More chemical companies turn to safety consulting firms

20 August 2010 00:19  [Source: ICIS news]

AUSTIN (ICIS)--Business has increased during the past two years for chemical safety consulting firms as companies outsource more training, a US safety consultant said on Thursday.

“When the economy goes south, safety and training are the first things that get cut,” said Len Satkowski, lead safety consultant with JJ Keller and Associates. “They say the funding is not available."

Companies are making more use of outside consultants as a way to fine-tune their safety programmes and make them more cost effective, he said.

Satkowski spoke at the OPSEM 2010 conference, held by the National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD) in Austin, Texas.

Many companies had lost broad safety training programmes, Satkowski said in a presentation centred around resolving violations found by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

However, individual business segments were still in need of training, he said.

“The plants of course have to, but the corporate office doesn’t,” Satkowski continued. “So they let the distribution sites take care of that by themselves, because they don’t have the internal resources to do it anymore.

“It’s good for me,” he said.

The NACD conference lasts through Friday.

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By: Ben DuBose
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