Over the last twenty years I have travelled extensively across Asia and visited countless industrial facilities, including those in primary (extractive), secondary (manufacturing) and tertiary (services) sectors. Regardless of the sector, one of the greatest challenges faced by these companies – and also one of the most commonly overlooked and poorly managed – pertains to […]
H&S, OHS, HSE, HSSE, HSSEQ, HSSEQ/CSR … Alphabet Soupization
In the 1970s, back when I was in high school/university and working summer jobs in Canada at construction sites and lumber yards, I do not remember ever running across a safety officer or in fact any sort of HSE professional at the job site.In the early 1980s, I worked as an environmental scientist and had […]
How Clean is Clean? Performing Phase II ESA in Countries Lacking Remediation Criteria
In last week’s blog post, I discussed issues related to Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) in developing countries. This week I’ll explore some of the issues in carrying out a Phase II ESA, and in particular how to carry out the Phase II ESA when there are no local regulatory soil and groundwater remediation […]
Are Phase I ESAs in Asia a Waste of Time and Money? Property Transfer and Environmental Liability in Asia
Over the last twenty years, we have carried out Phase I Environmental Site Assessments (ESA) for western–based multinationals in many countries across South-East Asia and the Middle East, including sites in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, China, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. Interestingly, we have yet to receive […]
The HSE “Professional’s” Dirty Secret – Fake Credentials and Certifications
This topic was suggested to me by a blog reader, M.F., an HSE trainer from a country in South Asia, who commented on the dismal state of HSE in his country:“Organisations state that they are adopting HSE but in reality they don’t have HSE departments in their organisations. Secondly, most of the consultants or institutes […]