Jan 2020

  • Introduction
  • Remastered and new YouTube tutorial videos
  • New WAC feature & other upcoming features to HazWasteOnline™
  • Training – Competent person status
  • hwol file – List of labs that can generate the .hwol file and which are working on it

Introduction

Happy New Year! We’re starting the new year by sharing our plans with you on how we’re aiming to improve HazWasteOnline™ through training, new features and new tools to make it easier for you to classify your waste. In this newsletter we provide more information about our new YouTube videos, our aim to release the competent person status and training, an update on how close we are to releasing the WAC assessment feature, new features planned for 2020 and the labs that offer or are actively working towards publishing .hwol files.

Re-Mastered and new YouTube videos

We are releasing a selection of videos on YouTube to help users navigate and demonstrate how to use the software. The videos will range from how to manually input your data for a waste classification report to more specific tutorials such as how to add a new data set to an existing job using a .hwol file. Currently, we have released 3 new tutorial videos on YouTube to date, these being:

  • A video to replace our old ‘manual data entry’ videos
  • A video to replace our old ‘How to create a waste stream template’ video
  • NEW –  tutorial covering the importation of .hwol files

Please go to our YouTube channel to view them.
Please subscribe as more videos will follow shortly.

WAC assessment feature* and other new features in HazWasteOnline™

1. WAC – We have added the ability to assess and report WAC data, this has been in trial during the beta stage of testing and we are adding some finishing touches to it. Please get in contact if you wish to begin using this feature during these final stages of testing.
WAC results can be imported using .hwol files or entered manually and are included in the final report.

* Available in the Professional & Packages edition.

2. Classification reports can be publicly downloaded via a URL -You can now have your classification report available for download via your own customer portal using the URL: https://www.hazwasteonline.com/report/ABCDEF-GHIJK-LMNOP where ABCDEF-GHIJK-LMNOP represents the serial number of the report. 

* Available in the Professional & Packages edition.

Other features in the development pipeline

Our various changes to HazWasteOnline™ to improve users’ use of the software are:

  • Traffic light help system –  To indicate that some additional attention to detail can enable a more accurate classification; HazWasteOnline™ will flag an issue and suggest a resolution. For example, where a user has retained worst case chromates in their Job (e.g. zinc chromate) but has an insufficient concentration of chromium(VI) (e.g. below limit of detection).
  • Duty of Care: The job will capture extra details about the waste including description of the waste and its origin; details that will be appended to the PDF report.
  • Asbestos documentation  – A problem we often see is classifiers ‘miss-classifying’ their waste when it contains fragments or unquantified concentrations of asbestos, as they do not provide the waste with two separate list of waste codes as required by WM3 V1.1.
  • PDF output for double ratio PAH plots (Available in the Professional & Packages edition)

Competency & Training Records

We have had many stakeholders welcoming the announcement that we will be adding each Registered User’s  training records to their PDF classification reports. Classification reports will document when a classifier last completed the two day waste classification training courses (i.e. both the basic and the advanced waste classification courses). For those that have completed the advanced course but more than three years ago, we are developing a new one day Refresher Course that we are putting together (see below).

Since we first announced this initiative in February 2019, a number of companies have commissioned our in-house training course to train large numbers of staff – some of the reasons being:

  • economies of scale,
  • staff’s CPD, and
  • that if one of their projects is ever audited by HMRC or the EA, they can show that they have had formal training in both the use of HazWasteOnline™ and in waste classification.

We are aiming to go live with training records on the PDF classification reports from the 1st February 2020. 

Refresher Course

For those classifiers who have completed the Advanced Waste Classification course, but more than 3 years ago, they can repeat the advanced course, or shortly, attend the new Refresher Course that we are working on.

The Refresher Course will comprise two parts:

  1. An on-line, multiple choice type assessment to go over the common mistakes that we see. This would be completed at home, in the days before attending the Refresher Course. We expect that this would take about 30 minutes to complete.
  2. A one day course which will be mostly workshop based, looking at real data sets and working through them. The one day course will likely have the following components:

Morning

  • Brief overview of legislative changes and new guidance (e.g. packaging, soil sampling) introduced over the previous three years
  • general review of the results of the on-line assessment, examples of common mistakes
  • Mini workshops where we look at real examples of data from a number of different waste streams
  • Review of new functionality added to HazWasteOnline such as processing WAC data, PAH double ratio plots, averaging replicate sample data

Afternoon

  • Workshop – multi-part exercise where delegates are given the details of a waste stream and have to work out whether it’s hazardous or not – includes desktop study, selection of EWC code, defining test suite, assessing sampling, import and processing replicate lab data using the .hwol file, identification of metal species, identifying the types of the hydrocarbons, data processing

If you are interested in attending the Refresher Course (and haven’t indicated your interest already), please let us know.

Labs that can publish .hwol files

The current list of labs that support the .hwol data file format is:

  • ALS (Deeside)
  • Chemtest (Newmarket)
  • DETS (South)
  • Element (Exova Jones)  (Deeside)
  • i2 Analytical

If your wish to start importing .hwol data files from one of these labs;

  • simply ask the lab for the .hwol file along with your normal deliverables,
  • watch our YouTube tutorial on how to set up your account and process .hwol files, and/or
  • contact Support (support@onetouchdata.com) and we will guide you through the process over the phone

Status of labs working on the production of the .hwol file

  • DETS North (Co, Durham) – Working on their draft hwol files – expect Q2 2020
  • Chemtech (Co Durham) – Almost ready – Expect Q1 2020
  • ELAB (Sussex) – Working on their first drafts of .hwol files

If you have any questions about the articles in this email, please get in contact by phone or by email.

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