Recordkeeping Part III: Context

Grab your headphones and tune into our insightful discussion with expert guest, Shannon Oelkers, who discusses the essential subject of record keeping. She helps us unravel the relevance of context in record keeping, using anexample of secondary containment area drainage. Get ready, as she reveals how missing details could have significant implications in the future. 

As we venture deeper, Shannon uncovers the tell-tale signs of a context problem in record keeping. She walks us through the red flags, ranging from the too-good-to-be-true perfect facilities to the overly detailed records and even the complete absence of certain records due to fear of messing up. Listen in and gain valuable insights from Shannon on how to improve your record keeping process. So gear up - this episode is set to be an absolute eye-opener!

 This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal or regulatory advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may occur from using this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional regulatory or legal advice, and the views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host, which would be me or Integrity Environmental. Thank you very much for listening. We would be happy to provide professional regulatory advice as part of our consulting services if you need professional regulatory advice.  

Support the show

intro/outro created with GarageBand

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, we're back with Shannon to continue record
keeping.
Moving on to the next leg,context.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Tell us a little bit about context with record
keeping, shannon, so context forus is when the person who is
actually filling out the recordand documenting a facility
inspection or something likethat, that person doesn't have
the knowledge or the training tounderstand what that record is
supposed to be doing.
And a classic example of thisis secondary containment area

(00:31):
drainage.
People fill them out all thetime.
It's a big requirement of a lotof these different records that
we are supposed to do, but themain intent is to document one
that there was nothing in thesecondary containment water
before it was discharged nosheen or obvious science espils
right.
But it's also to document howmuch water was discharged at any

(00:53):
given time over the life of atank farm.
And what we see a lot of is thecheck for sheen is there and
then was there a discharge event, yes or no?
But it's missing the volume andthere's a few other reasons for
that.
It can be difficult to calculatethe volume of a drainage.
But if you've got somebody withthe right knowledge and

(01:13):
training, they're going tonotice that there's a volume
missing and say I need to becalculating how much is being
discharged, because if there isa leak or a problem that is
discovered at a later date, youcan theoretically go back in
time and see how much drainagewater was discharged, and you
can from our end.
You can limit potentialviolations based on knowledge of

(01:36):
how much was discharged over acertain time, instead of
assuming maximum volume or someother placeholder.
That's a little deep for mostpeople.
But with the right training andcontext like if you tell a
terminal manager that the volumeis important, they're going to
A record a better volume and Bthey're going to notice if the
form is missing, that pieceright.
And so for us, the leg of thestool for making records better

(02:00):
is that whoever's filling thatrecord out has to have the
knowledge and the training tohave good context and be able to
help you identify when there'sproblems.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
What signs and symptoms are we looking out for
to notice that there is acontext problem?

Speaker 2 (02:14):
This one is.
It goes straight to the records, and we do see this quite a bit
.
There's a couple of signs thatwe see.
The first is that, when youreview the records, it is the
most perfect facility on theface of the planet.
There has never been a problem,there has never been an issue,
there has never been amaintenance item.
It's perfect.

(02:35):
It is a perfect facility andevery record is filled out and
there is nothing wrong.
And to a state agency or federalagency investigator, that is
the biggest red flag of all,because there are no perfect
facilities in real life.
Right, and so they're creatingthis perfect record, but what
they're really doing is tellingeverybody at the agency level

(02:58):
that they're not writinganything real down and they're
not actually documentinganything.
And in some ways, a perfectrecord is as bad as a record
that never got done, becausethere's clearly nothing being
monitored there, and so that'sone of the signs we see.
We also see overly detailedrecords, and this is where the
terminal manager has decidedthat he will never go to jail

(03:20):
for this company and everythingfrom every bandaid handed out
right down to every sinimaginable, is recorded on every
single record that he providesor she provides, I should say.
So we've got the overly detailedrecords.
Another one that we see is thatrecords aren't being done at
all because they're afraid ofdoing them wrong.

