Regulatory Compliance and Audits

With over 40 years of experience behind us, we not only can advise you on how to apply the legal regulations and create a schedule of legal provisions, but we can also support you in the proper discharge of your obligations. We keep you informed of key changes in regulations, advise you on the consequences of regulations and conduct internal audits to check the effectiveness of all your controls. This reduces your liability risk and saves resources, time and costs.

As a matter of course, our experts capture all the relevant regulations at EU, German and state level for you. Where your company or group of companies has a number of locations (office, production, logistics, etc) or operates a number of subsidiaries, we recommend that you create a separate schedule of legal provisions for each location or subsidiary.

A single schedule to cover all does not ensure regulatory compliance. A common reason for companies to fail in their compliance obligations over the long term is a lack of resources. The compliance advice that we offer will remedy this situation. We go through the relevant legal changes with you, your managers and your DGSAs in the form of regular on-site discussions, via webex or via our helpline and specialist blog, and we explore the impact on your company and recommend possible courses of action.

We currently cover the following legal areas: 

• Waste regulations
• General environmental regulations
• Plant safety regulations
• Occupational health and safety
• Soil protection regulations
• Chemicals regulations
• Dangerous goods regulations
• Water protection regulations
• Immission control regulations
• Nature conservation regulations
• Energy regulations

We help clients to identify, formulate and delegate the obligations that arise from a schedule of legal provisions. We deliberately tailor our support because experience generally shows that no two identification, creation and assignment processes are the same.

The key to successfully managing regulations is a properly curated schedule of legal provisions. Once we identify the obligations that arise for your operation, we take meticulous care to ensure that the requisite processes are implemented, i.e. documented and communicated. This promotes the necessary levels of transparency and acceptance among the stakeholders in your company.

Software is a good tool for illustrating the process for delegating obligations. Apart from the schedule of legal provisions, it can display all regulatory changes automatically, making the capture and delegation of obligations simple and intuitive. A comprehensive reporting module provides an overview of the implementation status of all obligations. We will gladly advise you on the appropriate software to use in your company. 

With software on one hand and on-site advice guarantee on the other, you are assured of success. We not only provide support for software implementation, including the schedule of legal provisions, the delegation of obligations and on-site training, but also conduct regular compliance workshops on specific areas to advise you on the latest regulatory changes and how they will impact on your undertakings.

We conduct random compliance audits to check your company’s status, to identify possible compliance risks and to devise recommended courses of action with you. If you have already established good compliance mechanisms in the form of a schedule of legal provisions and identified obligations, we recommend an annual system check in which we can check for compliance with REACH, dangerous goods, occupational safety, waste, water protection legislation etc. Furthermore, we offer process-based system checks, such as hazardous substances management, third-parties companies, and permits. We will discuss the appropriate type of check for your company on site with you.

We are in daily contact with our customers and therefore know exactly how to get employees to live and breathe the system and the various pitfalls to avoid in order to maintain their enthusiasm. We start off by analysing the current operation and assessing the strengths and weaknesses in the traditional way. This is essential for creating a foundation upon which to develop a coherent concept for structuring the management system in question. Apart from guidelines, such as environmental policy, SOPs and process descriptions, it is particularly important to devise and implement specific measures in the management system. A system which employees can fully stand behind needs self-explanatory documentation and good training. Regular audits, effectiveness checks and management reviews round out our service portfolio.

A special feature of our services is that we can examine individual subject areas on a case-by-case basis as well, such as third-party management/coordination, and permit systems. At their core, our services are all about providing expertise across the full spectrum of internal hazardous substances management – we can scrutinise and analyse every phase of the operation, from procurement through to disposal. 

Are there any risks that might not surface for another few years? Have all the necessary permits really been obtained? We have a wealth of experience of where to look and which documents must be available. Where necessary, our network experts will organise the entire process for you.