During the last ten years, August Mack’s eCAP® program (Compliance Assurance Program) has expanded and grown from a regional initiative to a national program that has served more than 100 facilities. The genesis of the program began in 1998 and the natural evolution has seen the eCAP program morph into a fully functional sustainable Environmental Management System (EMS), currently approved as a Supplemental Environmental Program (SEP). Applying a tad of revisionist history we might be inclined to take credit for all of positive attributes of the eCAP program. However, it really has been our clients that over the last ten years, have affirmed the benefits of our eCAP program and pleasantly enough have enlightened us to some very new benefits the program provided their facility. According to our clients, the top four benefits of eCAP are:

• File Organization
• Fixed cost structure
• Technical expertise
• Preservation of institutional knowledge

Organization
There can not be an effective EMS in place without proper organization, timelines, responsibility matrices, corrective action or accountability. With eCAP, one of the first tasks is to conduct a thorough file review. This environmental file review identifies which files (reports) are present and more importantly identifies which reports are not present. The eCAP program entails creating a web page that contains all, not some, not a few, but all of the required permits, monitoring logs, training records, report submittals, permit modifications and deviation reports required to demonstrate compliance. This allows our clients to have the necessary documentation at their finger tips.

Fixed Cost Structure
Let’s face it cost is an issue price is an issue. If it wasn’t then we would all be driving Lamborghini Diablo SV5’s, but sadly this is not the case. Our clients demand superior service at a reasonable cost. The only way we can accomplish this is to ensure our eCAP service managers are highly trained and knowledge about a wide variety of compliance issues. Doing the job right, the first time reduces our cost and is paramount to the success of the eCAP program. Providing a fixed cost structure to our clients for a set service agreement is what our clients demand and ultimately what we give them.

Technical Expertise / Upcoming Regulations
The bedrock of eCAP is ensuring zero non-compliant activities. While it most assuredly critical to maintain compliance with your existing permit or existing environmental regulations you cannot allow yourself to be lulled into believing that once your in compliance then “your job is done.” Regulations change. Your processes change. Having the assurance, the knowledge that someone with the technical expertise is monitoring your business, researching new regulations and determining how those regulations affect your business is a key component of the success of August Mack’s eCAP system.

Institutional Knowledge
Employees leave companies. Companies hire new employees. When an employee leaves a company that knowledge base, what is between their ears, leaves with them. To lessen the transition and the loss of knowledge that invariably happens during employee turnover is another key element of the eCAP system. Documenting methodology, data collection points, emission factors and so on is a function of eCAP. The web page is a tool that allows the seamless flow of information from August Mack’s technical team to our clients management staff. Process diagrams, report filings, worksheets, etc. are maintained on the Web site and provide a step by step historical record of facility inspections reporting functions and day-to-day compliance activities. This regimented effort reduces and eliminates that loss of knowledge that occurs when employees leave. It’s a hallmark of the program.

After ten years of eCAP implementation at nearly one hundred facilities the top benefits have become self-evident to August Mack and more importantly to our clients.