January 4th, 2024 by Dakota Software Staff
Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) managers are tasked with a variety of compliance and cultural responsibilities to help their companies succeed, and these obligations can be particularly complex when chemicals are involved. Numerous challenges are the everyday norm for businesses that work with chemicals, and that’s why EHS leaders in these fields must enact detailed, comprehensive management systems to mitigate the risk.
To help drive chemical safety and sustainability alongside organizational performance, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) created its Responsible Care® program and accompanying Responsible Care Management System (RCMS) certification programs. Here we’ll take a look at the challenges that necessitate such a unique system, how you can get certified, and how software can enhance the entire process.
The challenges facing chemical safety are immense, and considerations for EHS leaders include the proper labeling, transportation, handling, use, and disposal of hundreds of substances that may range from the mostly harmless to the extremely hazardous.
While the primary legislation governing chemicals in the workplace is the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), businesses may be subject to one or more of the following additional regulations depending on their operations:
The Hazard Communication Standard (HCS or HazCom)
The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)
The Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA)
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
The Process Safety Management (PSM) of Highly Hazardous Chemicals Standard
The PSM standard has particular importance to EHS professionals in chemical industries, laying out clear and specific guidance and processes to keep workers and the surrounding community as safe as possible from accidental release of hazardous chemicals. In addition to the physical risks, there are also the financial and reputational risks of noncompliance, from citations and fines to decreased customer and public trust.
With so much at stake from a safety perspective, it’s always wise to ensure compliance with a management system that delineates clear goals and core values, elaborates on the steps to achieve and maintain them, and checks progress toward those goals with frequent auditing. This is where the ACC’s Responsible Care program comes in.
Responsible Care is a framework for advancing safety and sustainability in the chemical industry, and the ACC mandates it for all of its members and Responsible Care Partner organizations. These companies track and report to the ACC a variety of EHS metrics to assess performance against key benchmark data. This information is then made public to promote transparency and accountability.
Now in its 35th year, Responsible Care requires the following C-suite level commitments from member organizations:
Signing onto the Responsible Care Guiding Principles
Tracking and transparently reporting company performance on EHS as well as security metrics
Undergoing third-party audits and certifying to the Responsible Care Management System (RCMS) or RC14001 (a combination of Responsible Care and ISO 14001 certification in a single process)
Implementing the Product Safety, Process Safety, and Security Codes
The ACC reports numerous benefits of RCMS for Responsible Care companies, including:
A 20% reduction in recordable injury and illness rates since 2010;
Reductions in emissions since 2017, including a 12% decrease in greenhouse gas intensity, an 18% reduction in sulfur oxide (Sox) emissions, and a 39% reduction in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions; and
A three times better worker safety rate than chemistry businesses overall—and a five times better worker safety rate than the U.S. manufacturing sector as a whole.
With such distinct advantages, EHS leaders in the chemical industry should take notice—here’s how you can get certified.
Companies are certified in RCMS by demonstrating their compliance with RCMS Technical Specifications and the three codes of practice mentioned above (Product Safety, Process Safety, and Security).
The technical specifications identify a framework of required elements for management systems to which organizations must adhere. This framework consists of:
Policy: Policies and expectations must be established and set at the leadership level.
Plan: Identify and set objectives that address potential hazards and risks facing operations.
Do: Document, communicate, and perform the actions necessary to meet the set objectives.
Check: Measure and assess performance—and take corrective action when necessary.
Act: Enact changes that are needed to improve performance and publicly share results.
If this sounds familiar, it should—it’s essentially the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) methodology that forms a major cornerstone of all management systems and is the framework of Dakota Software’s ProActivity Suite.
The next step in RCMS certification is compliance with the three codes of practice:
The Product Safety Code consists of 11 management practices for chemical manufacturers to continuously improve product safety performance while making product safety information readily available.
The Process Safety Code complements the PSM standard and EPA’s Risk Management Plan (RMP) standard with a more universal outlook meant to address process safety expectations and accountability across a division or corporation rather than an individual facility.
The Security Code consists of 10 management practices that address facility, cyber, and supply chain security as well as crisis and emergency planning. It requires companies to conduct security vulnerability assessments (SVAs) and make security enhancements under methods and timelines approved by national experts.
To demonstrate compliance with all of these requirements and achieve RCMS certification, an organization must undergo headquarters and facility-level audits performed by an independent, accredited auditor. Responsible Care companies must renew certification every three years.
Achieving RCMS certification is impossible without effective EHS management systems, and software is essential to success. To enhance ease of compliance with RCMS requirements, this software should support PDCA methodology—and that’s exactly what the unique tools of Dakota Software’s ProActivity Suite are designed to do:
Profiler manages regulatory requirements and plans
Tracer manages tasks and documents actions
Auditor helps you conduct regulatory and management system audits
Insights provides a holistic view of compliance and EHS performance
In addition to the foundational tools for managing PDCA processes, Dakota provides a management system module tailored specifically to RCMS and ISO14001. It includes the full text of the consensus standards, checklists, and frameworks so you can enjoy a smoother implementation and certification on your path to responsible excellence.
To learn more about ProActivity and how it supports RC 14001 certification, request a demo here.
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