Kestrel Tellevate is expanding our international resources with the addition of Consultant Emily Watt. Emily has in-depth knowledge of and experience as a Project Manager, working with federal contracting regulations and requirements. As a Consultant with international experience across multiple sectors, Emily will be working with KTL’s multinational clients and government agencies to provide EHS compliance and sustainability support.

Emily has worked on implementing projects for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Chemical Security Program, and U.S. Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). Her primary countries of experience include Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Iraq, Turkey, Brazil, Malawi, South Korea, and India.

Read Emily’s complete bio for more information.

One of the real joys this holiday season is the opportunity
for all of us at Kestrel Tellevate LLC to say thank you
and to wish you the very best for the new year.

We are excited to announce that Kestrel Management LLC (Kestrel) and Tellevate LLC (Tellevate) have merged to provide enhanced compliance and management consulting services to industry and government agencies. The newly merged entity will be conducting business as Kestrel Tellevate LLC (KTL) as of November 1, 2019.

Partnership History

Kestrel and Tellevate have a long-standing relationship dating back to 2011. “Our companies’ proactive partnership strategy has allowed us to quickly assemble the right resources to respond efficiently to changing cilent needs and ensure successful projects,” explains Joseph Tell, KTL Principal. “Formalizing this partnership through a merger will allow us to create more efficiencies in our business to bring more value to our clients and elevate their operations and business processes.”

Each entity brings resources and expertise to KTL to enhance the newly formed company’s ability to provide more comprehensive services to both industry and government. “Kestrel has a 20+-year history providing environmental, health, safety, quality, and food safety consulting services to a diverse group of industrial clients,” says KTL Principal Evan Fitzgerald. “Tellevate brings an extensive background in providing EHS management solutions to both industry and government contracts. This is a merger that will allow KTL to grow in both markets and to better serve our clients.”

What This Means for You

Your daily interactions and existing contracts with Kestrel Management LLC or Tellevate LLC will remain largely unchanged. Going forward, there may be some new faces (and expertise) to join your project team. Any future changes to our existing systems/process will be communicated to you, as needed.

Together, KTL will continue to help our clients reduce operational risks, assure regulatory compliance, and implement reliable management systems for continual improvement in the areas of environment, health & safety, food safety, and quality. We provide comprehensive services to both industrial clients and government agencies in the following areas:

• EHS Compliance Assurance
• Process, Program & Project Improvement
• Management Systems
• Food Safety Certification & Compliance
• Information Management Solutions

Logistics

The new entity’s primary branches are located in Decatur, Georgia; and Madison, Wisconsin; with satellite offices in Chicago, Illinois; Des Moines, Iowa; Ann Arbor, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Washington, D.C. Additional information can be found at https://kestreltellevate.com.

Kestrel is proud to provide our ongoing support for the manufacture, processing, and distribution of safe food. This fall, we look forward to joining our food industry friends and colleagues at a number of events to promote safe and quality food.

Food Safety Consortium

The Food Safety Consortium is a premiere event for food safety education and networking. The Consortium offers three days of informational sessions on topics including FSMA final rules, FDA inspections under FSMA, food defense, food recalls, new technology, hiring and retaining sanitation workers, building your food safety team, allergen management, proper use of sanitation chemicals, Prop 64, environmental monitoring, GFSI, and more.

• DATE: October 1-3, 2019
• LOCATION: Schaumburg, Illinois
• REGISTER NOW!

PROCESS EXPO with Special Food Safety Training

Kestrel will once again be joining FPSA at PROCESS EXPO, the nation’s largest trade show dedicated to bringing the latest technology and integrated solutions to all segments of the food and beverage processing and packaging industry.

• DATE: October 8-11, 2019
• LOCATION: Chicago, Illinois
• REGISTER NOW!

SupplySide West with Featured Panel Discussion

SupplySide West is all about the science and strategy around the development of finished products that drive the global business economy. Learn about new trends from over 1,300 exhibitors and 140 hours of educational and conference programming. Don’t miss Kestrel’s Workshop: FSMA & Import Requirements for Food & Supplement Brands.

• DATE: October 15-19, 2109
• WORKSHOP DATE: October 16, 9 am – 12 pm
• LOCATION: Las Vegas, Nevada
• REGISTER NOW!

We look forward to seeing you this fall. Contact us if you are interested in learning more about one of these events or setting up a time to meet!

