Environment, Health, Safety, and Sustainability Information Management
Information Management Solutions Tailored Just for You
In today’s competitive marketplace, our clients’ ability to collect, track, and use data efficiently and effectively is more important than ever before. The challenges of keeping up with increasing regulatory requirements across diverse geographies is front of mind for our clients around the globe. These stresses, along with internal pressures to increase efficiency, reduce costs and minimize risk, have created a high demand for the right solution.
That’s why CH2M offers an effective environmental, health, safety, and sustainability (EHS&S) information management solution to help companies like yours. We work with our clients to move help them produce high‐quality data, develop insights about their businesses, and gain confidence that data is being used not only to reach regulatory compliance, but to realize efficiencies.
CH2M
CH2M has long been a leader in EHS&S information management. We recognized early that efficient and effective management of information through innovative solutions provides a competitive edge to our clients, as it allows them to focus their energies on where they will get higher value for their money, while also mitigating short‐ and long‐term risks. This focus on EHS&S information management as a dedicated business focus is recognized as a key
differentiator in our consistent top ranking by various industry organizations and publications.
Verdantix, an independent analyst firm focused on sustainable business issues, has named CH2M a U.S. leader in sustainability consulting, environmental services, sustainable engineering, climate change consulting, and technology service providers. These recognitions exemplify our
commitment to sustainable practices in our internal operations, our project delivery, and the communities we serve.
Verdantix named CH2M a leader in technology services in 2014 after comparing the leading U.S.
environmental service firms through analytical interviews with the leading buyers and a fact‐
based questionnaire and detailed interviews with suppliers (Exhibit 1).
“The leading firms featured in this report lead the market thanks to a breadth of their offerings, their in‐house multidisciplinary experts, high brand awareness, and solid sustainability programs.”
‐‐Emilie Beauchamp, Verdantix Industry Analyst
Green Quadrant is a registered trademark owned by Verdantix Ltd
and is reused by permission. The Green Quadrant methodology is
an objective, fact‐based assessment of firms providing comparable products or services in a
defined market at a specific time. Verdantix
does not endorse any vendor, product or service
included in the Green Quadrant. Research conclusions are based on expert judgment and are
subject to change.
Verdantix disclaims all warranties, express or
Stable Company, Global Resources
CH2M’s original founders established the company in 1946, with the guiding principle of “doing the right thing.” Over the next 67 years, our clients responded to our commitment to bringing related values to every project, and the company grew to its present size of over 25,000 employees working on over 14,000 projects across the globe.
And we don’t ask you to take our word for it. CH2M consistently receives some of the top accolades in the industry. For example:
Ethisphere ranked CH2M as one of the world’s most ethical companies for the past 7 years.
CH2M has been named as a top workplace in the U.S. six times since 2003.
Engineering News Record has ranked CH2M as the top environmental firm in the United States since 2006.
CH2M offers a wide spectrum of expertise in nearly every environmental area. The scale of our firmwide accomplishments distinguishes us from competitors and allows us to partner effectively with clients to achieve strategic and operational goals.
Industry‐leading Safety Culture
Safety is a fundamental value at CH2M. As we meet project objectives, it is the first criterion of consideration in all of our projects. Our safety culture is exemplified in our comprehensive Target Zero program. Target Zero focuses on zero incidents, accidents, omissions, and environmental impacts. An effective safety program uses a top‐down and bottom‐up approach where everyone is responsible for making sure we are operating in a safe, high‐quality, and high‐performance work environment.
Our Target Zero program includes 55 firmwide core standards that cover every element of our work. These standards apply to roles and responsibilities, required certifications and licenses, audits and inspections, corrective actions, and documentation. We also have 82 standard operating procedures covering specific activities that must be followed. Our robust safety audit program allows us to evaluate and measure our performance. Our Target Zero program, which has earned CH2M nine Voluntary Protection Program awards from the Occupational Safety &
Health Administration in the last 3 years, enables us to achieve industry‐leading performance in safety, as shown in Exhibit 2.
EXHIBIT 2
Industry-Leading Safety Performance
Safety Performance Measures 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Experience Modification Rate (Industry Average is 1.0)
0.66 0.70 0.70 0.67 0.69
Total Recordable Incident Rate 0.49 0.30 0.54 0.33 0.19
DART (Lost Work Days) 0.18 0.15 0.18 0.03 0.06
Before starting any field work, we develop project health & safety plans, including applicable operating procedures and standards, with clients. Each CH2M team conducts its work in the safest manner possible, with a Target Zero focus on ensuring that each team member remains healthy and safe.
What We Offer
CH2M has played a major role in many of the most complex deployments of EHS&S information management solutions in the world under arduous performance, cost, and schedule metrics. We have also performed countless smaller‐scale site and business‐unit level implementations.
