Clydebank · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Clydebank workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Clydebank
Clydebank grew up around one industry above all others - the great John Brown and Company shipyard on the Clyde, where the riveters and platers built the RMS Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, the QE2 and the doomed Lusitania. The Titan crane that lifted their engines and boilers still stands on the old yard, a listed cantilever landmark that names the town's shipbuilding age in steel.
The liners are gone but the making has not stopped, and Clydebank's working economy now runs on engineering, food production and the fabrication trades grouped in the units at Clydebank Business Park and along the regenerated Queens Quay on the site of Brown's own slipways.
Every Clydebank process that gives off fume, dust, mist or vapour falls under COSHH, which requires the contamination held at source by local exhaust ventilation and that LEV thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We test right across the site, from the Clydebank Business Park plant to the single-bench Clydebank units, logging capture and face-velocity figures and returning a clear pass-or-remedial outcome with each hood identified and labelled.
By sector
Where fume, dust, mist or vapour is pulled away at the point it is made, that is LEV - and for employers in Clydebank and across West Dunbartonshire it stands as their COSHH evidence.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on the lathes and machining centres of the Clydebank Business Park units, the modern heirs of a town that once turned out the world's largest ocean liners.
Steam canopies, oven extraction and flour-dust control across Clydebank's bakeries, cold stores and food producers, from the Queens Quay units to the estates off Kilbowie Road.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at the town's cabinet shops and joinery works, where hardwood and MDF dust is captured at the tool before it reaches the lungs.
On-torch extraction, fume arms and downdraught benches across the Clydebank Business Park and Whitecrook units. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Clydebank bodyshops. Two-pack paints release isocyanates - the leading cause of occupational asthma - so booth airflow is examined to its design figure.
Fume-cupboard face-velocity testing for West College Scotland's Clydebank campus and the clinical and research spaces at the NHS Golden Jubilee, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Clydebank
We are out under Clydebank's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
Control at the fume cupboards in a much-loved pharmacy compounding area in Clydebank had dropped off, with the cabinet suffering from a partly blocked filter on the unit. We measured face and capture velocities, ran smoke tests at each point and inspected the fan and filter. Every point passed on re-test once the tired filter was replaced, with full test documentation issued. We traversed the sash opening on a nine-point grid to confirm the face velocity had come back inside the safe band, released a thread of tracer along the working aperture to watch the containment hold, and timed the clearance after a mock spill to check recovery. The pharmacist wanted the dispensing bench signed off before the afternoon script run, so we labelled the cabinet, logged the readings against its commissioning sheet, and marked the ageing carbon layer for its next change. A second cabinet in the adjoining prep room drew off the same riser, so we proved it would not backdraught when both ran together, then pinned a simple weekly filter-check note inside the cupboard door for the dispensing staff. The shop had traded on the same corner for years and wanted no disruption to the counter, so the whole examination ran from the dispensary side with the shutters up and the tills open.
The test
A statutory LEV test under HSG258 is not a visual once-over. On a Clydebank system it answers three things: is the system intact, does it still capture, and does that capture match what it was designed to do.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Clydebank Business Park units - the faults that quietly kill capture.
Face and capture velocities, static pressures and airflows measured at each hood with calibrated instruments - numbers, not opinion.
Readings compared to the system's commissioning figures, so drift from as-designed is caught before it becomes a failure on a Clydebank line.
Where exposure is in question - a precision engineering and manufacturing process, say - sampling confirms whether control is actually protecting the people at the process.
The duty
COSHH Regulation 9 makes it plain: any LEV controlling exposure to a hazardous substance has to be thoroughly examined and tested at intervals no greater than fourteen months, and the resulting records kept for at least five years.
On most Clydebank sites - the Clydebank Business Park units and the smaller workshops alike - it is the fourteen-month clock that bites: let it lapse and the system is non-compliant that day, however well it seems to run. We examine it, tag each hood with its status and next-due date, and hand over the report an HSE inspector or insurer will want. Where something fails you get the reading, the cause and the remedy - never just a red sticker.
How it runs
Full visual and structural check of every hood, duct run, filter and fan across the Clydebank site.
Calibrated velocity, pressure and airflow readings at each extraction point.
A COSHH-compliant report: results against benchmark, clear pass or fail, and plain-English actions for the Clydebank duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Queens Quay floor.
Questions
Under COSHH Regulation 9, most local exhaust ventilation needs a thorough examination and test at least every 14 months, with higher-risk processes more often. A precision engineering and manufacturing bay, a food and drink production bench and a lab fume cupboard can each sit on a different interval - we set the right one for every system.
Yes. A new spray booth or fume-arm install at a Clydebank workshop needs a commissioning test to prove it performs to its design figures before it goes into service - we measure it and document the baseline the 14-month clock then runs from.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Clydebank Business Park units, term-time access at the Clydebank university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Clydebank Business Park and Queens Quay, the university and hospital labs, and the wider West Dunbartonshire.
precision engineering and manufacturing, food and drink production, woodworking and joinery, welding and fabrication, vehicle body and paint, and laboratory fume cupboards - the trades clustered around Clydebank Business Park and Queens Quay and across the wider West Dunbartonshire.
No. LEV testing is a statutory examination of fume and dust control to COSHH and HSG258, with capture and face-velocity readings; TR19 is kitchen grease and fire risk. We do both across Clydebank, but a Clydebank Business Park fabrication shop and a Kilbowie Road canopy are kept as the separate jobs they are.
Yes. Each hood is labelled with its status and next-due date, and you get the HSG258 report and system schematic for your COSHH file - the record an HSE inspector visiting a Clydebank Business Park unit will ask to see.
Local knowledge
John Brown and Company launched the RMS Queen Mary from Clydebank in 1934 and the Queen Elizabeth four years later, the two largest liners the world had seen, fitted out under the 200-ton Titan cantilever crane that still stands over the old yard. That heavy-engineering instinct still runs through the town's machine shops and fabricators, and every one of them carries a duty to control the mist, fume and dust its work throws off. We test and certify local exhaust ventilation to the standard COSHH sets, so the extraction reads true against its design figures.
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