The Alandale Group has selected the Intelligent Fingerprinting drug test to help enforce its drug usage policy.

The group, which includes Alandale Plant & Scaffolding, Alandale Logistics, Alandale Northern and Alandale Security, is using the product for random testing of its 500-strong workforce at sites across the UK and Europe.

Drug testing is also a critical element of Alandale’s construction industry accreditation process, supporting the Group’s Safe Contractor, Construction Line, CHaS (Contractors Health and Safety) and the Construction Health and Safety Group accreditations, among others.

Sylvia Opara, head of HR for The Alandale Group, said: “We’ve selected the Intelligent Fingerprinting system to replace a urine test approach.

“We randomly test our workforce annually across all sites to encourage adherence to our drug usage policy and promote a safer workplace for all.

“We started using the Intelligent Fingerprinting System some months ago and, in contrast to the urine cup method we used before, our workers are much happier to provide a fingerprint sample as it is more dignified, and the testers find it easier to use.

“All of this, in addition to having results within minutes, helps reduce the amount of time (and paperwork) needed to manage each random test.”

Intelligent Fingerprinting’s drug test features a small, single-use drug screening cartridge which takes around five seconds to collect a fingerprint sweat sample.

The Intelligent Fingerprinting portable analysis unit then reads the cartridge and provides a positive or negative result on-screen for cocaine, opiates, cannabis and amphetamines in 10 minutes.

Should an employee’s initial screening test prove positive for any of the four drugs tested, two further sets of fingerprint samples are gathered for confirmation testing.

Informed written consent is obtained from the donor prior to sample collection, along with a statement of the donor’s prescription medication, if applicable.

Once confirmation samples have been collected, the cartridges are sent to Intelligent Fingerprinting’s partner laboratory for analysis.

The laboratory provides the customer with a quantitative laboratory result in the form of a certificate of analysis.

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