What You Need
to Know about
EHS and Covid-19
Changes Under
the Biden
Administration

Resources for
contingency planning,
risk management
and best practices

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What are the potential regulatory, resource, and policy changes?

As the Biden-Harris Administration transitions into the white house, business leaders should be preparing for anticipated impacts of policy changes, investments, and enforcement priorities related to Environmental, Health, Safety, Sustainability, Security and Supply Chain (EH3S). These impacts will reflect the incoming administration’s urgent priorities and will be particularly relevant in areas related to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, regulatory enforcement, and PPE shortages. These resources will help in key areas of:

 

What You Need to Know about EHS and Covid-19 Changes Under the Biden Administration

This recent co-sponsored webinar covered Biden administration predictions concerning new Cal/OSHA COVID19 prevention standard and its influence on a Federal OSHA COVID-19 emergency standards, heightened pressure for climate change response ranging from risk disclosures to increased infrastructure spending, ongoing supply-chain security, shortages, and business continuity including addressing PPE and essential worker shortages, vaccine distribution security, production re-shoring incentives and more.

 

Our Point of View: Impact of the Biden Administration

The differences between the new and old administrations couldn't be greater and likely so will the Biden administration impacts upon business-related environmental, health, safety, security and sustainability regulation, funding and enforcement. This summary chart predicts the timeline, financial impacts and probabilities of actions that will likely be taken including heightened pressure for climate risk disclosure, implementation of a national emergency standard and liability protection regarding Covid-19 (and related issues), environmental enforcement, mandatory vaccination, re-shoring tax incentives, health and safety enforcement and infrastructure spending on areas ranging from sustainability to workplace automation.

 

Q & A: What you need to know about EHS and Covid-19 under the Biden Administration

The BSI professional services consulting staff has pooled its resources and knowledge gained from working with hundreds of EHS, environmental and supply chain clients over the past months and answered questions put to them directly from nearly 1,000 participants in a recent webinar on the future of regulation, enforcement and resource allocation under the Biden administration. Questions ranged from specific topics like OSHA logging requirements for Covid 19 to broad issues like the impact of federal OSHA requirements on states and other localities.

 

After Covid-19: Sustainability and the New Normal

The outcome of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak will significantly impact sustainability as well as public health. President Biden has already signed an executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad. Challenges related to environmental degradation, climate change, and resource depletion are inextricably tied to human development, education, and inequality. All of these challenges are woven, in one form or another, into public health and how we tackle large-scale problems like the current pandemic. This paper outlines those enduring sustainability changes that will likely to be prominent as the impacts of the pandemic continue to unfold.

 

Natural Disaster Resilience and Complications of COVID-19

An initiative by the Biden administration could provide additional resources for disaster preparedness across the country to better protect people, homes and communities from the severe weather consequences of climate change. One motivation behind it is likely the realization that even during a pandemic, all of the customary risks to businesses and their served communities posed by floods, hurricanes, landslides, earthquakes, storms, and forest fires, still require management. This paper outlines the potential impact of future events, as they present themselves as simultaneously with Covid-19's aftermath.

 

Insights Analysis: CTPAT MSC Revisions Report

How the Biden administration will prioritize international trade and accompany security will likely be an upcoming issue. This 15-page analysis of Customs and Border Protection's C-TPAT anti-terrorism program is a step-by-step walk through of all changes plus new requirements for cybersecurity-related risks, new agricultural products requirements and the new approach to the vision of border security and its new responsibilities for importers who still need priority customs services.

 

Guidance to Business Continuity Planning and Emergency Response

There is a solid process for understanding gaps or weaknesses in an organization’s abilities to plan for business continuity during emergencies. This paper outlines the successful elements of this process including determining what it means for the organization to be resilient, adapting and managing expectations by building in flexibility, communication keys, using short, medium and long-term evaluation tools and using a crisis aftermath to plan for the future.

