Thomas Schliwka has worked for the TÜV NORD Group for more than three decades. Thanks to his internal training as TÜV Nord Auditor in 1992 he was engaged in the certified quality management of the Group. Since then he has been responsible for the organisation and expansion of the laboratory for structural investigations.
The main activities of the laboratory concern safety for life and health in buildings. Thomas Schliwka worked as an expert and consultant in this field both in Germany and abroad. Apart from this he was responsible for the development of testing processes and their availability to the market.
- The testing of fire dampers to ascertain whether they release components containing asbestos.
Fire dampers must be regularly serviced and checked to ensure that fire protection applies in an emergency. So far, it could not be ruled out that during the test, as a result of the dropping of the damper blade, asbestos fibers would be released and thus endanger people and the environment. For this reason well-known organizations recently refused to carry out the tests required by building regulations. In Germany alone it is currently estimated that more than one million fire dampers are subject to inspection. Since the replacement of the fire dampers is in the short term not feasable for technical and economic reasons, real estate operators were faced with a dilemma.
- Dealing with built-up plasters and fillers if they are suspected of containing asbestos.
Surveys have shown that plasters and fillers that were used until around 1989 are often contaminated with a small mass fraction of asbestos of ca. 0.1% and are therefore subject to the law on hazardous substances. This makes any construction work under normal conditions on plastered components from this period questionable. A risk assessment must therefore always be carried out in advance, to clarify whether protective measures are neccessary to fulfill the law on hazardous substances and which measures should be enforced. The relation of the plastered surface is extremely large in proportion to the sample which can be analyzed microscopically. This means that only a random statement is possible.
Therefore, and also in view of the great political brisance regarding the handling of the carcinogenic hazardous substance asbestos, it was necessary not only to develop new processes but also to evaluate and validate them. Put to the test, these processes withstood all stress factors and can be scientifically proven to be correct in all points.
Both processes are subject to the same physical principles, the second law of thermodynamics - entropy - or their statistical interpretation. Specifically, it must be determined to what extent the critical components of a fluid - asbestos fibers in the air flow behind the damper blade or asbestos fibers within the liquid fraction of plasters / fillers when they are installed - become "disordered" in the course of the respective test process. It must then be assessed which asbestos concentrations are to be expected.
The two test processes described here are copyrighted by the German Patent and Trademark Office.
The following objects can be named as examples, for which Thomas Schliwka was commissioned by the Federal Republic of Germany to investigate and assess since 1997: - Deutsche Welle, radio station in Cologne - Former Embassy of the GDR in Moscow - German Embassy in Pretoria - German General Consulate in Istanbul - German Consulate General in Sydney - German Embassy in Beijing
In addition Thomas Schliwka has repeatedly lectured on his field of work for the TÜV NORD Academy and for the Haus der Technik in Essen. In November 2015 he also participated in the panel discussions of the Construction Quality Conference at the Technical University in Riga. The test processes developed by him were published in various professional journals.
In March 2020 Thomas Schliwka founded Wave Function GmbH based in Essen and has been the CEO since then. Wave Function sees itself as a society for theoretical physics with the motto "Physics and Performance".
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