Environmental Assurance

Environmental assurance is the process of gathering, analyzing, and reporting a company’s environmental risk profile and management of environmental issues. Increasingly, stakeholders are asking executives to reduce their organization’s environmental risk profile and strengthen their commitment to environmental stewardship. Stakeholders are judging companies against several criteria, such as:

Whether or not adherence to environmental and financial liability reporting requirements is being achieved consistently across the organization;
To what extent the company’s environmental stewardship is enhancing its competitive position; and
How the company has developed environmental and employee health management skills to reduce risk and increase transparency.

For many years Cadmus’ experts have been at the forefront of advancing the design and implementation of environmental assurance programs. We typically work with boards of directors; corporate executives; environmental, health, and safety (EHS) directors; and attorneys under attorney-client privilege.

Cadmus offers a number of services to help companies increase the effectiveness of their assurance functions. These include:

Evaluating the assurance function and examining such topics as EHS auditing, improving reporting to the board, enhancing the efficiency of assurance activities, developing focused metrics, and assessing the methods and content of internal and external reports.
Assisting companies in developing and modifying assurance programs to meet strategic business needs, such as supplier/customer assurance, joint venture validation, and assessment of corporate social responsibility initiatives.
Conducting customized training programs to build and maintain core competencies in auditing and assessing performance across a broad set of environmental and social issues.

Recent examples of our work include the following:

For a large consumer products company, we analyzed key attributes of contemporary environmental and social assurance models and predicted how they will change in response to evolving business conditions.
For a large international energy company we directed the review and assessment of corporate governance practices focused on compliance, risk management, sustainability, and evolving corporate social responsibility issues.
For mining companies we have developed training courses to communicate and share information about environmental, health, and safety activities; create partnerships; and establish programs that clearly add value to the organization.
For a major chemical company, provided third party attestation to their audit program and served as a strategic partner to their overall assurance function.
For a number of clients in the industrial sector, we have developed tools to evaluate performance and rate internal activities relative to industry best practices. Our rating schemes have been accepted by management as reliable indicators for endorsing the establishment of critical pathways to improve performance.

Our staff have decades of experience in EHS assurance, working with numerous corporations, government agencies, and other organizations (such as universities). We have conducted hundreds of EHS compliance audits, trained thousands of EHS professionals in state-of-the-art auditing techniques, and evaluated dozens of EHS audit programs. Moreover, Cadmus staff are seen as thought leaders and publish articles, speak at conferences, and chair professional associations