Management Systems Support: EHS Manual Review, Prioritization, and Development of Matrices

Antea Group received a request from a new client to support the evaluation of an existing Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) manual for one of their companies. The evaluation focused on prioritizing the topics and establishing applicability and training matrices to clearly define the topics and training requirements for each role under each individual company owned by the client. The client, formerly a holdings company, has acquired smaller specialized companies in recent years and did not have a process or tool in place to capture all of this information for each company, making it difficult to identify where gaps exist. The existing manual consisted of over 50 sections, numerous subsections, and over 800 pages.

Antea Group evaluated the table of contents of the manual, as opposed to the full manual, to reduce costs and operate within the client’s budget. The evaluation would provide the client with recommendations for consolidating and streamlining the manual to ensure it can be used for each of the companies acquired by the organization. Antea Group provided a prioritized list of the topics with a priority ranking of low, medium, or high, based on the severity of potential consequences associated with the hazards of the topics and upon the level of applicability across all of the client-owned companies. Topics associated with high levels of physical or financial risks, such as the control of hazardous energy and chemical management, were assigned a high priority ranking. Topics that were unlikely to change across companies or generally associated with lower levels of risks to employees were issued a low priority ranking. Recommendations for the consolidation of certain topics or the transition of topics to Human Resources or other departments were also provided.

An applicability matrix was developed to show which topics applied to each individual company based on their individual work activities and services. In addition to the applicability matrix, a training matrix was developed, breaking down each company into their roles and by subject matter expert and general awareness training requirements for each role by topic. A separate tab was provided in the tool to show how frequently the training for each topic was required to be reissued to employees.

The client and their management team were very impressed with the deliverables, stating that the layout and content were well organized and easy to absorb. The client explained that their organization had made the decision to use Antea Group as their go-to consultant for EHS support and expects Antea Group to support with the development of an environmental management system, training, a business continuity plan, and facility closure support in the months following the completion of this management systems support.