Environmental Health and Safety Audits

A Compendium of Thoughts and Trends

Lawrence B. Cahill

• Publisher: Bernan Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781598889741
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Occupational & Industrial Medicine
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Environmental health and safety (EHS) audit programs have become an established and essential component of corporate governance in most every major organization whose activities could affect public health and the environment. While many of the audit programs in existence are quite mature there continues to be an evolution of audit practices designed to better identify and control EHS risks. This new updated second edition takes a look at many of those practices and potential advances in the profession. Among the critical topics addressed are:
What is the current EHS regulatory outlook in the U.S. and how might this affect a company's and the regulator's attitudes towards compliance and auditing? Are the potential consequences of "taking your eye off the ball" still significant?How does one know whether an audit program is actually working and meeting its established objectives? What are the best performance criteria to use?How can risk management be factored into audit programs and how individual audits are conducted to assure efficient and relevant outcomes? How can we get at the true risks and avoid the tendency to focus on "administrivia"?How can auditors become more proficient and how can we train people to help assure we maximize an individual auditor's potential? Can the individual auditor be "all things to all people"?Can innovative approaches such as "virtual" audits achieve the same or even better results more cost-effectively? How can limited resources be applied optimally?
The second edition addresses the key components of an EHS audit program and provides advice on:

How to improve the management and execution of an audit programHow to address the true compliance risks in implementing an audit programHow to make auditors more effective and versatileHow to help auditors understand the special demands of auditing internationallyHow to utilize innovative techniques, such as virtual auditing, to maximize a program's effectiveness and efficiency.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The U.S. EHS Regulatory Setting
• 3 Environmental Catastrophes
• 4 The Risks and Challenges of Accrediting EHS and Sustainability PerformanceA version of this chapter was previously published by the author in the on-line EHS Journal under the same title on October 6, 2015.
• 5 Measuring the Success of an EHS Audit Program
• 6 EHS Audits
• 7 Where Have You Gone, Ernest Hemingway?
• 8 Twenty Lessons Learned on International Assignments
• 9 Classic Auditor Failures
• 10 Repeat versus Recurring Findings on EHS Audits
• 11 Environmental Audits versus Health and Safety Audits
• 12 Using Risk Factors to Determine EHS Audit Frequency
• 13 Driving a Risk-Based Approach to EHS AuditingA version of this chapter was previously published by Messrs. Cahill and Costello in the on-line EHS Journal under the same title on June 28, 2016.
• 14 An Approach to Calibrating Relative Risks on EHS AuditsA version of this chapter was previously published by the author under the same title in the on-line EHS Journal on March 12, 2016.
• 15 Is Now the Time to Consider Virtual EHS Auditing?A version of this chapter was previously published by Mr. Robert Costello and Ms. Amanda Delcore in Environmental Quality Management, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. as “Is 2014 the Time to Consider Virtual Auditing?” Spring 2014.
• 16 Maximizing the Economic Potential of Capital ProjectsA version of this chapter was previously published under the same title by Mr. Robert Costello in Catalyst Magazine, Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, Spring 2016.
• 17 Outsourcing Corporate EHS Audits
• 18 The Use of Statistically Representative Sampling on EHS Audits
• 19 Ten Simple Techniques for Better Auditor Training
• 20 A Final Perspective
• Afterword
• Index
• About the Authors