Quartzelec, the £66m turnover provider of electrical contracting and rotating machines services, and a leading independent engineering service provider, is rolling out fingerprint drug testing from Intelligent Fingerprinting for some 450+ UK based employees.
The Intelligent Fingerprinting test can be managed in-house by the Quartzelec HR team, with the simple portable drug testing system used by each of the company’s three SHEQ Advisors (Safety, Health, Environment and Quality) to carry out random, for cause and post-incident drug testing. With all of their business units included in the proactive drug testing drive, the three SHEQ Advisors will be trained (remotely) to carry out tests as part of their standard site visits.
Quartzelec has set a goal to randomly test 10% of its workforce annually to encourage drug policy adherence. This will help ensure that staff are fit for duty for their own, their colleagues’ and their clients’ safety, as well as protecting Quartzelec’s best practice reputation. Quartzelec will also deploy a separate alcohol breathalyser supplied by Intelligent Fingerprinting to support its employee alcohol policy.
Lindsey Moffitt, HR Director, Quartzelec says:
“We have purchased three fingerprint drug testing systems to equip each of our three SHEQ Advisors covering all our UK locations. Intelligent Fingerprinting’s innovative system will allow us to mobilise quickly when we believe a test needs to be performed, while rapid onsite results will enable us to react accordingly.
Last year, before we introduced fingerprint drug testing, we had a rare ‘for cause’ requirement to test that ended up taking many hours and proved expensive for an external provider to conduct just eight tests. Our organisation is extremely committed to safety best practice, with this example triggering an investigation into appropriate in-house testing methods that could help us to improve our reaction time, be more cost-effective and also be more flexible in terms of proactive testing. After looking at a range of options we chose Intelligent Fingerprinting as its approach gives Quartzelec the inhouse control and flexibility to test as and when we want.
Due to the fact we have a large number of field-based engineers, it would have been time-consuming and disruptive to have them all come to one site for testing. This not only would have resulted in unproductive travel time, but would also have removed the element of surprise testing. With Intelligent Fingerprinting’s portable solution, we’re now able to carry out anywhere from 1 to 100 tests on-site as required, whenever and wherever our employees meet with our SHEQ Advisors – and it only takes minutes to collect a sample.
Intelligent Fingerprinting’s drug tests and alcohol breathalysers will enable Quartzelec to make our Drug and Alcohol Policy proactive for the first time. Fingerprintbased drug screening gives us the flexibility to test when and where we need to across our multiple sites – random, for cause or post-incident – to make our group of companies as safe as safe can be. Additionally, the fact that the test can be carried out with full social distancing is a major benefit for us.”
