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In Part 1 of our series, Kelvin Roth, Director of EHS at CF Industries, tells us about his company’s journey through the EHS software selection and implementation process and sets the stage for what’s to come.

Video Transcript

Voiceover: Over the next few months, VelocityEHS will be checking in with CF Industries about organizational changes and their EHS software journey. In part one of the series, we’re talking with Kelvin Roth about the selection process and the start of implementation.

Kelvin: My name is Kelvin Roth. I am the director of Environment, Health, and Safety at CF Industries. CF Industries has really grown over the past five years, and that means that a lot of the practices and things we’ve done in the past didn’t fit with where we were going in the future and even what we were doing today.

Our entire process took two years just to get to the RFP, and that’s because we started out initially focusing on the systems and what process did, we want to have happen, and what were the key goals, outcomes, or expectations of those systems.

Although that may seem like a long time, it really helped us not only build engagement but make sure that we were focused on the right things and not just looking for the next fancy tool or toy to implement in EHS.

Once we started looking at our software systems, we realized that: A) we had a lot of systems, B) none of them talked to each other, and C) we were collecting different information in each system for no good business reason.

We have to have better data to support our decision-making and to refine our focus so that we’re really focusing on things that move the needle.

And we couldn’t do that with a disparate set of software tools.

We realized that, from a technology standpoint, there are a lot of good tools out there, but ultimately, we wanted someone that understood how we do business at CF, how we view EHS at CF, and would help us accomplish our goals at CF, and that required a true business partner.

After a very thorough review, we selected VelocityEHS because not only could they meet the technical requirements, but they also were the right partner for us to achieve our EHS goals.

The selection committee not only was excited, but they were also relieved because it had been a two-year process, and now we could really roll up our sleeves and get down to the fun stuff: implementing the new system.

We contacted VelocityEHS and quickly set up a kick-off meeting, and within a very short timeframe, set up our first implementation planning session.

The implementation planning session was really interesting and fun, and a little bit frustrating. Interesting because we got to really focus on what our business needs were and start to think about how we can begin to address these things. Fun because we’d been waiting to do this for a while. And frustrating because many of us on that selection committee are engineers, and we want to jump straight to designing the solution.

It was a helpful reminder that we needed to focus on what we knew best, which was our business needs, our EHS processes, and let VelocityEHS focus on what they do best: software design and solution design.

I’m personally excited about this whole effort because not only are we looking at implementing a tool that will give us much better data visibility and data analysis, but we’re also having the opportunity to implement best-in-class or world-class processes and systems that will continue to drive our improvement in years to come.

We threw a lot of needs at VelocityEHS and a lot of expectations, and I’m hoping that we can come through on those. No pressure, VelocityEHS!

Voiceover: For more information about our solutions, visit ehs.com today.