Portfolio of Food Ingredient Production Facilities, Across Thailand
SLP Environmental was appointed to conduct and report Environmental Health and Safety Regulatory Compliance Audits (EHS RCA) at four food ingredient production facilities located in Rayong, Kalasin, Nakhon Ratchasima and Nakhon Pathom, Thailand. The audits were commissioned by the company’s corporate headquarters as part of their global Independent HSE Performance Auditing program.
The primary objectives of the EHS audit were to assess whether operations and activities at the facilities were a) in compliance with applicable national EHS regulatory requirements and, b) where non-compliances were identified to formulate a Corrective Actions Plan (CAP) identifying the root cause, corrective action, priority for implementation, completion indicator, responsible party and an outline budget for each Corrective Action (CA).
As a first stage in the assessment process, the management at each facility were issued with an Applicability Screening Questionnaire (ASQ) for their completion to enable SLP to prepare a tailored Information Request List (IRL) document which was then issued to the relevant representative/s at each facility. SLP created a secure Virtual Data Room (VDR) into which each facility uploaded the requested documentation for the auditors review in order to determine the compliance status of each facility with respect to permitting, training, inspections, monitoring and regulatory reporting etc.
Following completion of the document review aspects of the assignment, SLP’s auditors visited each facility to conduct the Onsite Compliance Review Audits. An onsite audit is critical to assessing EHS practices and behaviors at the operational level and the audits included facility inspections and interviews with management and workers representatives.
Following completion of the onsite audits, SLP prepared a draft EHS regulatory audit report for each facility which provided a synopsis of requirements associated with each identified regulatory non-compliance (NC), the legal citation and prioritization for close- out based on risk assessment. Each report included a Corrective Actions (CAP) to address each NC, a timeline for its implementation, the completion indictor and responsible party (i.e., individual/dept. tasked with closing out findings). The report also included guidance notes, cost estimates for CA, photographs and figures to illustrate findings. The draft reports were submitted to the management at each facility as well as the company’s corporate headquarters for comments. Once clients comments were received and addressed the finalised reports were prepared and issued.