Infrastructure & Utilities

Infrastructure and utility installations represent some of the most asbestos-intensive environments in the built world. Power stations, water treatment plants, and substations relied heavily on asbestos for its exceptional thermal insulation, fire resistance, and electrical insulation properties. In power generation facilities alone, asbestos was applied to boilers, turbines, steam pipes, and electrical systems on a massive scale, often in multiple layers and forms including sprayed coatings, boards, rope seals, and gaskets.

The critical nature of these installations creates unique management challenges. Many infrastructure assets operate continuously and cannot be easily shut down for asbestos surveys or removal work. Workers performing routine maintenance, equipment upgrades, or emergency repairs may unknowingly disturb ACMs, particularly in confined spaces such as pipe tunnels, valve chambers, and cable ducts where asbestos insulation is most prevalent.

Ageing infrastructure across the world is now reaching end-of-life, triggering major refurbishment and decommissioning programmes. These projects expose decades-old asbestos materials that may have degraded significantly, increasing the risk of fibre release. The sheer scale of ACMs in utility networks — spanning thousands of kilometres of insulated pipework and millions of asbestos cement components — demands systematic, sector-specific approaches to survey, management, and remediation.