Renfrew · COSHH / HSG258
Statutory thorough examination and testing of local exhaust ventilation for Renfrew workshops and production sites, keeping fume and dust control compliant with COSHH and HSE guidance HSG258.
Renfrew
Renfrew is the ancient county town of Renfrewshire, an old royal burgh on the south bank of the Clyde just west of Glasgow, and it carries a title few places can match - the Cradle of the Royal Stewarts, where the family that would rule Scotland and Britain first held its lands. It was a Clyde shipbuilding town too, home to the Simons and Lobnitz yards whose dredgers worked the Panama Canal, and the site of Glasgow's first airport.
Its working economy now runs on advanced manufacturing, engineering and the fabrication trades, much of it grouped in Westway - Scotland's largest fully enclosed industrial park - and the Kings Inch units by Braehead, close to the Inchinnan aerospace and life-science cluster.
Every one of those Renfrew processes puts fume, dust, mist or vapour into the air, and COSHH requires it controlled at source - which means local exhaust ventilation, thoroughly examined and tested at least every fourteen months. We test the LEV across all of it - from the Westway units to the smaller Renfrew workshops - with capture and face-velocity readings, a clear pass or remedial outcome and system labelling.
By sector
If a process captures fume, dust, mist or vapour at source, that capture system is LEV - and across Renfrew and the wider Renfrewshire it is your evidence under COSHH.
Oil-mist and coolant-mist extraction on CNC machining centres, from the advanced-manufacturing units at Westway - home to the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland and Boeing - to the Rolls-Royce and Terumo Aortic works in the neighbouring Inchinnan cluster.
Steam canopies and flour-dust control in the bakeries, food-production and cold-store units grouped at Westway, Scotland's largest fully enclosed industrial park, and around the Kings Inch estate.
Fine-dust extraction and downdraught tables at Renfrew 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 fabrication units at Westway, where marine and heavy-engineering firms like the Malin Group carry on Renfrew's Clyde-built tradition. Since the HSE's 2019 reclassification, all welding fume - mild steel included - is treated as carcinogenic.
Spray-booth and prep-bay extraction at Renfrew 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 the life-science and instrument makers of the Inchinnan cluster, from Thermo Fisher Scientific and Peak Scientific to Terumo Aortic, to the containment their work demands.
On the ground in Renfrew
We are out under Renfrew's extraction every week. The proof that matters is the jobs, not a stock photo.
Airflow at the station extract nozzles in a much-loved Renfrew nail bar had dropped since the last test, with the fan no longer reaching its rated speed. We ran velocity and smoke tests across the downdraught benches and made good an unsealed joint before re-checking. With a leaking connection cleared the system met its control standard, written up in a full LEV report for the COSHH file. We scheduled it for a bank holiday when the salon was shut.
The test
Under HSG258 a statutory LEV test is no visual once-over. For a Renfrew system it has to answer three things - whether the system is sound, whether it still draws at the hood, and whether that draw holds to what it was designed to deliver.
Ductwork, hoods, filters, fans and dampers checked for damage, blockage and leakage across the Westway 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 Renfrew 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
Under Regulation 9 of COSHH the obligation sits squarely with the employer - any LEV that controls a hazardous substance needs a thorough examination and test at least every fourteen months, and the records held for five years.
On most Renfrew sites - the Westway 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 Renfrew 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 Renfrew duty-holder.
Each system tagged with status and next-due date, so compliance is visible on the Kings Inch 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 Renfrew 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.
We record it as remedial and set out what is needed - airflow, ductwork, filtration or capture at the hood. You do the work and we re-test, and on a Westway production line we can usually fit the re-test around your shifts. We will not pass a system that does not control exposure.
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 Westway unit will ask to see.
Yes - the industrial estates and workshops around Westway and Kings Inch, the university and hospital labs, and the wider Renfrewshire.
A dated report to the HSG258 method, the readings taken, a pass or remedial outcome for each hood, and system labelling - the evidence a duty-holder at Westway or a smaller Renfrew workshop needs for their COSHH file.
Yes. We plan testing around production shifts at the Westway units, term-time access at the Renfrew university labs, and normal hours at smaller workshops, so the examination never stops the line.
Local knowledge
Renfrew's shipyards once lined the Clyde: William Simons and the rival Lobnitz and Company built steam bucket dredgers and hopper barges that were shipped to the Panama Canal, India and the ports of Africa, and the two yards launched well over a thousand vessels before they merged in 1957 and closed in 1964. That precision-engineering instinct never left the town, and it runs today through the machine shops and advanced-manufacturing units at Westway and the Inchinnan cluster. Every one of them carries a duty to control the oil mist, weld fume and fine 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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