(03:41):
And so they're doing somerecords really thoroughly, but
there's a new one for somethinglike P, a, e, l, pre-approved
air limit, and they didn't getvery good training and they're
really worried about doing itwrong, and so they just wait and
don't really do it.
And so when you see a dichotomy, when someone who's a good
employee and doing their besteffort is filling out some

(04:01):
records but not others, thattells me that they don't have
the training and the knowledgeand context to feel comfortable
filling out those other records.
And then the last one we see isI understand why people do this
, but it is kind of funny to mewhen I do see it.
But you'll go through a recordand you'll ask a terminal

(04:24):
manager and you'll be like I seethat you marked your.
I'll see that you marked yourliquid level gauges as
functional, and they're likemm-hmm.
And I'm like your tanks don'thave liquid level gauges.
Your hand dipping and they'relike oh well, I meant the hand
dip and I'm like, okay, but whenyou mark off like liquid level

(04:44):
gauge and it's functioning, thatmeans something different.
Right, and really the recordneeds to be changed to is hand
gauging being performed, yes orno?
A lot of our clients havemultiple systems that are in and
out of service, and so ifthere's a system on a tank and
it's out of service, it needs tobe marked as not functioning
and out of service on therecords, and so if they're

(05:05):
marking off things that are thatdon't exist or that are not
functional, but they're markingthem as functional, oftentimes
the culprit is the context.
Like they're translating like ohwell, our liquid level gauges
down, but I'm doing, I'm doingthis hand gauging.
So, yes, I am doing liquidlevel gauging, but what the
record's really asking is isyour liquid level gauge fixed

(05:28):
and functioning?
And if it's not, then how longis it going to take you to get
it fixed and back into service?
Or are you going to choose analternative method and do all of
your plans and permits need tobe updated to just reflect hand
gauging?
So those are sort of the foursymptoms that we see.
The most of that are related tocontext.
We see many other fun thingswith records when we do audits,

(05:51):
but those are the ones where weknow the root of the problem is
that they don't understand whatthey you know.
They don't have the knowledgeof the training to understand
what needs to go into thatrecord to meet the requirements
of the regulation.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
So what's a solution for that?

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Well, the first one is training.
I know big shocker, but thattraining needs to be specific to
the record keeping form and thepermit itself, because it needs
to provide the context, and oneof the things I like to talk
about here is that knowledgechanges over time.
I'm of an age now where I'vebeen through an entire

(06:28):
generation of regulations, andwhat was true about a regulation
10 years ago is not necessarilytrue now, because the
regulations have changed and therequirements have changed, and
so training is something thatcan't necessarily happen once.
It needs to be ongoing, atleast with permit and plan

(06:48):
renewals, because things thatwere allowable 10 years ago are
no longer allowable.
For example, in the 70s and 80sit was perfectly allowable to
take used oil and spray it on aroad for dust suppression.
We no longer do that.
That's sort of an extremeexample, but there's a lot of
those knowledge gaps instormwater and in sea plan and

(07:11):
spill planning things that usedto be okay.
They're changing, and if youdon't provide training, someone
who's been in a position for 15or 20 years may think that they
are fully compliant because whatthey learned they're still
operating under, but if theydon't get the new knowledge and
the new training, then they'regoing to become uncompliant
without even knowing.
The other way to fix it too isto actually review the records

(07:34):
that are coming in and watchingfor those four symptoms that I
said.
If there's an environmentalmanager at the company and
they're looking and they seeoverly detailed reports like
incredibly detailed that's asign that somebody's really
nervous about what they're doingand they don't have the context
and the training you know.
And so if you take those foursymptoms and you identify some

(07:54):
of those and you know you've gota context problem, that review
in and of itself will help youfix it and allow you to kind of
target your training to helpthem understand what they're
doing Ialso think some of the solution
to the context problem isrelated to our previous podcast
topic of quality and quality out.
When you have good recordkeeping forms, they're stated

(08:16):
clearly, they have goodinformation in them.
It's pretty obvious what youwant.
You know like what outcome youneed to have and they're
designed for that.
They're designed to beunderstood by somebody who's
going to be filling them out andthey sometimes come with clues
or information sheets on how tofill them out and answering FAQs
.
Right, those are all thingsthat you can put in.

