So You’re Impacted By An Updated Regulation… What’s Next for your Digital Tools?

New and updated regulations occur regularly and often change the required compliance actions. How do you ensure that your digital tools are updated to reflect the latest and greatest regulatory requirements? We’ll step through a high-level process and checklist of content types so no parts of the digital solution are missed.

High Level Flowchart for Regulatory Updates

This flowchart below walks through the high-level process of determining impacts of regulatory updates. The first few steps of this process are likely familiar to experienced Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) professionals, but the later steps may look less familiar.

Checklist for Updating Digital Content for Regulatory Updates

The checklist below adds some context and detail to the flowchart. The numbers on the flowchart steps match the items below:

• Determine if the described regulations apply to your organization and site(s). If the answer is no, then the remaining items don’t apply to you! If the answer is yes, you need to keep working to determine the impacts.
• Identify which parts of your digital tools need updates because of regulation changes. For example, if you aren’t currently using inspections for environmental compliance, you won’t need to review and update inspections as part of the gap analysis.
• You should work with experts to review the regulatory changes and determine needed updates. This process is called a gap analysis.
  • Experts can help you select a content provider that fits your needs. Content providers can provide tools such as red line strike outs of the regulatory text.
  • Experts have invested time in reading the regulation in detail as well as related documents for context.
• Review your digital content against the regulatory gap analysis for specific content that needs updates.
  • Examples could include added content, updated content, or inactivated obsolete content.
  • Configuration changes could potentially be required.
• Update any impacted existing digital content in a test system.
• Test the updated digital content and deploy content to the end users.

Types of Digital Content that Could be Impacted by Regulatory Changes

What kinds of digital content should be reviewed for gaps or needed updates? This list summarizes some examples of types of changes.

• Applicability Determinations
  • Determined at a company-wide level or individual site level
  • Includes a comment usually for why the regulation does not apply
• Compliance Tasks
  • New tasks needed to support new requirements
  • Changes to existing tasks that include updating the task description to cover the updated requirements
  • Updating the related regulatory citations linked to the tasks
  • Removing tasks that relate to activities that are no longer consistent with the updated regulation
• Calculation Methods
  • Adding new calculations for sources not previously considered
  • Updating emissions calculations to be consistent with updated regulation
• Limits
  • Emissions Limits
  • Operational Limits
• Inspections
  • Update existing inspection checklists
  • Add new inspections
  • Change inspection frequency
• Reporting Requirements
  • Additional information for reporting
  • Additional sources of data for reporting

ALL4 helps organizations identify the compliance requirements and implications of these updated regulations as well as manage changes to digital tools from regulatory updates. If you want to learn more about any part of this, please contact Julie Taccino at jtaccino@all4inc.com or 281-201-1247.