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April 8th, 2025 by Dakota Software Staff
With Environmental, Health, & Safety (EHS) regulations constantly evolving, keeping up with compliance can be a challenge—and yes, the struggle is real.
Noncompliance can result in fatal accidents, costly fines and penalties, expensive legal issues, and even operational disruptions. It can also harm a company’s reputation with the public, customers, and shareholders.
With stakes this high, it’s important to have accurate regulatory registers for all your locations and a proactive regulatory change management system to ensure they are kept up-to-date. Read on to learn how an efficient and effective system can save time, increase safety, and ensure compliance.
Regulatory change management is the process organizations use to track, assess, and implement changes to ensure ongoing compliance with regulations and industry standards. It involves monitoring regulatory changes, evaluating their applicability, and updating processes, policies, and controls across the organization.
The key components of a regulatory change management include:
Tracking: Continuously monitoring regulatory sources to gather information, understand changes, and flag updates that may affect environmental permits or internal policies.
Assessment: Evaluating changes to the best way to integrate regulatory changes with existing policies and procedures.
Implementation: Integrating applicable changes into EHS processes and updating procedures to mitigate potential compliance risks.
Analyzing: Establish processes that continuously track, evaluate, and adjust the integration of changes to ensure regulatory compliance.
Auditing & Evaluation: Conducting internal audits to reveal issues in implementing new regulations and ensuring existing criteria are being met.
Documentation & Communication: Maintaining thorough records of regulatory updates and ensuring clear communication with all relevant stakeholders.
Tracking regulatory changes presents several challenges for EHS professionals:
The sheer volume of regulatory updates can be problematic to track. The number of restrictive words in the Federal Register surged from 400,000 in 1970 to more than a million in 2025, according to QuantGov. Additionally, more than 20,000 pages were added between 2006 and 2016.
The complexity of the legal language or technical terminology can make interpreting regulatory changes difficult.
There are also many variabilities within regulations across federal, state and local jurisdictions. These nuances can be tricky to interpret and implement across multiple locations.
Given the volume and complexity of regulatory requirements, it can be a cumbersome process for EHS teams to ensure timely updates to policies, procedures, and training.
With these, and other data management issues, it’s no surprise that EHS professionals consistently report tracking of regulatory changes as one of the most difficult aspects of their jobs.
EHS professionals, compliance managers, and risk management teams have heavy workloads and the pressure to stay ahead of regulatory changes can be overwhelming. Implementing a structured approach to regulatory change management can reduce that burden and help your organization maintain confidence in its compliance programs. The following best practices can help you stay proactive and prepared:
Understanding which authorities have jurisdiction over your operations lays the foundation for successful compliance management. Start by determining which federal agencies oversee your industry; then drill down by location to determine state and local authorities.
Once relevant authorities are identified, the next step is to determine which specific regulations apply to your organization’s operations. While this process can take time, especially for multi-site organizations operating across jurisdictions, it is an important step toward ensuring compliance. This task is typically led by in-house EHS or regulatory teams, or by third-party consultants. Organizations can also leverage software solutions, like Dakota Software’s ProActivity Suite, to streamline the regulatory applicability process.
Change is the only constant. EHS compliance leaders must establish reliable processes and sources for tracking regulatory updates, amended regulations, regulatory guidance, news and circulars, comment letters, enforcement actions and alerts, and related speeches.
Regulatory information should be organized and stored so it is accessible to multiple stakeholders, including executive officers, compliance officers, risk managers, EHS personnel, and other staff. Again, using the right EHS software tools can enhance collaboration and ensure everyone is working with the same set of information.
Compliance teams must integrate regulatory updates with current internal policies, procedures, and local permits. Management systems, such as ISO 45001, 14001, or the American Chemistry Council (ACC) Responsible Care Management System must also be considered related to internal audits and compliance plans.
Successful regulatory affairs teams ensure their compliance plans and policies are aligned with current and upcoming regulations. They use impact assessment tools to evaluate which processes and policies may be impacted by regulatory changes and updates. This allows them to prioritize areas of concern and allocate resources where they’re needed most.
Effective regulatory change management ensures stakeholders remain informed and engaged in the entire process. Applicable changes must be documented and communicated to all stakeholders, including not only executives and management, but also employees, third-party contractors, service providers, and suppliers.
Finally, best practices for regulatory change management require flexibility and continuous oversight to adapt and implement internal controls to mitigate risks. This involves regular reviews and updates to the organization’s change management plan.
By following these best practices, organizations can reduce the burden of regulatory complexity, ensure alignment across departments, and maintain a proactive stance in the face of constant change.
Since 1988, Dakota Software has been helping organizations reign in the chaos of regulatory compliance. We are the only EHS solution that delivers continually updated, expertly-curated Regulatory Intelligence through an enterprise-level software platform.
With Dakota, you get:
Automated regulatory tracking powered by real-time updates and plain-language summaries from our in-house regulatory experts
Centralized compliance management with tools for organizing, assigning, and documenting tasks across the enterprise
Smart compliance calendars with profile-driven tasks linked directly to regulatory citations, complete with alerts and notifications
Built-in audit tools that help determine applicable requirements, presents related audit questions, and can be customized to address your internal policies
In short, Dakota Software helps organizations simplify compliance, reduce risk, and build safer, more sustainable workplaces.
Regulatory change management is complex, and a casual approach can lead to unnecessary costs and avoidable risk. To remain proactive and ahead of costly mistakes, EHS compliance leaders must use a structured and disciplined approach.
Leveraging solutions designed for managing regulatory changes and compliance not only streamlines the process and reduces organizational risk, it also saves money and creates a safer workplace environment.
Request a demo to see how Dakota Software’s solutions can help you ensure bulletproof EHS compliance and create a strong foundation of EHS management excellence.
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