(08:39):
You know.
Quality in that will give thecontext later, even if there's
not necessarily like a sit-down,one-on-one training.
Sometimes we provide trainingsto terminal managers but the
person that's performing theinspection is actually the one
of the yard laborers or a tankfrom operator or truck operator,
and so when we have trainingswe need to make sure and allow

(09:04):
somebody in the leadershipposition like the terminal
manager, equip them withtraining that they can take to
their staff and perform and beable to train their staff at a
level that they can fill therecords out and have the context
that they need to do their job.
Sometimes if you're only givingthem the terminal manager level
training, then they have tomake up their own stuff for

(09:25):
their staff to get their staffto do what they're supposed to
do, and there may be context ortranslation issues there as well
.
All right, one final note ontraining.
I have done a whole career outof adult development.
I mean we are writing plans andpermits, but essentially what
we're doing is training peoplethrough a plan or permit to do

(09:46):
certain things.
And one thing about training isthat one time and one delivery
method is generally not enough.
Most adults need seven.
They need to hear somethingseven times, and generally in
two or three different formats,before it really sinks in and
becomes something they caneasily access and remember in
the future.

(10:06):
One training every five yearsis probably not sufficient for
somebody to remember how to do arecord for the duration of
those five years, especially ifthe record's only annual, so
they're not doing it veryfrequently.
We see the best compliance withthe dailies because they're
doing them daily and they startdoing them right away.
Right, but when it comes toquarterly or annual stuff, there

(10:29):
tends to be a bigger gapbetween when the training
happened and when they have toimplement it, and they're not
doing it as frequently.
And so a good training programhas multiple ways of reaching
and reminding people about whatto do, and so our firm works
really hard to have some kind offace-to-face training, whether
that's virtual or in person.
And then we also try to havewritten guides with clues and

(10:53):
how to do things.
And then we also haverefreshers that occur on a
routine basis.
Some regulations require annualrefreshers just to combat this
problem.
And then we also have thereview.
If you have an environmentalmanager reviewing the record
with the terminal manager, thatcan be its own training session
in and of itself.

(11:14):
Like oh, I see you're fillingout the secondary containment
drainage log.
It looks really good.
But you're reporting thedischarge but not the volume.
You really need to make sure toget the volume in there.
That's really important, right?
Like that's another way to train, and so I just want to make
sure that everybody listening tothis who's like I need to train
my terminal managers.
Make sure you're giving them itin different methods and

(11:36):
different presentations and atleast seven times before you
expect them to remember itforever.
And then make sure you'reupdating that training so that
something they learned 10 yearsago isn't changing how they're
filling out records today andcausing compliance issues.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
It does sound like a lot to keep up with and I'm glad
that we're reviewing thisinformation.
Do we have any resources tohelp understand context or to
point terminal managers into theright direction for training or
training their staff?

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, our firm provides training for terminal
managers with annual refreshersthat are suited to each one of
these regulations that apply asto bulk fuel storage.
But we also have included somehandouts that will attach in the
show notes and they kind ofshow the different record
keeping symptoms from afictional company.
Of course that handout, I think, would be really helpful to

(12:29):
somebody who is responsible forrecord keeping compliance.
It would help remind them ofwhat they're supposed to be
looking for and help themidentify a context problem.
So we'll go ahead and link thatin the show notes.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
Great, we'll stay tuned for next time.
We have one more episode comingup on record keeping and then
we should put it into a wrap.
Thanks so much, amanda.
Thank you.