Environmental compliance is an often complex challenge many businesses face. As industry continues to grow and advance globally, effective environmental compliance and management is not only key for companies to address their legal requirements, but also deepens community relationships, enhances stakeholder confidence, and increases overall operational efficiency. Understanding which federal, state, and local air permitting programs apply to a particular facility and complying with those programs can be a full-time job on its own. Throw in shifting state stormwater permitting programs, such as Arizona’s recent updates to its Multi-Sector General Permit, and the intricacies of hazardous waste classification and disposal, and environmental compliance can become increasingly complicated.
This is where environmental consultants come in. Environmental consultants live and breathe environmental regulations and can provide businesses with value-added services to support facilities in achieving and maintaining environmental compliance as well as getting major projects permitted. Additionally, hiring an environmental consultant can provide relief to environmental personnel who are often overloaded. When working with an environmental consultant, there are several rules of thumb to ensure that your goals are met on time and within budget.
Communicate Expectations
Just like any relationship, model the behavior you would like to see from your environmental consultant and communicate your expectations to them. This can include considerations such as timelines, cost, preferred communication methods and frequency, and points of contact. This will ensure the consultant prioritizes these factors when working on your projects. Additionally, take opportunities to build a working relationship with your consultant. Environmental consultants love learning about new processes and are often willing to take the time to see their clients’ operations at low or no cost if opportunities to improve their relationship or chances for long term work with their clients exist. Setting up in-person visits with your consultant’s offices is also a great way to build a long-term working relationship with them.
Schedule for Success
- Account for proposal development time when developing a project schedule and share your objectives. Completing a project in a timely manner begins with understanding the level of effort needed for an environmental consultant to develop a representative and thorough scope of work. Depending on the number of tasks associated with a project and their complexity, proposals can take a consultant and their team several hours to several days to develop. Trinity does not believe proposals are “one size fits all” and carefully aims to tailor our proposals to a client’s specific needs. By providing a detailed background on the type of support you are seeking as well as your business objectives, your environmental consultant will be better enabled to clearly lay out proposed project tasks, assumptions, and budget, which will establish alignment between parties and streamline project completion down the line. As a rule of thumb, plan for proposal development, proposal review, project authorization, and purchase order issuance to add between two to four weeks to your project timeline. Sometimes, a small preliminary “step 1” project makes sense so the consultant and client can work together to clearly define overall project scope for more complicated projects or situations new to you or your company.
- Bring an advisor in early when you can. Bringing on an environmental consultant early in a project can save clients time, money, and headaches. As soon as you find out you’re going to be inspected – particularly if it’s been a long time (or never) since the last inspection – get an experienced advisor helping you with anything from a phone call to get you ready with a checklist, to a pre-inspection audit. Your consultant may have worked with your inspector or agency before and is familiar with what they look for. For construction projects, your consultant may be aware of regulatory limitations that will make some equipment a better choice than others and permitting concerns that result in design/layout requirements. Knowing those things early will save you rework later.
- Kick off the project in a timely manner and set realistic deadlines. Environmental consultants will typically have their schedules filled out at least a week or two ahead to ensure project progress and work continuity. Consequently, requesting proposals or projects with very quick turnaround times (e.g., one day to a week) may require a consultant to work outside typical business hours and often over the weekend to support clients in meeting their deadlines, which may also be competing with existing projects tied to rigid agency deadlines. Compressed timelines can limit the time available for review and feedback associated with the deliverable, which could lead to revisions and delays later in the project. Therefore, establishing realistic turnaround times is extremely important to ensure the completeness and defensibility of the final product. Consultants greatly appreciate clients who communicate their timing needs. They want to help you meet these needs but need to collaborate with you to set realistic deadlines. Consider whether the deliverable or proposal you want from a consultant is truly needed within a tight timeframe – sometimes that is the reality of the situation! – or if a more flexible timeline would benefit its overall quality and coordination.
Implement Effective Communication and Data Collection Mechanisms
- Establish preferred data collection mechanisms early on. The data feeding into the deliverable, as well as its associated level of detail, plays an important role in the work product your consultant prepares. At the beginning of a project, environmental consultants will likely send out a request for information (RFI) to collect the necessary data to prepare the project’s work product. If you are not sure what RFI format works best for you and the project, make it a point to clarify this as early as the proposal development stage. Data collection may look like data entry into spreadsheets if you are knowledgeable of your project details and facility resources and systems. Data collection may also consist of requesting the consultant to come onsite to gather the data if the work area is not as familiar to you. When consultants have to interpret cryptic or excessively long RFI responses, or assumptions need to be made for missing information, you are paying for them to do additional information sorting and increasing the risk of confusion due to the consultant not being as familiar with the site as facility staff. Providing RFI responses on the date requested by a consultant is also important, since it helps ensure that project timelines are met. When you provide information in the agreed-upon format and in a timely manner, it helps facilitate overall project success.
- If you do not have specific information, confirm assumptions. At the start of a project, you may not have all the details needed to complete the project’s deliverables. Working with your consultant on defined project assumptions and context to “fill in the blanks” is vital to ensuring that a project progresses in a timely manner.
- Coordinate communication with environmental agencies. It is always a good idea to build a positive relationship with the agencies that regulate you; as a part of that, it is important to prepare for even casual interactions with regulators, particularly on sensitive topics. Taking a thoughtful and coordinated approach can help ensure that communications are clear, consistent, and aligned with your broader objectives. For this reason, it is often advisable to consult with your environmental advisor in advance to align on the most appropriate strategy for engaging with agency staff. Environmental consultants also bring experience in facilitating these interactions in a way that supports clarity, reduces the likelihood of miscommunication, and helps manage potential risks effectively. Environmental consultants can also engage with environmental agencies anonymously with questions from clients, which helps avoid miscommunication, setbacks, or unintended consequences.
Conclusion
Engaging the right consultant and applying these best practices can help you maximize the value from an environmental consulting partnership. If you have questions about what support environmental consultants can provide your business, please explore Trinity’s global landing page or contact Trinity’s Phoenix Office at 602.274.2900.