Join NACD and Kestrel on Thursday, April 4 at 12:00 p.m. (EDT) for a webinar on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). During this webinar, Kestrel’s Roberto Bellavia, Principal in Food Safety Compliance, will provide an overview of FSMA rules applicable to the chemical ingredients industry, focusing on the receiving, storage, production, blending, and transportation of these products. Register here.

This webinar is a precursor to an upcoming in-person NACD regulatory workshop during which Kestrel will cover the FSMA regulations in-depth. This workshop will take place on June 12-13 in Oak Brook, Illinois, immediately following the Central Region Meeting. Registration for the workshop is forthcoming.

Join the National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD) and Kestrel Principal Evan Fitzgerald for a free webinar on Responsible Distribution Code XIII. We will be taking a deeper dive into Code XIII.D., which focuses on cybersecurity and information. Find out ways to protect your company from this constantly evolving threat.

NACD Responsible Distribution Webinar
Code XIII & Cybersecurity Breaches
Thursday, September 20, 2018
12:00 -1:00 p.m. (EDT)

Organizations in the chemical manufacturing and energy industry face the daily challenge to safely manage the processing, storage, and transportation of hazardous materials. To enable this, a great deal of focus and effort is put into compliance, strong management systems, well-maintained equipment, and organizational capability.

A key component of organizational capability is the competence of employees. This is critical to an organization’s success—and very relevant to process safety. In fact, process safety competence is both a regulatory requirement and a business improvement driver. But what does competence mean when it comes to the management of process safety?

Defining Competence

Process safety competence is an area that is sometimes misunderstood as simply providing training to employees. However, it is much more. Organizations need to understand the definition of competence and ensure employees have the basic competence required to fulfill their job function successfully.

Competence is often defined as “an individual having the right level of training and experience to enable the successful execution of defined job responsibilities”. By this definition, competence is a step beyond basic job training—one that necessitates understanding and the ability to successfully apply what is learned.

To fulfill this intent, especially for those working on the management of process safety, it is critical that employers have a structured and sustainable approach to ensure process safety competence. This may include a clear process safety competence assurance program. Not only will this assist with regulatory compliance, it is a critical element in the prevention of a process safety incident.

Steps to Ensure Competence

To successfully create an organizational culture that values and emphasizes process safety competence assurance, there are some basic steps that need to be followed, including those outlined below:

• Understand and define positions within the organization that impact or influence process safety.
• Define desired competence levels and requirements for each of these positions.
• Develop an organizational competence matrix for process safety that documents the positions and requirements.
• Assess position holders’ (i.e., employees’) process safety competence against the requirements outlined on the organizational matrix.
• Identify gaps in competence for each individual and develop individual closure plans.
• Work with employees to address identified competency gaps and verify that they have been closed.

When filling a position that has process safety requirements, the identified candidate(s) should undergo an assessment against the defined process safety requirements for the position to ensure they are competent. It is important to ensure the new employee has the required competence before they are appointed or hired. Successful candidates may have some minor gaps that can quickly be rectified, but putting candidates into jobs that impact or influence process safety as “development” or a “learning opportunity” is a large risk to the organization and unfair to the individual. It is also a practice organizations should stop if they are truly committed to process safety.

Maintaining the Commitment to Competence

To further enhance the ongoing process safety competence of an organization, each position that impacts or influences process safety must maintain the required process safety competencies identified on the competence matrix. The commitment must be sustained to be successful; it should not be a one-time effort.

Organizations can do this by:

• Reviewing competence requirements and adjusting the matrix as new requirements are identified;
• Conducting regular assessments to verify employee competence; and
• Providing opportunities for training and experiential learning that ensure process safety competence remains a top priority.

OSHA has released three new guidance documents to help employers comply with the agency’s Process Safety Management (PSM) standard. PSM is critically important to facilities that store highly hazardous chemicals. Implementing the required safety programs helps prevent fires, explosions, large chemical spills, toxic gas releases, runaway chemical reactions, and other major incidents. The new documents focus on PSM compliance for Small Businesses, Storage Facilities and Explosives and Pyrotechnics Manufacturing.

Over the past 30 years, there have been numerous events both nationally and internationally that have led organizations to bring a more concerted focus to process safety. Such a focus has many such organizations building process safety elements into their management systems. The goal is to not only comply with regulations, such as OSHA 1910.119, but to also ensure sustainable programs that prevent process safety incidents from ever happening.

