Current guidance names two surveys: the management survey and the refurbishment and demolition survey. Older documents and older surveyors still say type 1, type 2 and type 3, which came from guidance withdrawn years ago, and the numbering causes real confusion because a type 2 is not the same shape as either current survey. What a building needs is decided by what is about to happen to it rather than by a number.
The two current types
A management survey locates asbestos that could be disturbed during normal occupation, with minor intrusion only, and produces the record the duty to manage is discharged from. A refurbishment and demolition survey is intrusive, is scoped to the work that will follow, and is what must be in hand before that work starts. Everything else is a variation of one of those two.
Where type 1, 2 and 3 came from
An earlier HSE guidance document described a type 1 presumptive survey with no sampling, a type 2 sampling survey, and a type 3 full access survey. That document was replaced by HSG264, which uses the two names above. The old numbers survive in conversation and in old reports, and a quote using them is worth clarifying rather than dismissing.
Which one a job needs
Living in or working in the building: management survey. Any work that will break into the fabric, from a kitchen refit to a full strip out: refurbishment and demolition survey of the area being worked on. Demolition of the whole building: refurbishment and demolition survey of the whole building. Buying the cheaper one before building work is the classic false economy.
What both must produce
A plan showing each item, an identification with the analysis certificate behind it, the material and priority assessments, a recommended action, and an explicit statement of what could not be accessed. A survey that produces a list with no plan and no assessments has not produced the document that anybody downstream needs.
Questions people ask about types of asbestos survey
What is a type 2 asbestos survey?
A term from withdrawn guidance for a sampling survey. Current guidance calls the equivalent work a management survey; if a quote says type 2, ask which of the two current surveys it means.
How many types of asbestos survey are there?
Two in current guidance, plus reinspection, which keeps a management survey current rather than being a third type.
Can one survey serve both purposes?
A refurbishment and demolition survey covers the area it opened, so it can serve both there. It does not cover the rest of the building.