 

Create Cultural Change with a Best in Class Environmental Compliance Program

Creating a best in class environmental compliance program does not need to cost a lot of money, or take up a lot of time, and, best of all, the payoffs can lead to immediate and important impacts to your organization such as: better staff morale, higher profits, improved productivity, greater safety, and a commitment to sustainable practices that help improve the health of our planet. This paper presents models and guidelines developed by industry experts to better focus this type of effort.

 

Conducting a Lessons Learned Exercise for COVID-19

Although some organizations had response plans in place prior to COVID-19, the outbreak likely had a significant impact on all organizations, including those with an existing pandemic response plan. As we learn from the initial response to the crisis, there is a recognition that the plans need to have a degree of flexibility to allow the organization to continue to function with a portion of operations shuttered or a portion of employees needing to working remotely. Flexibility can be incorporated into plans in several ways. One of these is by creating a "lessons learned" retrospective on what worked, what didn't and how the response can be improved as this paper outlines.

 

Building the Business Case for a Total Worker Health Approach

As mandated in President Biden's Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety, more worker protections for Covid 19 exposure are being targeted for enforcement. This should cause organizations to review not only pandemic protections but something that is increasingly being categorized as Total Worker Health. This paper outlines what the scope of this type of program is, what its benefits are and how it can be implemented.

 

Benchmarking Survey on Coronavirus Impacts

One key aspect of President Biden's stated executive action and target legislation is to increase supply chain flexibility and resilience in many areas. This paper contains both a brief survey showing that as many as 70% of businesses have sustained some type of supply chain interruption or change, but also a high level outline for business continuity planning to help mitigate ongoing changes.

 

Reopen, Reboot and Re-energize the Workplace

COVID-19 is the most recent and extreme example that has forced industries to think differently about their work environment and business operations, including known best practices that existed pre-pandemic. This paper explores these key learnings such as the necessity for agility in resilience planning, the fragility of supply chain and transparency of critical suppliers, the need for a broader view of total worker health and wellness, a re-imagining of the workspace design for social distancing, and work-from-home internet security and work-home life separation, the importance of data centricity available for quick and informed decision making and more.

 

New Class Coming Soon:

Meeting the Evolving Needs of a Pandemic Through Business Continuity Management

In this course, come learn about the most pressing lessons organizations are learning from the COVID-19 pandemic, and how to incorporate it into your business continuity program. This includes issues such as COVID-19 supply chain audits for your vendors, and how to meet evolving needs during different phases of an incident. The course will also provide a summary of ISO 45001 and ISO 22301 management systems as they apply to business continuity and mitigating business impacts such as a pandemic. The course will include interactive exercises that allow participants to share ideas and practice implementing the concepts presented.

What are the key elements to help you respond to a changing environmental, health and safety changing regulatory environment?

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Developed and implemented in line with international best practice standards and aligned with local regulatory requirements specific to region, BSI can customize and add to our Return to Work Kit including documentation, training, consulting and communication methods.

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Tools for managing upcoming regulatory challenges safely, efficiently and confidently.

The Covid-19 pandemic and new US presidential administration sparked new health and safety guidelines and behavioral changes across our country that now need to be migrated into the workplace. Here are critical resource links that can help you in this process:

New York Times: Joe Biden on Climate Change

Environmental Enforcement Under a Biden Administration

Eight Key OSHA Changes Under Biden

National Law Review: What to Expect from OHSA from President Biden

Columbia University: Climate Re-Regulation Tracker

Healthier Workforce Center of Excellence at the University of Iowa

NIOSH Total Worker Health Program

WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard

CISA Critical Infrastructure Sectors

BSI FEMA: Defense Production Act

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BSI (British Standards Institution) equips businesses with the necessary solutions to turn standards of best practice into habits of excellence.

BSI Consulting, a subsidiary of BSI, is a global consultancy dedicated to supporting clients managing their risks in environmental, health and safety, security and sustainability to deliver sustainable, socially responsible solutions. With clients representing a range of sectors - technology, life sciences and healthcare, manufacturing, energy, retail, food and beverage - BSI is the organization to go to when the path forward is unchartered and deep technical experience is required. Our innovative solutions synergistically work in lockstep with our consulting services to deliver positive sustainable impact for our clients and a higher degree of resilience.