Addressing the top organizational challenges in the environmental remediation industry

Balancing regulatory, technical, and environmental issues are ongoing concerns for major organizations managing environmental liabilities within their asset portfolio. GHD and ENFOS recently co-hosted a remediation executive workshop in Washington, DC to facilitate a platform for sharing insights on these top organizational challenges and collaborating on the development of efficient and sustainable solutions. The participants consisted of industry leaders who are responsible for managing remediation portfolios for some of the worlds’ largest companies. A variety of sectors were represented including Chemical/Petrochemical, Defense, Industrial & Manufacturing, Mining, Rail/Transportation, Energy/Oil and Gas, and Pharmaceutical. Speakers at the event were predominantly from industry and the event generated many opportunities to hear leaders’ views on current priorities and the evolution of the market into the future. A live poll was conducted during the meeting, which spurred interesting results and discussions.

Concerns around PFAS and the associated implications to their respective businesses was a key driver. The remediation workshop occurred the day after the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) promulgated the new National Primary Drinking Water Regulation (NPDWR) for six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). This regulation sets legally enforceable Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) for PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFNA, and HFPO-DA and sets a hazard index (HI) for two or more of four PFAS as a mixture (PFNA, PFHxS, HFPO-DA, and PFBS).

There was considerable dialogue around how this new USEPA rule affects remediation projects and environmental reserves. Emerging contaminants are always a driver in the remediation industry, but PFAS is an unprecedented disruptive contaminant of concern. PFAS has been termed ‘forever chemicals’ because of it’s resilient nature in the environment. This is compounded by limited scalable and cost-effective options for in-situ and ex-situ treatment. Further complexities exist associated with the extremely low enforceable MCLs, evolving science including lack of data, and attainable laboratory method detection limits.

Read more about the regulations and how businesses are Navigating the complexities of PFAS.

As the event was focused on topics associated with environmental reserve responsibilities, it was understandable that the next most prevalent responses were financial management, forecasting, auditing, compliance and governance.  Sustainability, ever-changing regulations and compliance, knowledge management, prioritization of sites, and financial controls  were also among the top concerns. With so many challenges and opportunities to navigate, balancing the priorities, while prioritizing the most important topics to push forward is key. This can often come down to identifying what priority aligns with each individual organization’s core values and organizational goals.

Annual spend to budget was the highest rated key performance metric. A speaker provided a presentation about how their business is evaluating their remediation portfolio on the accuracy of their respective annual budgets. He was able to utilize financial data from ENFOS to review budget accuracy by project manager, consultant, and vendor. The takeaway is, as an industry, we are not very accurate in projecting remediation costs, especially beyond the following year. Compounding these costs are the ongoing management of the asset portfolio. This response underscores the understanding that ‘cash flow is king’.  

While managing budgets is a priority for most organizations, this is an area that can be improved with new tools such as AI, compilation of data, and rigor around financial strategies. One of the presentations involved how companies can leverage AI to balancing budgeting and security concerns with advancements and demystify what AI brings to the table for the remediation industry. View the presentation slides on Making Artificial Intelligence Real for Remediation, here.

Other relatively highly ranked topics included closures and obtaining “No Further Action” status (NFAs), reserve reductions, and lifecycle phase progressions. These speak to the goal of reducing respective companies’ environmental liabilities. This is obviously important for public companies that are required to provide this information to shareholders. Environmental liabilities can become a significant metric in evaluating company value; and therefore, reductions in overall environmental reserves as well as annual projected spend are important. Documented cost savings surprisingly ranked very low in this poll. As consultants, this is a metric that we are frequently asked to track and report to our remediation project and program managers.  Understanding this poll and how consultants and clients can align our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will be a valuable exercise. 

An astonishing 100% of the industry participants who were polled identified that they could foresee an increase in their environmental liabilities in the future. Both process improvements and using subcontracted resources were identified as necessary steps to address gaps in internal resources in the future.

83% of industry leaders said they are planning on using process improvements and subcontracted resources to address any gaps in internal resources in the future.

GHD is investing to build capacity to support the internal shortages in the remediation industry today, and in the future. To discuss ways to reach your remediation portfolio goals, or any of the other topics raised above, contact us.