Certification “with mention” (asbestos, lead): what it really opens up

Of the six certification domains of the French property diagnostician, two split in half: asbestos and lead exist in a plain version and a “with mention” version. The distinction looks like administrative fine print. It is in fact the border between two trades, two levels of risk and two markets.

Plain certification: the transaction survey

The plain certification covers the routine assignments of property diagnostics: the pre-sale asbestos survey of a dwelling, the constat de risque d’exposition au plomb (CREP, lead exposure risk report) in an ordinary home, the private areas of a residential building.

This is the bedrock of the trade, fed by the steady flow of transactions. The client is a seller, a landlord, an agency, a notary; the document produced serves first to inform a buyer or a tenant.

“With mention”: the site survey

The “with mention” certification opens the most technical and most exposed assignments: pre-works and pre-demolition surveys, highly complex buildings, situations where the survey conditions the safety of a construction site.

The change of nature is complete. In a transaction survey, an error produces an incomplete document. In a pre-works survey, an error produces an exposure: workers drilling, cutting or demolishing an asbestos-containing material the survey failed to identify.

Hence the heightened requirements, on entry and throughout the cycle: longer prior training, specific exams, more demanding checks by the certification body. The logic is proportional to the risk, exactly as in other French schemes where the bar rises with the danger of the activity — it is also the principle behind asbestos certification for removal contractors, which covers the firms carrying out the works rather than the people surveying them.

Why the regulations are so strict on asbestos

The lag between exposure and disease is what makes this risk so hard to perceive on site.

France’s programme national de surveillance du mésothéliome (PNSM, national mesothelioma surveillance programme) was set up in 1998, one year after the asbestos ban; Marcel Goldberg and colleagues described the scheme in “The French national mesothelioma surveillance program” (Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2006) (see the study). Pleural mesothelioma, a cancer of the pleura mainly linked to asbestos exposure, can appear several decades after first exposure.

In other words: a careless survey today produces harm nobody will see traced for thirty years. No market mechanism penalises that kind of error in useful time — hence the choice of strong upstream regulatory control, in the form of reinforced certification.

Lead follows the same logic on another timescale: the source of childhood lead poisoning generally lies in degraded old paint, and the point of the CREP is to identify that risk before a child is exposed to it.

What the mention changes economically

Three concrete differences for a firm.

The market. Pre-sale surveys are a volume market, highly competitive, with strong price pressure. Pre-works surveys are a construction-site order: professional clients, developers, demolition contractors, with longer and less substitutable assignments.

The production cycle. A pre-works survey is not handled in an hour between two appointments. It means understanding the works programme, sampling, testing, reasoning zone by zone. The economics are not those of the transaction survey.

The risk carried. The professional liability insurance required of the diagnostician takes on its full meaning here. Before targeting a mention, it is wise to check with your insurer that the scope of cover extends to the assignments you have in mind.

Should you target a mention? Three questions

1. Do I have access to a flow of construction sites? The mention is only worth having if you are positioned to win the order: a network of contractors, public developers, social landlords, engineering firms. Without a channel, the certification sleeps.
2. Am I ready to invest in method? A mention cannot be improvised after the fact. It calls for written procedures, traceability of samples and a reporting discipline that transaction surveys do not demand to the same degree.
3. Can my structure sustain the monitoring? Each certified domain adds checks during the seven-year cycle and a recertification at expiry. A rarely used mention costs money all year — see our article on monitoring and recertification.

What to check before committing

The exact scope of each certification level, the access prerequisites and the length of the prior training are set by the orders in force — and those texts have moved a great deal. The order of 24 December 2021 was annulled by the Conseil d’État with effect deferred to 1 September 2024; the order of 1 July 2024 has since covered asbestos, electricity, gas, lead and termites, while the energy performance survey falls under the order of 20 July 2023.

The practical consequence is a constant in this trade: never make an investment decision on the basis of an undated web page. Ask an accredited certification body for written confirmation, for your profile and for the date on which you commit.

Take action

If your plan is to move beyond transaction surveys alone, the asbestos or lead mention is the most direct lever — provided you have first secured a channel of site orders. See the Property diagnostician certification page for the overall framework, and our overview of the six certification domains to place the mention within the wider route.