We apply the expertise of our multidisciplinary engineering and professional teams to develop innovative energy and environment information management solutions. Our staff has strengths in consultation; local knowledge of regulatory, environmental, and socioeconomic concerns; and engineering design, construction, operations, and maintenance. We integrate those strengths from the start of each project to achieve our client’s desired outcomes – and get it right the first time. Our strong global multimedia environmental management capabilities serve as a
foundation for understanding your needs.
Our Process
Like CH2M’s approach to project management, our EHS&S information management
standardized implementation process is scalable: both rigorous, to preserve information quality, and nimble, to adapt to our clients’ needs. We focus first on your requirements and how we can help define the vision, enhance work processes, assist with software selection, configure those systems, and provide staff training and capability development. Our end goal is to assist you in getting to a position of high‐quality information to support strategic decisions, while retaining the flexibility needed to meet your ongoing business requirements.
Our standard process is broken up into the following essential steps, as shown in Exhibit 3.
Assess. Recognizing that there is a need is easy, but being able to clearly define how that need will be addressed and obtaining support for that process can be more difficult. Our experts will help shape your near‐ and long‐term vision and goals as well as help foster that support needed to be successful in your program.
Analyze. We understand that no single solution is one‐size‐fits‐all. Our experts help you to define those requirements that are right for your program. We are able to provide tools and processes to support this stage, depending on your individual needs–from gap analyses, user surveys, workshops, and vendor demonstrations to procurement support.
Plan and Design. We believe it is extremely important to plan and design solutions that meet our clients’ near‐term goals as well as their long‐
term vision. This kind of comprehensive planning is crucial if companies are to anticipate and get ahead of future obligations, risks, and impacts as regulatory environments evolve.
Develop and Implement. We understand that information systems are only the enablers of an organization’s overall management processes. How we make that
“enabling” happen is often as important, if not more important, than what system is implemented.
Deploy. The best configured solutions do not support themselves. They need your people to understand and feel comfortable with the overall solution as well as the work processes surrounding the use of your solution. We assist with training and testing of your solution,
EXHIBIT 3
CH2M’s standard process for EHS&S information management
Shared Implementation and Information Management Philosophy
When an organization undertakes an EHS&S information management project, improving efficiency and enhancing compliance assurance are the minimum expectations. CH2M takes a broader program view when planning these activities by focusing on deriving continuous value from your solution and data. We push your organization to think beyond compliance reporting.
Understanding the daily dashboards and data analytics not only supports ongoing decision‐
making and value generation, but also can anchor your long‐term business case for an EHS&S information management system.
In contrast to other system integrators, CH2M emphasizes the need for companies to be self‐
reliant after implementation and looks to strengthen the relationship between you and your selected solution vendor. It is important to design the appropriate transition model at the beginning of the program, and although CH2M can play various roles in system support, we prefer that clients embrace their EHS&S information management system and take ongoing ownership of it. We want to be a high‐value, long‐term partner, not a third‐party dependency for your operations.
Our Technology Partnerships
We have proven experience in assisting our clients with the selection and implementation of leading, commercially available EHS&S information management systems. We partner with software vendors that provide industry‐leading software that meet the demands of our clients.
We continually evaluate the marketplace and engage in relationships with vendors who we believe will offer valuable solutions to clients.
Example Projects
Environmental Reporting
Multinational Chemical Confidential Client
CH2M provided the best cost‐quality‐delivery environmental reporting solution for the client’s production sites in the United States. Multiple legacy systems used for regulatory reporting were no longer sustainable, varied among the sites, and required redundant resources for support.
Our standardized solution included inventory, waste, air, material, and water solution modules.
We replaced multiple environmental reporting systems and work processes with a centralized system, eliminating repetitive support roles and reducing structural costs at multiple sites. To better automate data capture and enable interoperability among systems, we designed and built custom interfaces to communicate with existing back‐end systems, saving thousands of hours of manual entry. We developed sustainable work processes, training documentation, and videos to enable access to information via the client’s Intranet.
To preserve the client’s investment, we established a centralized organization to eliminate the need for a support organization at each site and ensure that the standard configuration is maintained and adapted consistently.
We established a sustainability team, key to the project’s overall success. This central team (comprising client and CH2M staff) supports the system’s maintenance and takes advantage of the onsite staff’s expertise. For example, the client staff reports when a new boiler is installed and what calculations it needs. The central sustainment organization updates the system, and the site is only responsible for entering basic calculation inputs like throughputs and reactant amounts. All of this updating is done via custom Web forms and workflows that route the information to the appropriate subject matter experts for review, approval, and execution.
We also can update their system and calculations to be compliant with new rules and regulations. For example, we performed a calculation overhaul of combustion equipment to comply with the Mandatory Reporting Rule. By having a central database of emissions, we could find all instances of equipment that was affected. We could make widescale, consistent updates from site to site without needing to update different legacy calculation spreadsheets (as would be necessary without an information management solution).
The new, innovative work processes and tools saved the client by preserving the client’s license to operate in over 200 operating units at 35 U.S. manufacturing sites and eliminating redundant legacy reporting systems.
