Having the proper emergency response plan in place not only provides your company with the tools it needs to prevent and, if necessary, respond to a spill, it also keeps you in good standing with the federal government. According the United States Environmental Protection Agency, a facility must have an SPCC plan if it meets three criteria:

 

1) The facility must be non-transportation-related;

2) The facility must have an aggregate aboveground storage capacity greater than 1,320 gallons or a completely buried storage capacity greater than 42,000 gallons; and

3) There must be a reasonable expectation of a discharge into or upon navigable waters of the United States or adjoining shorelines.

 

If any of the facilities your company owns meet these requirements, SPCC plans help them to “prevent any discharge of oil into navigable waters or adjoining shorelines,” according to the EPA. Creating and executing such plans requires expertise and experience, though, which brings us to the topic of this article, “5 Reasons to Hire an Emergency Response Plan Consultant.” Continue reading to learn how your company can benefit from hiring this particular type of consulting firm:

 

1. Federal regulations are not set in stone. Changes take place continuously, and keeping abreast of these changes and their impact on your facilities requires significant investment of time and manpower on your part. When you hire an emergency response plan consultant, you outsource the ongoing research involved and take advantage of the expertise of a firm that does nothing but emergency planning.

 

2. Employee turnover will not affect the planning process. Many companies opt to employ emergency response planners in-house but soon realize this leads to inefficiency and confusion. When you assign your SPCC plans to one employee – or a team leader – you will find yourself wishing you had not when that employee leaves. Emergency response planning, while regulated by the federal government, can be approached in a number of different ways, and odds are, your next planner will want to do things differently than his or her predecessor. Even small changes to SPCC plans can create new documentation and workflows that must be executed and implemented. This creates additional work for everyone involved, and new training must be undertaken to meet the new specifications of the plans. When you hire an emergency response plan consultant, you do not run into this issue. All employees represent the firm’s planning philosophy and use a central system; if your particular planner leaves the firm, it can simply replace him or her seamlessly.

 

3. You also can outsource your IT planning needs. When you hire an emergency response plan consultant, the firm not only creates your SPCC plans, it also gives you access to its information technology systems so you can more easily and efficiently maintain those plans. Choose a firm that offers a web-based, database-driven system that simplifies the process and reduces time and cost associated with emergency plan management, freeing up your IT department to work on other projects.

 

4. An emergency response plan consultant provides training. Not only must you have an SPCC plan in place for each of your facilities that requires them, every employee associated with the process at the facility must be trained in its execution. Training itself requires development and facilitation, and an emergency response plan consultant can easily free you of these tasks as it provides training for its clients on a regular basis. This is another area in which outsourcing leads savings of both money and time.

 

5. Additional planning needs are met with a consultant. If you have multiple needs for emergency response planning, above and beyond SPCC plans, a consultant can provide them and integrate plan features and processes as necessary. Among the other plans often created by these types of firms are business continuity plans, security plans, fire pre-plans, spill response tactical plans, pandemic plans, oil response plans, storm water pollution prevention plans, severe weather contingency plans, office emergency action plans and corporate crisis plans.

 

During your search for an emergency response plan consultant, be sure to ask each firm about its acceptance rate. SPCC plans are audited by the federal government, and you will want to know how often a firm’s plans have not passed on first review. If plans have been flagged in the past, ask how the firm went about ensuring the plans passed the next audit. This will give you insight into how the firm works both with the federal government and its clients.

 

About The Author: Scott David Rodgers serves as a consultant for the Technical Response Planning Corporation in The Woodlands, Texas. In his role, he works with clients to create SPCC plans and other types of emergency response plans. Rodgers is a popular lecturer on the subject at industry conventions and organizational meetings.