By Randal Meske

Managing Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) compliance is not for the faint of heart. It is for intelligent, responsible, dedicated people who mean business.

Mismanagement of EHS compliance, or even just a little bad luck, can not only put whole companies at risk, it can destroy our precious environment and endanger or even kill the very workers that make employers successful.

As far as work is concerned, most people have to worry about sustaining revenue, managing and preventing customer satisfaction issues and keeping their bosses and coworkers happy. It is a very select few, such as soldiers, surgeons, law enforcement personnel, and EHS compliance officers, who bear the stress of 24/7/365 responsibility for people’s health and safety and environmental sustainability.

EHS compliance officers are special people. They aren’t really appreciated when things are running smoothly, yet they have targets on their backs when issues arise.

Compliance is a team effort, so the complexity of their roles is exacerbated given the decentralized nature of managing their functions on a global scale. Although more and more companies are funding their EHS compliance practices more aggressively, it is still often the case that these dire responsibilities lay on the backs of far too few people.

Technical knowledge is required to do the job well, yet people skills are paramount to success in order to solicit cooperation from dispersed and diverse personnel in varied disciplines who may or may not report to the EHS compliance person in charge.

So, these people manage complex operations amidst high risk with limited resources and challenging interpersonal dynamics. They are asked to do the impossible.

In short, EHS compliance officers are super heroes.

One would think that this complex set of circumstances would cause these people to be serious and lacking in humor. The pressure they bear is real, and I wouldn’t blame them one bit for being a little less fun than the rest of us.

That is why I was quite surprised to read the article entitled “If You Think Accountants Are Hilarious, Try These Guys – Search for America’s Funniest Compliance Officer Is Tough; a Whoop for Dodd-Frank” in the Wall Street Journal. Not only do these hyper-responsible people have senses of humor, some of them actually participate in competitions to determine which of them is the funniest. Go figure!

Perhaps good humor is the elixir that helps them survive their tension-filled days. Maybe as a result, they are actually more funny than the rest of us.

Whether your EHS compliance leaders are funny or not is quite irrelevant. What matters is if they are effective despite the vast challenges they face.

These are special people with critical responsibilities. If you haven’t done so lately, the next time you see your EHS compliance person, give them a great big hug and thank them profusely for what they do (If that person in your organization isn’t a hugger, I’m sure a hand shake will do).

Do you know any stellar EHS compliance professionals? Do you have any humorous stories about EHS compliance professionals, experiences, or incidents? Please respond with your stories in the comments below.

This week's post was written by guest blogger Fu Lu, Senior Environmental Regulatory Specialist with ESD China Limited, an associate of Inogen Environmental Alliance.

Released by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on September 17, 2010, and effective November 1, the Interim Measures on the Assessment and Review of Energy-Saving of Fixed Asset Investment Projects (the Measures) are designed to curb excessive increases in energy consumption and raise energy use efficiency across China.

According to the Measures, all new investment projects (including new construction, renovation and expansion projects) must undergo independent assessments and government reviews on whether they are energy-saving or not before being approved by regulators. Independent institutions will carry out the energy-saving assessments while government departments will take charge of the review work. Any fixed asset investment project that fails to meet the energy-saving requirements will be vetoed. Those projects that pass the energy-saving assessments and reviews will be subjected to strict supervision of their actual energy consumption.

According to the Measures, projects with an annual energy consumption of over 3,000 tons of coal equivalent must submit an energy-saving assessment report to government regulators. Projects with an annual energy consumption between 1,000 tons and 3,000 tons of coal equivalent will have to submit an energy-saving assessment form. Projects that consume less than 1,000 tons of coal equivalent annually will only have to submit a government energy-saving registration form. Both the assessment report and assessment form must be completed by independent institutions and reviewed by government regulators, while the registration form can be filled out by the project owner and does not need to go through a government regulator’s review.

Before the Measures took effect, there were no such compulsory restrictions on the country's new fixed asset investment projects. The implementation of the new Measures will ensure only projects that pass the energy-saving assessment and review can be approved for construction. This will restrain excessive increases in energy consumption for all new investment projects and thus help China achieve the new target of 16% reduction of per unit GDP energy consumption during 2011 - 2015.

By Ted Polakowski

I have been reading the newspaper accounts over the last few weeks of how enraged we have become regarding the closeness of regulator to regulated. 

Back in early May there was a front page New York Times article titled “Nuclear Agency Beset by Lapses.”  The article explained that several years ago, workers at a nuclear power plant caused a leak in a critical cooling water system as they were cleaning a badly corroded section of the pipe. 

Further investigation found that the company who owned the power plant, knowing that there was a corrosion problem, routinely lowered the minimum thickness of pipe that was deemed safe – seemingly after each time it cleaned up the corrosion. 

And how could the plant owner do this alone? Well it seems that they didn’t; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) routinely either ignored or condoned the action by not taking further action. 

The rest of the investigative report in the New York Times seemed to indicate that the oversight approach taken by the NRC was one not of policeman but more of a benevolent family member – my words not theirs. 

More recent news articles indicate that the same lax oversight conditions also existed between regulator and regulated in Japan. 

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on the disaster released on June 1, 2011, suggested, that the regulatory structure of Japan’s nuclear industry lacked independence.  Because of this closeness of regulator and regulated, the Japanese nuclear power plant was just not robust enough in light of how big a tsunami might beset the plant.

So, let’s assume all this is true. 

What I am pondering here is why should either party, the regulator or regulated, not take on its own responsibility?  It seems like the regulated is playing a game of “how much can I get away with?” and not “what is prudent for safeguarding my facility, my people, and the environment?” 

It looks like we are getting to believe that as long as we can essentially fool each other into believing whatever action (or non-action) we are trying to get the other side to accept (or at least not to object to) constitutes the result we want.  But does it?  

Have we as EHS professionals, who populate the ranks of the industrial sites as well as those of regulator, forgotten that we win or lose based upon the actual record we generate, not what the either side said was OK? 

I believe we have to get back to the point where each and every one of us takes ownership of our jobs and approaches it in the absolute, not in what we can get away with.   

What do you think?