Client Story
In order to remain leaders in EHS performance and reinforce their corporate-wide commitment to protecting their employees and the communities and environments in which they operate, one of the largest natural gas providers in North America decided they would implement an audited EHS management system (EHSMS) encompassing all of their operations and locations throughout the US and Canada.
As a primary component of this EHSMS implementation, SafetySkills was tasked with the challenge of performing a gap analysis on the client’s existing EHS training matrix and helping the company develop a dynamic, relational data-driven tool to identify required employee safety training competencies, as well as assisting the client in developing learning products that would exceed industry standards and help the company continue to set the bar in EHS implementation.
Powerful Vision
The company’s ambitious goal was to implement a system that not only conformed to the minimum EHS requirements in the countries in which they operated, but also conformed to internationally recognized standards such as ANSI’s ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001, while being able to leverage available information technologies to ensure the system is maintained and supported long after implementation.
SafetySkills was tasked with helping the company create dozens of custom training courses the met not only OSHA standards, but also the company’s industry-leading standards and practices.
In order to deliver training in locations with poor internet access, SafetySkills developed an interactive CD format for the company’s custom training courses. Courses could be delivered in this format or through the company’s internal LMS, allowing flexibility for delivery both online and off.
Analytical Approach
A key component of any successful EHSMS implementation is identifying direct links between significant environmental and occupational hazards, and the employee training and verification activities intended to address those hazards.
The SafetySkills team audited and indexed the company’s EHS data to establish an EHS taxonomy of hazards that could exist, then developed this data into a set of well-defined employee competencies. These competencies were then cross-referenced with over 1,200 discrete job descriptions to develop a fully relational data set which links each hazard with the appropriate competency requirements and the verifications that must be completed to certify that an employee has met those competencies.
In addition to intensive and comprehensive environmental impact analysis, the company had an advantage because they had, over the years, aggregated a robust data set of job hazard analyses that had been performed by the company over numerous operations across the organization. SafetySkills was able to utilize this data to create a more complete picture of the organization’s competency requirements.
