Hello Mr Martin,

Consider the local legislation, the approvals of selected company, mode of testing, disciplinary action procedures etc. 

Contractors and sub-contractors - it need to be in the contract that they are required to conform to your standards and testing on drugs.  In their case - removal from site is the only real outcome for anyone that tests positive.

Your own staff -

• have you consulted on the proposed changes? [staff and Management]
• you need to have open and proper testing arrangements [suitably qualified specialist?] to do the tests at short notice, if there is cause to think someone has been drinking or taking drugs
• test MD and Directors first, then set up random testing [shows commitment by the management]
• have good procedures set up for dealing with 'failures'.

[You could lok at Railway Testing procedures - Google should help]

This has been discussed on the forum many times.

Firstly must be certain that it is needed.  If you run a railway or an airline and are concerned with managing drivers and pilots then you can justify the effort required to run such a programme. If the staff are office based and engaged in low risk activities then it is probably not worth the effort. It is down to you to decide if that is the case.

Secondly your policy must be robust enough to cope with any scenario. So what happens if someone comes back to work after a trip to Amsterdam and he admits having smoked weed over there but that this was days ago  and he is not effected in any way now but still comes up positive.

Or someone simply denies flat out that he indulged or says that it is a cross reaction with a medicine he is taking and that he is willing to go to a tribunal and have your drug testing company  examined to confirm that  test was 100% correct. Most such tests have, even if done exactly according to standard protocols, a level of error.

Thirdly, who do you test the guys on the shop floor but not the managers. Is that unfair?

Originally Posted by: Alan Haynes

Contractors and sub-contractors - it need to be in the contract that they are required to conform to your standards and testing on drugs.  In their case - removal from site is the only real outcome for anyone that tests positive.

Your own staff -

• have you consulted on the proposed changes? [staff and Management]
• you need to have open and proper testing arrangements [suitably qualified specialist?] to do the tests at short notice, if there is cause to think someone has been drinking or taking drugs
• test MD and Directors first, then set up random testing [shows commitment by the management]
• have good procedures set up for dealing with 'failures'.

[You could lok at Railway Testing procedures - Google should help]

that is something we'd need to agree on, what would we do if a subcontractor failed and as you say removal from site would be the most likely outcome.

All staff would be informed of the change in policy and we'd give it a few weeks before conducting a random test, we'd need to discuss and agree on a criteria to test

If there was any suspicion of an operative undertaking works whilst under the influence of drugs or alcohol it would be the line managers respnsibility to deal with the operative. Managers training to identify and deal with this sort of situation could prove to be an issue.

Tests would involve both operational staff and project management being selected at random for testing.

Any failures would be managed with the HR department

Originally Posted by: A Kurdziel

This has been discussed on the forum many times.

Firstly must be certain that it is needed.  If you run a railway or an airline and are concerned with managing drivers and pilots then you can justify the effort required to run such a programme. If the staff are office based and engaged in low risk activities then it is probably not worth the effort. It is down to you to decide if that is the case.

Secondly your policy must be robust enough to cope with any scenario. So what happens if someone comes back to work after a trip to Amsterdam and he admits having smoked weed over there but that this was days ago  and he is not effected in any way now but still comes up positive.

Or someone simply denies flat out that he indulged or says that it is a cross reaction with a medicine he is taking and that he is willing to go to a tribunal and have your drug testing company  examined to confirm that  test was 100% correct. Most such tests have, even if done exactly according to standard protocols, a level of error.

Thirdly, who do you test the guys on the shop floor but not the managers. Is that unfair?

We have businesses involved in construction and operatives carrying out safety critical roles. The issue has also been raised following audits, PQQ's and tenders which are all driving the need for change in our current policy.

As you say the policy would need to be robust to deal with all scenarios, HR would be involved with any actions taken following a failed test. If an individual questioned the results this would then be passed to the tester to ensure that the test was carried out properly and the testing standards would be referenced in the policy.

As stated earlier, tests would be conducted on management and operational employees.

Hi,

In my previous employment we would often undertake D&A testing of subcontractors working on our sites as well as our own site management staff. This would involve an external specialist coming to site (PM me if you want their details) who would select 10-12 people at random from the signing in book.

Costs, if i recall correctly, were in the region of £50 per person. However, if somebody provides a "non-negative"  sample on site (you don't use the word "positive" at this stage) then there would be additional "chain of custody" costs as the sample is sent off to be analysed. 

In the interim period (usually 3-4 day) the person was exlcuded from site. If the sample came back negative then they would be allowed back onto site. If it came back positive they were banned from all company sites for 3 months and would then only be allowed back on if they could provide a clean bill of health. Direct staff, if found to have provided a posituive sample, would be dealt with at company level under the company's internal disciplinary policy.

The testing kits they use are, we're told, 99% accurate (hence the need to send off any non-negs to the lab for a 100% answer). However, it should be noted that in 8 years of testing, every "non-negative" sample we ever had on site came back as positive.

Testing method was urine for drugs and breath for alcohol. I would however thnk carefully about how you choose to test for cannabis. The reason i say this is that cannabis can be picked up for weeks, sometimes months, in a urine test and every test would result in at least one or more people being removed from the job for cannabis.

Hand on heart i can say that none of them were ever "stoned" on site and usually just smoked at weekends, parties etc (the Amsterdam stag do was a big one as well!) Unfortuanately a urine test won't give much indication as to when they smoked it, meaning a lot of good guys ended up losing work for a few drags on a joint.

At the time i pushed for saliva tests, which we were told had a "range" of around 24-48hrs, rather than several weeks. This way anybody who had smoked it recently would still be picked up, but those who had smoked at a party, stag do the week before wouldn't.

There was of course an additional cost per person for the saliva tests. However, when this was weighed up against the reduced number of non-negative samples and associaited "chain of custody" costs, the overall increase was negligible. 

Hope this helps!

What this line:

Originally Posted by: Stern

Hand on heart i can say that none of them were ever "stoned" on site and usually just smoked at weekends, parties etc (the Amsterdam stag do was a big one as well!) Unfortunately a urine test won't give much indication as to when they smoked it, meaning a lot of good guys ended up losing work for a few drags on a joint