Quality Assurance in EHS Audits and Audit Programs: The New BEAC Standards

• Date: 01 July 2009

39 ELR 10594 EnviRonmEntaL Law REpoRtER 7-2009

Quality Assurance in EHS

Audits and Audit Programs:

The New BEAC Standards

by Ridgway M. Hall Jr.

Ridgway M. Hall Jr. is a senior counsel in the Washington, D.C., oce of Crowell & Moring LLP. He is the author

of All About Environmental Auditing (Federal Publications, 2d ed. 1992) and a member of the Standards Board of the

Board of Environmental, Health and Safety Auditor Certications. He can be reached at rhall@crowell.com.

How does a chief executive ocer (CEO) know when

he or she certies to the accuracy and completeness

of the company’s annual report, led with the U.S.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that all of the

company’s environmental liabilities have been identied and

properly characterized and evaluated? If the answer is that

he or she relied on a bunch of environmental audit reports

prepared by employees or a consulting rm who said they

knew t he relevant laws, how does the CEO know they got

it right? For the auditors, the entities who design and imple-

ment auditing and compliance a ssurance programs, and

CEOs and other users, help is on the way.

e practice of environmental, health, a nd safet y (EHS)

compliance auditing developed in the late 1970s in response

to the wave of complex environmental laws and regulations

enacted during that decade by federal and state governments.

ese regulations carried civil penalties of up to $25,000 per

day of violation, comparable criminal penalties plus jail time

for “knowing” violations, a nd injunctive and administrative

sanctions.1 Especia lly for companies with facilities in mul-

tiple states, each with its own set of air, water, and hazardous

and solid waste regulations, keeping abreast of these regu-

latory requirements was simply not possible without some

kind of compliance system backed up by a “self-assessment”

or auditing program. Some companies developed compliance

assurance programs in-house and others called on law rms

or environmental engineering rms to assist in designing and

implementing such programs, including the performance of

compliance audits.

As long as the persons who were being asked to design

the program or conduct the audits demonstrated reasonable

familiarity with the relevant laws and regulations, generally

no one inquired further as to their qualications. Over time,

many lawyers and environmental engineers gained substan-

1. See, e.g., Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. §7413, ELR S. CAA §113; Clean

Water Act, 33 U.S.C. §1319, ELR S. FWPCA §309; Resource Conser-

vation and Recovery Act, 42 U.S.C. §6928, ELR S. RCRA §3008.

tial experience in this eld. eir websites and individual

curricula vitae were proof enough for most companies, lend-

ers, insurers, and other customers that these individuals were

qualied to do the job.

Today, as a result in part of the certi cation requirements

in the Sarbanes-Oxley Amendments of 20 02 and the pros-

pect of a renewed emphasis on environmental enforcement

under the Barack Obama Administration, there is an increas-

ing need for published standards setting forth the minimum

requirements for the conduct of an EHS compliance audit

consistent with best practices, and comparable standards for

those who design and implement auditing programs, to pro-

vide assurance to those enga ged in t hese elds that if they

comply with these standards they will have “gotten it right.”

More specica lly, they need to have a high degree of con-

dence that the conduct of the audit, and the design and

implementation of the audit program itself, produce reports

that are complete, accurate, and reliable.

e Board of Environmental Health and Safety Auditor

Certications (BEAC) is the largest organization in the coun-

try that certies the professional qualications of an EHS

auditor based on experience and a written test.2 In Decem-

ber 2008, BEAC issued its Performance and Program Stan-

dards for the Professional Practice of Environmental, Health

& Safety Auditing. is followed a three-year process during

which BEAC’s Standards Board, of which I am a member,

conducted a complete review and rewrite of BEAC’s original

auditing and program standards, which had been issued in

1999. ose standards were merely skeletal by today’s mea-

sures. Most of their content was in the nature of “guidance.”

e new standards, by contrast, are both comprehensive and

exible.

is Article will discuss rst the need for such sta ndards,

then summarize their principal provisions and provide

some practica l suggestions regarding their use. ese stan-

2. For more information about BEAC, see BEAC home page, http://www.beac.

org.

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