In safe hands

An effective Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) strategy can reap huge dividends for organisations across all verticals, says Chris Methven, Environment Director at IHS EMEA.

How can a well managed EH&S programme bring a company cost savings?
Chris Methven. A company's ability to achieve cost savings depends upon its ability to collect, manage and report on a broad range of EH&S and sustainability information. High performing companies are leveraging integrated enterprise-level EH&S software platforms and content services to uncover opportunities to reduce costs with emission-reducing process improvements. They look to eliminate redundant legacy systems and reduce labour costs to streamline delivery of emission and compliance reports, reduce emissions fees, waste disposal fees and reduced monitoring and less frequent inspections. Our clients have documented major cost-savings through the use of integrated EH&S software platforms. For example, Dow Chemical eliminated over US$2 million in redundant emissions reporting systems, with the potential to save an additional US$2 million over time. Reducing the risk of fines potentially avoids significant increases in operating costs and helps to assure accurate compliance with auditable and verifiable reporting.

Oil and gas companies are now under increased pressure to comply with EH&S guidelines. How high a priority has this become at board-level within these companies?
CM. This issue has become a very high priority, stemming from both regulatory and corporate drivers, resulting in widespread reporting and compliance initiatives. Key emerging regulatory drivers include the European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS), Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) and the UN's Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS). For example, under Phase III of the EU ETS, regulators will tighten the emissions cap and they'll be handing out fewer allowances to emitters after 2012.

There are also corporate business drivers such as profitability, liability and innovation. These business drivers include EH&S topics including how emissions portfolios impact strategic asset and GHG cap and trade decisions, how management of hazardous materials manifests and minimises EH&S exposure, and the creative use of green solutions to preserve and build brand reputation. Finally we have corporate responsibility or sustainability drivers such as shareholder initiatives for greater environmental transparency to become more energy and natural resource efficient.

Why would gaps in a company's health and safety strategy lead to loss of revenue?
CM. Businesses that achieve zero work-related injuries can realise several operational benefits including business growth, cost avoidance, and responsive risk management. An effective EH&S strategy can support business growth through smart sourcing, for example, where worker safety performance is reviewed before determining which vendor to commission for outsourced tasks. In having policy compliance, organisations can ensure that vendors with high 'experience modification rates' are not selected, and companies with excellent worker safety performance get the competitive advantage with high productivity. Cost avoidance can be realised through elimination of lost production time and fines/penalties, employee health and benefit premium inflation and potentially equipment and facilities damages and associated repair or replacement costs.

An integrated enterprise-level EH&S software platform can significantly strengthen your company's ability to assure worker safety and productivity. Another of our clients, Hunter Douglas, achieved a 50 percent reduction in injuries and compensation costs and an 80 percent drop in lost work days. Greater health and safety information transparency and insight enables decision makers to select or reject improvement investments based on risk impact and probability relative to potential recurrence. Compliance risks are mitigated, which improves a company's reputation with investors, community and employees. Companies can also mitigate financial risk and the lost revenue by returning to full operations quickly if a disruption occurs.

How can your company help companies to create a successful EH&S strategy
CM. IHS offers complete and proven information management solutions to meet the needs of evolving EH&S programmes. Our EH&S solutions team works closely with our clients to address their specific challenges and develop a suggested set of software, content and services to address critical EH&S business issues and deliver on EH&S improvement goals. Because each customer is unique, the IHS solution packages are designed to be tailored to specific requirements.

For additional information about the IHS Environmental solutions, please visit www.ihs.com/environment.

As Environment Director of IHS EMEA, Chris Methven is responsible for European environmental business development. Prior to joining IHS he spent four years with ABeam Consulting (formerly Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Consulting) where he served as a Senior Consultant and Account Director in the European Utility Practice, focusing on technology enabled business transformation projects.