One of the requirements for health, safety and environmental (HSE) on construction projects is to ensure compliance with the organization’s environmental policy. This will usually be achieved by having a periodical inspection of how the contractor is complying and fulfilling the requirements of the policy. Those could include requirements associated with air emissions, nuisance control, resource/ energy conservation, waste management, erosion/ sediment control, soil resources, groundwater and dewatering, vehicle/equipment management, fuel and chemical storage, spill management, welfare/ laydown and construction materials.
Using a Project Management Information System (PMIS) like PMWeb, the Environmental Compliance Inspection process can be improved and better monitored and evaluated. PMWeb Custom Form Builder will be used to create a detailed Environmental Inspection Checklist to capture all data needed to fulfill the inspection requirement. The checklist will have a predefined list of questions that will probe the inspection. Those questions will be grouped into 14 divisions: Air Emissions, Nuisance Control, Resource/ Energy Conservation, Waste Management, Erosion/ Sediment Control, Soil Resources, Groundwater and Dewatering, Vehicle/Equipment Management, Fuel and Chemical Storage, Spill Management, Welfare/ Laydown and Construction Materials. For each inspected item, the inspector needs to provide the inspection compliance score. The score will be “10” for Full Compliance, “5” Partial Compliance, “0” for No Compliance and “NA” for Non-Applicable items. In addition, the inspector needs to provide the description of needed corrective actions for partially compliant or non-compliant items, action risk rating and the completion sign-off date. In addition, pictures and other supportive documents for items that need to corrected or rectified can be attached to the Environmental Inspection Checklist form.
The attachment tab will be used to upload and attach pictures and other documents that are relevant to the completed environmental inspection. If a mobile device like an iPad or any other smart device was used to access PMWeb, the user will be automatically advised if he/she wants to take a picture or video when the add attachment button is selected. The PMWeb attachment tab also allows linking other relevant PMWeb records and imported emails to the inspection form.
A workflow will be assigned to the Environmental Inspection Checklist form to formalize the submit, review and approval of the carried-out inspection. Should the inspection form have identified observations that need to be rectified, the form will be returned to the contractor where it will be resubmitted for approval after completing the required rectification items. It is also recommended as a best practice, to attach a picture of all completed rectification actions.
The environmental compliance inspection score for each category at the end of each period will be available to be reported on. The percentage compliance per category is based on the actual compliance score achieved against each item, which could be “10”, “5” or “0” divided by the total target compliance score for the category which will be based on achieving full compliance or “10” for each item. In addition, the report will provide the total compliance score for the period based on the sum of compliance score achieved at all twelve (12) categories. The report will also show the observation actions that need to be rectified for each category. The report will provide summary for all those due actions regardless of their risk rating as well as summary of all due actions by the action risk ratings which could be Extreme, Maximum, Medium and Low.
