A specialty chemical manufacturing business was seeking a consistent approach to managing occupational hygiene (OH) and environmental health and safety (EHS) risks at its facilities throughout Asia (including Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). Golder came on board to assist this client with developing and implementing an EHS risk management strategy that is aligned with their corporate and local regulatory requirements, but flexible enough to accommodate local work practices, site specific conditions and available resources.
The OH risk management strategy involved carrying out OH management and monitoring at different facilities. This included exposure assessment for some chemicals that did not have standard analytical methodologies and could not be analysed at local laboratories. Golder worked with specialist laboratories to develop and identify sampling and analytical methodologies for some of these specific chemical hazards.
We conducted training programs (based on the Occupational Hygiene Training Association) at our client’s facilities, bringing their representatives together to build capability and share best management practices.
Our client was also able to successfully implement specialist programs. For example, the client’s engineering team was anticipating a renovation project across multiple facilities. Most of these facilities were old and may potentially have involved hazardous materials such as asbestos. This risk was compounded by the location of the facilities in countries with limited asbestos risk management regulatory frameworks.
Our team coached EHS managers in managing and evaluating asbestos risk and assessing specialist remediation contractors. We also assisted our client with an asbestos risk management program which included surveys at the facilities followed by a risk assessment. Different risk management approaches were recommended to the client prior to the renovation program, enabling them to proceed with it with reduced risk in relation to disturbance of hazardous materials.
With Golder’s support, our client was able to achieve a consistent approach to managing OH and EHS hazards across facilities in different locations and regulatory frameworks. The relative performance of various facilities was able to be benchmarked so that funding and support could be targeted to where it was required. With specialist advice, staff at individual facilities were able to conduct their local projects in a consistent manner to other regional facilities.
