Understanding the Compliance Requirements in the System

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

Create compliance requirements.
Create environmental limits.
Create regulatory lists.
Create equations.

Compliance Requirements

To be environmentally compliant, a given location (or a piece of equipment) must adhere to certain requirements; these may be part of the documents (regulations or permits) issued by global environmental agencies, or policies that are issued by the companies internally. These documents consist of conditions and requirements, and they are organized in a given order (such as, chapters, subchapters, parts, subparts, paragraphs) that is relevant for various industries or businesses.

To ensure and control the environmental compliance at a location or equipment in accordance with the corresponding regulations, permits, or internal policies, you (in the role of the environmental manager at that company) have to prepare the set of requirements (conditions) that are relevant for the industry of your company. The environment management component enables you to create an object known as a compliance requirement and use the issued regulations, permits, or internal policies as a basis for this object. The compliance requirement facilitates the creation of industry-relevant excerpts of the larger environmental documents.

When you create a compliance requirement, you first specify all details such as title, issuing organization, period, and area of validity. Then, organize the industry-relevant conditions from regulations, permits, or internal policies into paragraphs of the compliance requirement, and finally, create the lowest level compliance checks (such as, environmental limits, or regulatory lists) in those paragraphs.

Once you have created the compliance requirements, you release these objects for productive usage within scenarios to ensure environmental compliance of the locations or equipment within the company.

Procedure

This is a two-stage procedure starting with the provision of some preliminary details and basic information, followed by the organization of paragraphs that are relevant for the particular business.

More Information

For more information about compliance requirements that are delivered as content, see: Regulatory Content for Environment Management.

Create Compliance Requirements

Steps

Choose Compliance Requirements and, depending on the requirement purpose, choose one of the following:
- Create Regulation
- Create Permit
- Create Policy
Enter a title for the compliance requirement.
Enter the name of the organization that issues the compliance requirement.
Enter a validity period for the compliance requirement.
Note
Permits and internal policies have explicit validity end dates.
Enter the environment domain for which your requirement is valid.
Optionally, you can enter additional information about the requirement in the Description field.
Optionally, you can enter the validity area (country and region) for which your requirement is valid.
Note
If you do not add a region, the compliance requirement is considered valid for all regions of the added country.
If you do not specify a validity area, the compliance requirement is considered valid for all countries.
Save your entries.

Result

The application stores the compliance requirement in the system and opens it for editing.

Organize Compliance Requirement Contents

Steps

In the Compliance Requirement Contents section, select a node in the structure table and choose Add.
Note
If the compliance requirement has no added paragraphs, only the root node is available.
Enter the name of the compliance requirement paragraph in the corresponding field and choose OK.
Result
The paragraph is placed as a sub-node of the node that you selected.
To edit the details of the created paragraphs, add environmental limits, or regulatory lists, choose a paragraph to open it for editing.
On the Basic Information tab, edit the paragraph name, add a description, add documents for further reference, or links to compliance requirement information.
On the Environmental Limits tab, create and add any environmentally-relevant limits that are related to the specific paragraph of the compliance requirement.
For more information about creating and adding environmental limits, see: Creating Environmental Limits.
On the Regulatory Lists tab, create and add any environmentally-relevant regulatory lists that are related to the specific paragraph of the compliance requirement.
For more information about creating and adding regulatory lists, see: Creating Regulatory Lists.
On the Equations tab, create and add any regulatory equations that are related to the specific paragraph of the compliance requirement.
For more information about creating and adding equations, see: Creating Equations.
Save your entries.

Compliance Requirement Lifecycle

The compliance requirements that you create have a specific lifecycle that is controlled by their status at a given moment. To ensure the correct usage of compliance requirements, the statuses introduce some restrictions to the activities that you can carry out. This means that depending on how you want to use compliance requirements, you must consider the following statuses and the activities that are allowed in each of them:

New
When you create a compliance requirement (or a compliance requirement revision), the system sets its status to New. At this point, you cannot use the compliance requirement in follow-on business processes, but you can carry out any changes to the compliance requirement details or set its status to Released.
Released
When you set the status to Released, you enable the compliance requirement for use in follow-on business processes. At this point, you cannot carry out any changes to the compliance requirement details or contents. To make changes, you must either create a new revision of the compliance requirement or set the status back to Under Revision.
Under Revision
When you set the status to Under Revision, you disable the compliance requirement for productive usage and enable it for editing. You can only edit compliance requirements (or compliance requirement revisions) that are in the status New or Under Revision. In requirements in the status Under Revision, you can only make the following changes:
- Edit the description text and the corresponding translations.
- Add, delete, update, and restructure only recently added paragraphs. This means that you cannot change any paragraphs that had been used before you set the requirement status to Under Revision.
- Add or remove documents.
You can change other details (such as, validity area or existing paragraphs) of the compliance requirement (or its revision) only if its status is set to New. In addition, to make changes that are bound to a specific period, you must create a new revision of the compliance requirement (providing the corresponding validity period).
Historical
When you set the status to Historical, you disable the compliance requirement revision for active usage, and you cannot carry out any changes to the compliance requirement details. You cannot change the status back to Released or Under Revision. To reuse a compliance requirement with the status Historical, you have to create a new revision.

