Explore Plant and Transport Solutions – one of the UK’s fastest-growing transport and plant hire services – is using Intelligent Fingerprinting’s innovative fingerprint drug testing method to help meet its industry Drug Policy requirements.
As part of Explore Plant and Transport Solutions’ Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS) accreditation, the company must ensure that their driving staff meet driver licence/medical requirements and are not impaired through drink, drugs or fatigue. Explore Plant and Transport Solutions is now using the Intelligent Fingerprinting test to detect drug use in around 10 minutes by collecting and analysing tiny traces of fingerprint sweat. The company’s HR executives have been trained to carry out the quick and easy fingerprint drug tests in-house as needed. The Intelligent Fingerprinting system is currently being used for random monthly drug tests across Explore Plant and Transport Solution’s UK sites to help promote drug use abstention among the company’s 300 employees.
Paul Gray, HSE Advisor at Explore Plant and Transport Solutions said: “we are a specialist transport and plant hire services company serving a wide range of safety-critical industries including construction, rail and aerospace, and safety is an integral part of our culture. While we’re proud of Explore’s safety record and consider it an important differentiator, we’re always keen to adopt innovative safety-promoting solutions that bring added value to the business. As part of our active employee Drug and Alcohol Policy, we were keen to have greater control over the process with an in-house drug testing method that we could use company-wide at our depots for HGV drivers as well as office-based employees. We were very impressed with the Intelligent Fingerprinting system and it stood out from everything else in the market. It is highly portable, enabling us to take it to any of our depots across the UK. It’s also accurate, non-invasive and really easy for our HR team to use. Employees are picked at random for testing, and we’ve found that they are intrigued by the new technology and have embraced it.
“We want to promote our Drug Policy as a positive initiative for both safety and for employee well-being. The Intelligent Fingerprinting method is hygienic for tester and employee alike, and we believe it is a really easy to use system that is ideal for our requirements with its portability and rapid sample collection – involving just a few minutes of an employee’s time,” added Paul Gray.
Intelligent Fingerprinting’s Dr Paul Yates added: “We are getting more and more interest from safety-critical employers such as Explore Plant and Transport Solutions, where drug abstention is a priority to promote health and safety in high-risk environments. What is clear from this drug testing project is that our product’s portability and in-house testing abilities provide the customer with the flexibility and control needed to fulfil not just their internal safety objectives, but also their industry regulatory and accreditation requirements.”
Fingerprint-based drug testing – how it works
Intelligent Fingerprinting’s drug testing solution features a small, tamper-evident drug screening cartridge onto which ten fingerprint sweat samples are collected, in a process which takes less than a minute. The Intelligent Fingerprinting portable analysis unit then reads the cartridge and provides a positive or negative result on-screen for all drugs in the test in ten minutes. A fingerprint-based laboratory confirmation service is also available.
An introductory video demonstrating fingerprint-based drug testing in action is available here
