocols, which feed straight into the interpretation of screening results and an overview of both health and risk management.
As a company we specialise in just the things Adam likes. All the rest of health and safety was dropped except noise, and we have no interest in the rest of Occupational Health such as HAVS, blood and urine testing, FLT medicals, vision screening, etc. We focus on our areas of interest, where we know both the health and the safety sides of it and can ensure our work and recommendations are based on both, not just one or the other. We know noise and we know dusts/fumes/spirometry as holistic areas.
We are not an Occupational Health company, in the same way we are not a Health and Safety company, we focus on a very narrow specialist area.
“Bloody hell, that was so much easier than we’ve had before with other companies, saved us loads of hassle and got it done very easily”
Production Manager for large manufacturer in Manchester on 340 hearing tests. He was a forthright chap.
Do we work nationally?
Yes indeedy. We have clients from Elgin and Inverness to the Isle of Wight and Bodmin, Dover to Pembroke, Liverpool to Newcastle.
We tend to group jobs regionally and cover all mainland England, Scotland and Wales.
For the record, Adam once did a noise assessment for a client in Dorset who liked what he did so much that they asked for more noise assessments in Singapore, the Philippines, the Caribbean and Americaland.
It is important to make it clear to anyone that this is more than acceptable to us and if someone is needed to go and wave a noise meter around somewhere hot in the Caribbean then we can have a bag packed in about ten minutes flat.