Sustainability & Risk / Hazard Abatement

Hazard Abatement: Overview

Due to the nature of the material, the governing regulations, and the potential for dangerous situations to arise, hazardous material (hazmat) projects are often complex, expensive, and require detailed management.

The Hazard Abatement application offers two major features for managing an abatement project from start to finish:

Assessment Items -- You can manage all the details of abating a particular area -- from sending samples out for testing, to recording the abatement company that handled the issue and their certification to do so, to entering the final cost of abating the hazmat -- by recording your details in assessment items which belong to a hazmat project.
Project Activity Tools -- In addition to all the details of collecting samples, analyzing samples, and abating a particular room, an environmental manager needs tools for managing the overall project and process flow, as well as creating an audit trail of the specific actions taken. Environmental and project managers can use the application's project activity items to manage the overall project.

Typical Hazmat Workflows

The Hazard Abatement application is not intended to enforce any specific workflow; it provides a flexible set of tools that your organization can implement in a way that best fits your organization's existing procedures, workflows, and needs.

For an overview of the overall process, review the following typical workflows:

High-Level Workflow Diagram Using Assessment items -- Assessment items form the backbone of the Hazard Abatement application and hold the details of how you handle each room or area in the hazmat project. Using assessment items only, you can completely and thoroughly work through all phases of an assessment project.
Detailed Workflow Diagram Using Project Activity Items -- This is a more advanced workflow that takes advantage of project activity items.
Overall Hazmat Step-by-Step Procedure -- Whereas the above topics use diagrams, this topic outlines the basic procedure as a series of steps. This process focuses on using assessment items to manage hazmat issues.

Typical Hazmat Roles

Whereas the above-referenced workflow topics outline a start-to-finish process, many users may focus on only the tasks appropriate for their role within the hazmat process.

The Hazard Abatement application organizes its tasks by role: abatement worker, manager, field assessor, project manager, etc. The primary intent of these roles is to restrict some obvious functionality by role and provide an interface in which users can access only the records assigned to them.

The default roles and tasks reflect a flexible configuration that can be used by many sites. However, since hazmat management is a large and complex process, the exact tasks for each role will vary based on the hazardous substance, regional regulations, the severity of the hazmat, and so forth.

The following outlines the major roles and their corresponding tasks.

Business Process Owner

The business process owner sets up the data from which users will choose when completing various forms.

CAD User

Your site might optionally choose to track your hazardous areas in CAD floor plan drawings. Floor plan drawings with hazmat information are handy for outside personnel, such as abatement workers and inspectors, to easily find the areas they must visit. Tracking hazmat on CAD floor plans also helps maximize employee safety since personnel will know exactly where problems exist. If you opt to include hazmat information in CAD, see these topics:

Environmental Project Manager

The Environmental Project Manager creates projects to track and manage the hazmat initiatives.

Overview
Enter Additional Background Data
Define hazardous material projects that outline the area in the building that must be checked for specific hazardous substances.

Environmental Hazard Manager

The Environmental Hazard Manager manages the day-to-day details of hazmat issues as well as the overall process flow.

Once the tested samples are returned from the lab, the environmental hazard manager must determine how to address the issue.

After the abatement workers resolve the problem, the environmental hazard manager typically does the following:

Throughout the process, the hazmat manager can use these tools to manage the overall project:

Field Assessor or Inspector

The field assessor or certified hazmat inspector goes on site and assesses each area for which he is assigned a hazmat assessment item. They record their findings in the system. Field assessments may take place at several points in the process:

at the beginning of a project, visit the field to estimate cost of a formal inspection
at the beginning of a project, visit the field to inspect these locations for hazmat
after a formal inspection and lab results are returned, visit the field and use the lab results to determine the risk rating of each item and to recommend response actions
after response actions are determined, visit the field to estimate the cost of the response action for each assessment item
after abatement has been completed, visit the field to verify the response actions, perform air monitoring (if necessary), and confirm that the hazard no longer exists

These topics outline the tasks for the field assessor or inspector.

Abatement Worker

The abatement worker goes on site and resolves the hazmat issue.

Manager

Managers at various levels will want to periodically review reports for an understanding of hazmat issues at their site.