A large part of this effort involves integrating process safety leadership into existing programs. Improving an organization’s process safety leadership and culture can have significant and lasting impacts on a company’s process safety performance. Three steps that organizations can undertake to advance this effort include the following:

• Amending metrics to include more leading indicators that are designed to prevent process safety incidents
• Cultivating communications geared toward process safety
• Ensuring incentive schemes include measures related to process safety

Traditional Management Systems

Traditional management systems include personal safety, environmental management, and industrial hygiene as the core elements. Management systems, metrics, and communications have historically been focused on personal safety and environmental management. These areas have clear industry compliance drivers and easy-to-understand metrics for organizational leaders. The prevention of personal injury or actions to protect the environment are relatable concepts for most.

The addition of process safety to the management system structure has been a smooth transition for many organizations, as the majority of the elements that cover process safety are already part of a typical management system. However, process safety—and the incidents that can occur if not managed well—can be complex in nature to explain. The challenging part of integrating process safety into an organization becomes getting leaders both comfortable and equipped to address it.

Leading Metrics

Due to the generally low frequency of process safety incidents, the development and measurement of process safety indicators is often not a priority for organizations. Many companies rely heavily on lagging personal safety and environmental metrics (Days Away from Work Rate, Total Recordable Incident Rate, Spill Rate). Injuries are easy for leaders to understand and explain. Leaders demonstrate empathy towards their staff and contractors, again making it easier for them to relate to personal safety. Minor spills are also easily understood and easier to discuss.

While these lagging metrics are still important and can be used and communicated, organizations need to include different metrics to bring more focus on leading indicators that are designed to prevent process safety incidents. Some examples of leading metrics that can be developed, implemented, and tracked include the following:

• Identifying systems/equipment that are critical to prevent or mitigate a process safety event, and tracking their effectiveness and operability
• Tracking the completion of Management of Change (MOC)
• Tracking the effective closeout of Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) and PSM audit actions
• Assessing organizational capability around process safety and tracking identified gap closure plans
• Tracking the number of Pressure Relief Valve (PRV) activations
• Tracking anomalies from complete permit-to-work reviews

Communication

Once an organization has developed a set of leading process metrics applicable to the business, the metrics should be made visible to all staff and included in communications on business performance. Leaders also need to focus more of their strategic communications and site visits on process safety. This can include talking about leading process safety metrics and undertaking the following activities when at a facility:

• Ask members of the facility staff about the major identified hazards from the PHA
• Determine if staff are involved in reviewing and updating operating procedures
• Ask staff about the last emergency drill and actions taken
• Ask operations staff about the number of alarms they deal with on a typical shift to determine if alarm management/rationalization is required or if low criticality alarms are not burdening staff
• Hold discussion groups focused on process safety during leadership onsite visits

Incentive Schemes

Another outcome of tracking lagging metrics involves translating them into part of the organization’s incentive bonus criteria for leaders. Organizations should work to transition leadership bonus/incentive schemes away from just traditional personal safety and environmental lagging metrics, namely injury and spill rates. Again, it would not be necessary to immediately drop existing lagging metrics. Start with adding the new metrics and gradually change the percentage weightings so leading process safety indicators become the dominant factor. This will serve to reinforce the importance of process safety and incident prevention in overall business performance.

To truly have an organization that demonstrates process safety leadership and has a strong process safety culture, there need to be some changes and effective actions taken. The steps outlined in this article—amending metrics, cultivating communications toward process safety, and integrating process safety into incentive schemes—can help organizations take a few of the initial necessary steps to build process safety culture and leadership and, ultimately, prevent process safety incidents from occurring.

Kestrel is pleased to be growing our resources to the food industry with the addition of Senior Consultant Roberto Bellavia.

Roberto comes to Kestrel following a successful career with US Foods, where he provided leadership for quality and food safety programs; managed and developed HACCP, GMP, SSOP, and SOP programs; and planned and implemented GFSI certification for FSSC 22000 at 13 national locations.

At Kestrel, Roberto will be serving as project manager for food safety-related projects and supporting clients in developing and implementing GFSI schemes and supplier approval programs. He will focus on meat, dairy, RTE, bakery, and other related food industry segments.

Roberto holds a number of food qualifications that will enhance Kestrel’s ability to serve the food industry, including GFSI, HACCP, GMP, SSOP, SOP, FSPCA, Lead Auditor certifications. He has nearly 20 years of food quality experience and a Master’s Degree in Animal Production Science from the University of Camerino in Italy.