Vision and Strategy
Global Mining Company
A global mining client was determining how to approach a long‐term need of establishing an effective process for information management. The client had long relied on individual ingenuity and local tools for tracking and maintaining compliance. Although this had been adequate, the client had a vision for going “beyond compliance” and supporting an overall culture that is steered by environmental stewardship.
CH2M assisted the client in defining an overall strategy and vision for enhanced compliance and the solution to support that vision. After we helped the client develop its internal business case, senior management saw that this solution was much more than a savings in personnel hours. It was going to give them the available resources needed to take that next step beyond
compliance. Our business case focused not on hard dollar savings, but on missed opportunities that would continue to happen if the client were to continue to do nothing. We helped the client plan a global rollout strategy and develop costs and a timeline for the solution.
In 2008, about a year after the solution was deployed, the client gave the project an excellence award: "Best of the Best:
Winner for Project That Saved More Than
$2 Million and Enhanced Sustainability”
Regulatory Excellence Global Energy Company
A global oil and gas client had received a notice of violation for a missed permitting activity. The company took this as a wake‐up call and realized in order to be a leader in its industry, it had to do more. The client engaged CH2M to establish the vision and set the requirements to satisfy that vision. CH2M helped establish requirements for a solution that would be used to track the client’s legal and other requirements across the organization in a consistent, complete manner.
We assisted the client with selecting an appropriate software to support its overall legal and other requirements process. We also helped lead a pilot at one of the client’s business units.
After successful deployment of the pilot, the solution has advanced to more business units and continues to support the client in implementation and deployment across the organization.
Water Discharge Management System Global Coal Company
CH2M’s EHS&S information management experts have been providing this large coal company with large‐scale Enviance implementation support for its National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System (NPDES) permitting needs since 2009. The client has numerous mines in West Virginia, with hundreds of stormwater permits and thousands of outfalls. For this project, we assisted with development and implementation of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Enforcement Investigations Center compliance‐focused environmental management system (CFEMS). The CFEMS covers 17 mines in West Virginia and includes Enviance as the environmental management information system of choice, accessible to staff at each of the mines.
CH2M followed a phased approach in developing and implementing the CFEMS. This approach included an initial review and evaluation at each of the 17 mines to identify gaps; development of a CFEMS manual with environmental policies and procedures appropriate to operations;
identification of significant environmental aspects and impacts; a standardized procedure and updates to existing practices, procedures, and control equipment for mitigating significant impacts; a Web‐based CFEMS support system, including electronic document control, audit checklists, NPDES compliance tracking, and a corrective action system; and an audits process.
EPA approved the CFEMS manual with just two comments. More importantly, project success quickly became evident when the client saw a greater than 50 percent reduction in NPDES violations in less than 9 months.
In addition, CH2M supported the client with its environmental compliance information management system in 2009. The requirements of the information management system were driven by a Consent Decree, which created tight deadlines, rigid parameters, and a complex configuration. The Enviance system from inception to go‐live was complete in 5 months, which included full configuration and laboratory integration. Key features of the Enviance configuration included use of handheld tablets for field data collection; full integration with automated uploads by over two dozen laboratories using Enviance’s auto‐bulk load tool, EIFL (Enviance Integrated Framework Language) and associated coding; and programming of permit limits, tracking, and notifications. In addition, CH2M designed and implemented a solution to electronically facilitate the client’s compliance management business processes, including tasks or workflows and forms for outfall inspections, internal and third‐party auditing and corrective actions, and executive rollups on compliance task completion status.
Since that time, CH2M has continued to assist the client with Enviance solutions enabling it to
About CH2M
Headquartered near Denver, Colorado, USA, employee‐owned CH2M is a global leader in full‐service consulting, design, design‐build, operations, and program management for public and private clients. With US$6.1 billion in revenue and over 25,000 employees worldwide, CH2M delivers innovative, practical, sustainable solutions—
helping clients develop and manage infrastructure and facilities that improve efficiency, safety, and quality of life.
The firm has long been recognized as a most‑admired company and leading employer. CH2M is an industry‐leading program management, construction management, and design firm as ranked by Engineering News‐Record (2014).
Visit us at www.ch2m.com, twitter.com/ch2m, and facebook.com/ch2mhill.
Contacts for EHS & Sustainability Services:
Kristen Duda
Service Area Director ‐ Environmental, Health & Safety, and Sustainability 125 S. Wacker Dr. Suite 3000
Chicago, IL 60606 Tel: +1 630 964 1310 kristen.duda@ch2m.com
JR VanOrder
Global Practice Director, Information Management 430 East Genesee Street
Syracuse, NY 13202 Tel: +1 315.396.4455 jr.vanorder@ch2m.com
Global Headquarters 9191 S. Jamaica Street Englewood, CO 80112 USA Toll‐free: 888.CH2M.HILL Tel: 303.771.0900 Fax: 720.286.9250