You can change the compliance requirement status using the Set Status dropdown menu.

Structure

This business object stores the following information:

Create regulation
- Title of regulation
- Issuing organization
- Validity date of regulation
- Description
- Applicable country and region
- Revision
- Revision start date and end date
Create permit
- Title of permit
- Issuing organization
- Validity period
- Applicable country and region
- Revision
- Revision start date and end date
Create policy
- Title of permit
- Issuing organization
- Validity period
- Applicable country and region
- Revision
- Revision start date and end date

Environmental Limits

Define Environmental Limits

Multiple environmental limits can be defined depending on the business case, specific requirements, or the installed equipment.

The type of environmental limits that can be created are as follows:

Upper Limit
Lower Limit
Range

The subject of the environmental limit can be a listed substance or a chemical/physical property that the environmental limit applies for and the corresponding unit of measurement.

Usage of Environmental Limits

After the environmental limit is created and released, it is ready for active use. The use of the environmental limit can be checked in the compliance scenarios and the corresponding activities (data collections, calculations, samplings, or location aggregations).

Use the environmental limit for a calculation activity.

The example illustrates the usage of the environmental limit for a calculation activity defined in a compliance scenario.

The Where Used list also enables you to navigate directly to the activities and scenarios that use the limit. In addition, environmental limits can be deleted when it is ensured that they are not used in any compliance scenario activities.

Note

If the limits are used, they must be either unassigned from the corresponding activities, or even deleted from the activities, before the limits can be deleted.

Regulatory Lists

Define Regulatory Lists

The standard system is delivered with the following regulatory list types:

Boiling Point
Carbon Content
Emission Factor
Global Warming Potential
High Heating Value
Liquid Density
Low Heating Value
Molecular Weight
Vapor Pressure Equation Constant
Vapor Pressure

Define Paragraph Regulatory Lists

On the Regulatory List tab, select a list and view the details. You can maintain the list details here.

To be able to create a new regulatory list, the environmental manager has to maintain the following details:

Name
Official Name (more detailed description)
Chemical/Physical Property - specifies the chemical/physical property for which the regulatory list is created. The app does not allow changes on any predefined chemical/physical properties.
Listed Substance/Pollutant

Usage of Regulatory Lists

When you are setting up the compliance scenario, the environmental manager can use the regulatory lists as input variables in the calculation formulas. The data source type will be the regulatory list and the data source will be based on the regulatory list types (for example, Emission Factor) and the predefined value (0,0016 kg/MMBtu). This is shown in the example in this figure.

Use the regulatory lists as input variables in the calculation formulas.

Equations

Define Equations

To define equations, the environmental manager can specify the following types of results:

Final
The final results represent the final values persisted as individual data sets that are the product of the calculations. The final results can be used for direct reporting to the authorities and/or for follow-up calculations. Depending on the use case, the final results can be used also in other expressions of the same equation (similarly to the intermediate results).
Intermediate
The intermediate results represent transitional values that are used (for example, as input variables) in other expressions of the same equation. The intermediate results cannot be used for direct reporting of data to the authorities. Instead, the environmental manager can specify various expressions with intermediate results that can be reused in the same equation for calculating environmental data. This way, the expressions with intermediate results facilitate the definition of larger, error-prone equations. Using expressions with intermediate results in the equation allows handling of more complex methodologies which require a lot of sequential steps (for example, tank equations).
The mathematical expression of an equation consists of numbers (constants), mathematical functions, operators, and input variables that are used in the calculations.
The intermediate or final results (output variables) can be reused as input variables within the expressions of the equation. However, to avoid recursive references between expressions, there are sequence dependencies and restrictions that are implemented in the Check Consistency functionality. Furthermore, to ensure the correctness of the entered dimensions, you can use the Check Dimensions functionality.
The equations conform to the lifecycle of the compliance requirement. When the requirement is released, the equation is also released for active usage.
The environmental manager only defines the equations as a basis for future calculations. The environmental manager can check the usage of the equation across the calculation activities and the corresponding compliance scenarios. The Where Used list also enables the environmental manager to navigate directly to the activities and scenarios that use the equation.

Note

Additionally, equations can be deleted but first ensure that they are not used in any calculation activities.

Usage of Equations

After an equation is created and released, it can be used actively. The environmental manager can use the equations and perform calculations of environmentally-relevant data.

The following figure provides an example of the usage of the equation in a compliance scenario in the system.

View the usage of the equation.

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