Safety & Loss Prevention

Regulatory Compliance--Best Practices

The staff at OSLP advises campus environmental, health and safety (EH&S) staff professionals on regulatory compliance and best practice issues that affect their campuses.

Assisting a wide variety of campuses

At most of our campuses, the EH&S professional frequently does not have the time to adequately research potential solutions to a specific question. Also, the same questions often occur on many of the UW System campuses. It is often most effective for OSLP to research specific issues and to act as a central resource in providing the necessary regulatory and best practice assistance. Some of this advice is provided in our index of environmental compliance and best practices. Other resources are available at useful internet links for UW System environmental managers .

Environmental regulation often affects campuses in different ways dependent upon the size/environmental impact of a particular campus. It is not unusual for any advice we offer to be provided in two or three different versions, depending on how a campus might impact the environment. Our advice is also tailored to the resources a particular campus can bring to an issue, since this varies by campus.

The complications of environmental management at our public university

There are many complexities associated with managing environmental affairs in a public university setting, including:

  • the need to account for the presence of employees, students and the public;
  • open accessibility of facilities;
  • exclusion from some federal regulation due to status as a governmental entity;
  • diffuse organizational governance; and
  • the presence of small quantities of a wide variety of hazardous materials.

Additionally, there are considerations that are specific to UW System campuses, including:

  • joint responsibility of construction and associated permitting with the Department of Administration (DOA);
  • ownership of heating plants and associated regulatory air permits by DOA;
  • ownership of two-year campus facilities by local municipalities; and
  • inclusion of some campuses in certain Wisconsin-specific regulations.

Environmental management guidance provided by professional engineering and environmental consultants is typically targeted to the business community. Because of the complications listed above, guidance that targets the business community frequently does not meet the specific needs of campus EH&S professionals.