Where to Start With an EHS Consultant

A common refrain when considering the help of an EHS consultant is this well-worn phrase:

“We've always done it this way.”

Environmental professionals today are responsible for a wide range of jobs: employee training and safety, chemical inventory and waste management, environmental reporting and recordkeeping, and hazardous materials shipping logistics, just to name a few.

With such a broad, complex range of work to get done, it is tempting to trudge forward and do things the way they've always been done–instead of seeking out more efficient or effective ways to manage compliance.

However, asking for an outside perspective has more than one advantage. Not only can it determine any potential risks for noncompliance, which could lead to fines and penalties at your next inspection, it can also offer insights that will save you money.

Change Happens Fast—Are You Keeping Up?

Hazardous materials and hazardous waste compliance requirements change often. If your procedures don’t change with them, you can quickly find yourself out of compliance. But when faced with pressure to meet production and revenue goals, taking time to look holistically at your compliance efforts can seem like an impossible task.

The “we’ve always done it this way” approach can be comforting—but can easily lead to inefficiencies or noncompliance issues that will reveal themselves in time. That may happen when you are hit with a notice of violation and a civil penalty for noncompliance during an inspection, or when an accident or spill forces you to re-think your procedures.

You may even lose market share to organizations that are taking advantage of new reliefs or best practices that you’re unaware of.

How a Site Assessment Can Help

A hazardous materials or hazardous waste site assessment can help identify these issues before you discover them the hard way.

Lion will send regulatory and industry experts to your facility to do a full-scale assessment of your hazardous materials and/or hazardous waste compliance initiatives. Then, we will lead a formal debrief session to identify our findings, make recommendations, and answer any questions you have about compliance.

From how you package, mark, and label hazardous materials for transport to how you store and manage your hazardous waste on site, a site assessment gives your team the chance to step back and look critically at how to streamline and improve compliance.

A site assessment can answer questions like:

• Have we fallen out of compliance due to recently added or revised regulations?
• Are there critical EHS or dangerous goods regulations that we’re not aware of?
• Are we meeting hazmat and hazardous waste training requirements for all covered employees?
• Are there opportunities to simplify or streamline our compliance efforts?
• Can we make minor or major changes that reduce our compliance costs?

How Lion Can Help

The Lion experts you trust for hazardous waste, hazmat, and safety training now offer consulting services, including hazmat shipping guides, hazmat and hazardous waste classification, and EHS compliance assistance. Learn more about how a site assessment can improve your facility.

As a leader in compliance training since 1977, Lion researchers, consultants, and instructors field thousands of questions and requests for guidance from businesses big and small every year. We produce whitepapers, reports, and news articles for some of the most-read industry publications. This work keeps us constantly connected to the latest rules and makes us uniquely qualified to assess your site and provide reliable, up-to-date, and accurate compliance guidance.

Simply put, RCRA and hazmat compliance are our #1 focus. We’ve been at the top of our game for 40 years— and we’ll help you stay at the top of yours. Ready to take the next step?

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Tags: consulting, EHS, hazardous materials, hazardous waste, hazmat, site assessment, waste