How does the organization ensure that it has provided effective operational direction for EHS Procedures?

What We Believe

A key component of any effective management program is the development of understandable and relevant procedures which can be used by the operations staff to meet their requirements.  The problem with many such procedure documents is that they are neither understandable nor relevant.  In some cases, the documents are simply recitations of regulatory requirements:  an edited version of the equally unclear regulations themselves.  The question is, "What does this stuff mean to me?"  This is a question which is difficult enough for those EHS professionals who have years of training and background - how do we expect a department manager whose focus is on how to get the widgets built by next week to figure it out? 

The answer is to provide interpretation of the requirements in a concise presentation which is relevant to the specific operations being managed.  This requires an understanding of the operations and how the requirement may (or may not) apply.  It means that the author has to use judgement based on experience to provide the proper scope of information to enable effective implementation.    The purpose of the document is to provide specific direction, not make the user an expert in a particular regulatory requirement.  One way which has been used very effectively is to illustrate the requirements and interpretations with real-life examples from the operation - using digital photographs of actual workplace scenes.

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