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Environmental, health, and safety (or environmental health & safety)–EHS positions are a critical but often unappreciated contributor to the company’s bottom line. Applying for permits, writing plans, keeping records, submitting reports, conducting inspections, buying supplies (signs, hazardous waste labels), shipping wastes, lab analysis, hiring consultants, and paying for a qualified EHS person/team is expensive. It looks like a giant, unnecessary hit to the budget until the company gets nailed with a penalty from EPA or OSHA–or worse, a worker is injured on the job in a preventable accident.

Many of my clients have EHS personnel who were thrust kicking and screaming into the EHS position. Some volunteered, viewing it as job security, or are truly interested in learning a new role. But without proper training, it is easy to get overburdened and overwhelmed, especially if you have other roles within the company.

The most common training mechanism is Baptism by Fire and one can certainly learn a lot by putting out figurative fires or as I like to call it, EHS wack-a-mole. But this practice tends to leave gaping holes in environmental and safety compliance.

I have mentored and trained many new EHS professionals, one-on-one, and it works out well except that I can only help train a few people at a time and there is a greater need. Therefore, I am starting this blog as a way to reach out to this group of newly ordained (and future) environmental/EHS professionals. A variety of topics will be covered and I have also setup a Toolbox page with links to various rules and tools that will be continually updated.

Together we are stronger!

I welcome comments, feedback, and suggestions for useful tools or topics to be covered.