One of the world’s premier moving and relocation solutions providers have contracted ESC to develop an environmental, health & safety (EHS) legal register to cover its operations in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Malaysia. The register will document the legal requirements in each respective country for the attainment of key international EHS standards, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001. Once delivered, the EHS Legal Register will allow the client to check and manage its compliance status in all four countries on one central database.
Formulated by experts at the International Organization for Standardization, ISO standards are a set of guidelines for national governments to follow for the regulation of commerce and industry. The ISO 14001 standard seeks to reduce the environmental impacts of commercial activities, reduce waste, and promote sustainability, while the ISO 45001 standards are designed to reduce risks and improve overall health & safety in the workplace. Both of these sets of standards are fundamental to the client’s operations, which involve large-scale cross-border haulage as well as warehouse activities like packing, wrapping, moving, and unpacking.
While the ISO standards are internationally recognised, countries may vary in their approach to incorporating them into their legal codes. For multinational companies such as our client, meeting the regulatory requirements in the various countries they operate in can present a difficult challenge.
What’s more, the need to track any changes in the legal code in several countries at once can be a drain on human resources. The ESC Legal Register facilitates multi-jurisdiction compliance by collating all relevant laws, together with their respective practical significance in one database, country by country. Furthermore, as part of the contract agreed between ESC and the client, the database will be updated on a half-yearly basis, thus removing the need for the client to constantly monitor for legal changes in the countries in question.
As a member of the Inogen Alliance – a global network of some of the world’s top EHS firms – ESC is able to lean upon the regional expertise of its partners to deliver legal register services which are truly global in scope. By partnering with ESC, the client will benefit from having a single point of contact for all issues and queries related to ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 in the region.
Having recently secured contracts with firms in the Biotech, Aerospace, Chemical, Manufacturing, and Construction industries, the list of companies using ESC’s EHS Legal Register services is growing all the time. This trend can be expected to continue in the coming years as awareness about the various benefits of the service spreads.