AMS Integrator

For most property managers the ability to share critical data with others in the organisations is one of the key requirements of any computerised asbestos management system.

Under the Control of Asbestos Regulations (CAR) 2006 and other related health and safety regulations you are required to supply information about the location and condition of asbestos to employees, contractors and other parties. For example, the departments responsible for carrying out maintenance on your buildings may need this information when issuing job tickets for planned or responsive repairs.

You may also wish to make use of existing property address and asset data held in other systems to avoid duplication of effort and to ensure consistency of information throughout the organisation. In the past, integration has meant creating custom built links between the various systems. This is often a time consuming and costly task.

AMS Integrator is a stand alone product that facilitates and automates this operation. AMS Integrator acts as a bridge between AMS and most 3rd party system providing multi-functional and seamless interface. The requirement for exchange of data can be to and from your property management, housing management, asset management, works order and/or Job ticket system or indeed other relevant information systems and databases. AMS Integrator will facilitate the link with most information systems through a combination of methods. These are as follows:

 

Information Exchange

Designed to handle exchange of data for the entire property database or subsets of properties. The exchange happens in two ways.

  • Importing of property and asset data from a 3rd Party system into AMS
  • Exporting of asbestos (survey) data from AMS to a 3rd party system.

The method of information exchange between AMS and any 3rd party application is XLM Message exchange.

 

Information Exchange - Import of Property and Asset Data

The Import facility is used to primarily import property and asset data from the property management or housing management, asset management or your property gazetteer into AMS.

This can be set up as a one off or scheduled daily, weekly or monthly task. The AMS Integrator Import facility also appends or updates property information as they change at the source. Filters can also be specified so that data on specific properties are excluded from the import process. For example properties that are no longer maintained by you or sold properties.

 

Information Exchange - Export of Asbestos Information

If you wish to store some of the asbestos information for the properties in your property or asset management system the AMS Integrator Export facility can be used. Although the system can export any data set specified by the user, in case of asbestos it typically includes:

  • The location (room, floor and element) of the asbestos containing material (ACM)
  • The location (room, floor and element) of suspected ACMs (presumed to be asbestos including no access areas)
  • Information about the condition or severity of Risk of ACMs (if required)

For properties that have not been surveyed (i.e. there is no asbestos data available) a note can be sent across to the 3rd party application so the operator of the application is made aware of what they need to do in these situations. Similarly a standard statement can also be exported if the property has been surveyed and is free of asbestos.

As with the import facility, the export facility can be set up as a one off or scheduled daily, weekly or monthly task. The system always sends the latest set of information however keeps a complete history of inspections and reinsertions within AMS. The export facility enables the above information to be uploaded onto a 3rd party application such as your housing or property management system and the relevant information printed on the Job ticket (please note that this may require some modification or configuration to your 3rd party application).

 

Handling Information Transfer Failures

As a quality control measure at any time if the AMS Integrator fails to exchange data with a 3rd party application a relevant failure log will be produced and made available to the system administrator. The system administrator can investigate the problem and once rectified carry out an instant manual integration.

 

Scheduling Jobs

Import job is a scheduled job that runs regularly to Add/Update property information in the AMS System and Export job is a scheduled job that runs regularly to export asbestos information of the properties from the AMS System.