Ensuring environmental compliance is a challenging responsibility, especially as regulations continue to evolve. Whether you manage a single facility or a hundred, it’s hard to achieve and maintain compliance without a robust plan in place.
An environmental compliance management plan establishes the policies, procedures, and responsibilities required to comply with relevant federal and state regulations. It provides a clear roadmap to reaching and maintaining compliance, helping your company mitigate regulatory risks and costly oversights.
To create an environmental compliance plan for your business, take these steps:
1. Identify Gaps and Establish Goals
Before creating an environmental compliance action plan, you must determine if there are any gaps in your current procedures or processes. You can accomplish this by conducting an internal audit.
First, establish the scope of your audit. Will it include all facilities or just one? What processes and activities will you evaluate, and what regulations will they be assessed against?
After establishing the scope, enlist a manager or consultant to conduct the audit. During the audit, they can identify any noncompliance issues or potential risks related to environmental regulations, like problems with emissions control or waste management practices. They can then report their findings to you so you can develop goals and objectives to address the gaps they’ve identified.
You can use a software solution, like PlanTRAK’s Audit Tool, to streamline recordkeeping and track the implementation of audit recommendations. For example, with PlanTRAK, managers can easily document audit findings and efficiently assign corrective actions to the appropriate team members.
2. Develop SOPs and Assign Compliance Tasks
Once you’ve identified compliance gaps and established goals, it’s time to make an action plan. The plan should define the specific actions employees must take to address compliance issues. These steps can be outlined in policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs). It’s also crucial to designate roles and responsibilities for compliance activities and set deadlines for completing these tasks.
With clear and actionable SOPs ready to go, you can begin assigning tasks. Distributing tasks to the right employees does not have to be a time- or resource-consuming activity. For instance, PlanTRAK makes it easy to assign and schedule tasks across multiple facilities from a centralized platform — all tailored to your business’s environmental compliance plan.
With PlanTRAK, you can also send automated reminders to the people responsible for compliance activities, helping them stay on track and ensuring accountability. Use PlanTRAK to store all compliance-related documents, including SOPs, in one place so you’re always ready to send the correct information to the right person.
3. Train, Track, and Improve
An SOP is only useful if employees know how to apply it. For example, if staff doesn’t have a real-world understanding of how to properly label hazardous materials, an SOP might not be too helpful.
Therefore, it’s crucial to develop training programs that ensure employees understand their roles in environmental compliance. Once employees are trained and can implement SOPs effectively, you can track and monitor compliance activities. With greater oversight of these operations, you can ensure the necessary work is getting done and pinpoint areas of improvement.
A user-friendly tool like PlanTRAK allows you to easily track and monitor training and compliance activities, as well as regulatory updates, so you can maintain oversight and streamline recordkeeping requirements.
PlanTRAK is also a flexible solution that simplifies the management of staffing, permit, and regulatory changes. For example, with PlanTRAK’s Transfer Tool, you can quickly transfer assignments and critical knowledge between employees, preventing compliance disruptions when staff members change.
Simplify Environmental Compliance Planning and Management With PlanTRAK Software
Environmental compliance requires much more than marking off items on a checklist. It takes a holistic, proactive approach to meet changing, complex regulations — and a well-developed plan.
At SolutionsTRAK, we understand compliance can be challenging to plan and manage — but our software simplifies the process. PlanTRAK empowers EHS managers to effortlessly assign, track, monitor, and record compliance activities across multiple facilities, helping them to mitigate compliance risks with less stress.
Ready to see PlanTRAK in action? Request a demo or contact us today for more information.