If you operate from multiple sites, environmental management can seem rather daunting and a big task to ensure that all sites are legally compliant and managing pollution risk correctly. Managing it centrally with standardised guidelines will assist you in ensuring all sites are meeting compliance requirements. Our blog will look at how you can achieve that and the advantages of doing so.

What Should I Standardise?

When setting out guidelines for pollution risk management, it is important to determine what it is feasible to standardise and any areas where guidelines would be helpful to assist sites in making the correct decisions while remaining flexible. Some basic pollution risk management requirements will apply to all sites, such as regular checking of oil storage areas, maintenance of site interceptors and supply and checking of spill kits. Standards should have clear guidelines so all sites know the exact requirements they are expected to meet, but are flexible enough to adapt to site circumstances. For example, all interceptors should be serviced every 12 months but those servicing at risk areas (such as refuelling or vehicle washes), must be serviced at least every 6 months.

When establishing your standards, you will need to establish the activities that your sites carry out and what pollution prevention measures you would like to standardise. You will then need to write your guidelines, setting out the requirements while covering site variation. Once those standards have been set, it is essential to communicate them to site teams so they can be universally implemented and that sites are supported in following the standards.

Peace of Mind

Having clear, implemented standards will give you peace of mind that all sites are aware and are meeting pollution prevention requirements. There is no need for individual site teams to establish what is required if there are clear and easy to understand standards, bespoke to their activities. In addition, you can set standards that go above and beyond legislative requirements to improve your businesses environmental performance and to encourage best practice.

Benchmarking

When establishing the environmental performance of sites, having clear guidelines and expectations makes it much easier. Having standards that you can check against will help you to identify areas of compliance and any non-compliances that will require addressing and you can refer site teams to your established standards. Sites should be regularly assessed to ensure they are complying with the standards you have set and you can create a league table of performance. This will allow you to determine which sites require additional support and those where good practice can be shared.

Setting pollution risk management guidelines for multiple sites to follow will allow you to standardise pollution prevention procedures and ensure that all of your sites are compliant and fully aware of their environmental obligations. You can have peace of mind that sites know their obligations and regular checking against the standards can allow you to measure performance and benchmark compliance and improvement.