LegalB Products and Services: STAQs and Environmental Compliance Programmes

STAQ PRODUCTS

AND ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE PROGRAMMES

Requirements of a good environmental compliance and compliance-maintenance programme

Taking responsibility, the allocation of resources, management and proper information flow.. that’s all it takes to develop a good environmental compliance and compliance-maintenance programme.

...taking Responsibility

Without taking responsibility, there can be no allocation of resources, management or appropriate use or generation of information. Every organization has, to a more or lesser extent, to take responsibility for environmental compliance and compliance maintenance. Without this, personal liability for environmental damage may well land squarely at the feet of those in the organization who should have taken responsible for its environmental compliance.

However, taking responsibility does not mean the externalization of responsibility. Therefore, if the existing compliance and compliance-maintenance programme of an organization has effectively externalized the responsibility of those in charge for compliance with environmental legislation, then definitely a step in the wrong direction has been taken. If this is the case, our STAQ products will assist those in charge to bridge the gap between taking responsibility and the externalization of compliance and compliance-maintenance programmes, by bringing the organization’s existing internal systemic knowledge-systems, role-allocations and resources into play.

In fact, our STAQs will ensure not only that a de facto environmental compliance and compliance-maintenance programme develops, but that a chain of responsibility in that programme develops, is strengthened, and even ends up systemically driving that programme.

...allocating Resources to the Compliance and Compliance-maintenance Programme

Our STAQ products (from the perspective of our clients) consist of a series of factual questions to which “yes” or “no” answers must be given. Information and knowledge of probably upward of 90% of the facts required by the STAQs are probably already contained within the organisation whose compliance and transgressions are being enquired into. It is largely simply a matter of bringing the facts to light, and the cost of the systemic resources needed to do so are costs that most likely have already been unproductively incurred by the organization for quite some time. This capacity of STAQs makes them particularly cost-effective and easy to use.

Where there is a real lack of internal resources for the organization’s compliance and compliance-maintenance programme, our STAQs clearly identifying the factual questions which the organisation cannot answer, and the nature of the expertise needed and the extent of involvement of those expertise in the compliance programme is really clear. Further, the nature of machinery and equipment, labour and other resources needed to run and maintain an environmental compliance programme also becomes clear. This allows the organisation to take really rational, cost-effective decisions about how to develop and allocate resources to its environmental compliance and compliance-maintenance programme.

...management of the Compliance and Compliance-maintenance Programme

While using LegalB STAQs to generate and drive a management regime for managing an organization’s bottom environmental legal compliance line, internal management resources must be made available to manage the implementation of our STAQ system.

However, because this will generally require only internal management resources to systematize the forwarding of STAQ questions to those in the organization capable of answering it, the monitoring of replies, and the entering of replies in the STAQ programme, this is simplicity itself. Where there is a lack of capacity to answer STAQ questions (which should be rare) the forwarding of STAQ questions to outside experts, the management of expertise development, and upgrading of machinery and equipment to generate facts necessary to answer a STAQ question, or the co-ordination of outside experts to answer questions would have to be managed.

We have ensured that our STAQ system allows anyone with a minimum of training to perform most of the management tasks needed to simultaneously establish whether or not there has been non-compliance with any number of pieces of environmental legislation and that, at any time, the status of the organization’s environmental compliance can be easily ascertained.

Summary

STAQs greatly simplify and automate the process of taking responsibility, allocating resources, managing and managing information relevant to environmental compliance and transgression... and that’s often about all it takes to develop a good environmental compliance and compliance-maintenance programme.

Products and Services