How to Succeed with Outsourced Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) Support

While this might seem obvious, many clients don’t appreciate that by outsourcing EHS functions, they are able to tap into the consultant’s organization. Consultants arm clients with a wider breadth and depth of technical talent than the client can afford to hire in-house. Clients need to value a consultant’s input so that when unusual or challenging problems appear, they can often be quickly resolved through the EHS consulting firm’s expertise and resources.

Hiring staff is time-consuming and challenging. Building an in-house EHS team has always been a challenge, and in today’s highly competitive labor market it is particularly difficult. EHS consultant teams are ready to move fast, and they give each client the amount of time needed to do the job right. By outsourcing EHS functions, clients can often get the support they need in a matter of days, rather than months.

For consultants, providing clients with internal EHS support often provides them valuable insight into the client’s work environment that they serve. Consultants gain insight from working with various customers within the same industry. Even jobs in separate industries can offer valuable insight that will be useful later. This insight can be used to assist with other EHS needs of the organization and propose well-informed solutions to solve the client’s issues.

Outsourcing EHS services can help any business reduce overhead costs and save time. While not always significant, the outsourcing of EHS function support (whether at the corporate office and/or at the plant level) is usually a more cost-effective option when compared to the overall costs required to identify and hire a similarly qualified full-time internal EHS professional (including costs for benefits).

Outsourcing activities and responsibilities can be a very different type of project engagement with the client than a typical straightforward scope of work proposal that the consultant has performed many times. In TRC’s experience, it’s important that the contract reflect these differences and nuances. Failing to craft a clear contract creates confusion regarding responsibilities and can lead to liability concerns. The contract should be carefully prepared to identify the specific tasks, activities, responsibilities, needs and objectives the client envisions for this EHS function.

Expertise is a clear benefit, but there’s only so much to go around. The outsourcing of EHS talent for certain consulting firms can lead to the temporary loss of talent or offering less talented and/or experienced resources to the client. For small firms, this temporary loss of talent can be significant, while its impact on larger firms is typically less severe.

Clients should investigate a firm’s size and compare it with the number of projects they take on. Large EHS consulting firms employ more experts to meet demand. As a result, large EHS consulting firms tend to have better flexibility to offer EHS outsourcing services and they plan accordingly to develop and offer outsourcing services across their organization.

In TRC’s experience, the best outcomes are possible when each party maintains a specific role. In successful relationships, the EHS consultant provides guidance, recommendations and risk review, and the client remains in the role of the decision-maker. Determining each parties’ responsibilities and meeting them without overlap ensures the best results.

In addition to job-based roles, legally there are some responsibilities that cannot be delegated to the outsourced consultant including signing or certifying required EHS documents (e.g., permit applications, compliance certifications, completing OSHA logs, conducting internal accident investigations, etc.). It is very important to know the legal limits of the outsourced EHS resources.

Some industries are complex and involve higher EHS risk awareness and operational controls than others. Complex industries such as the chemical industry, oil & gas production, primary metal processing and the pulp and paper industry are a few examples. These complex industries need highly specialized EHS resources in many of their functions. Therefore, there may be a learning curve for the EHS consultant selected to be effectively outsourced into an EHS function.

In TRC’s experience, outsourced EHS functions in process-intensive industries needs to be approached differently than with industries with more common requirements and lower EHS risk profiles. For companies within these more complex industries, outsourcing EHS functions must be performed to align the right resources with the required assignments and responsibilities. From there, it’s crucial to communicate the industry’s complexities to the firm so they can make the right accommodations.