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The Business Analyst: REACH/CLP: an IT project from the start?

Because many of the issues thrown up by REACH and CLP are not going to go away any time soon, and supply chain communication will remain a vital means for exploring solutions, IT systems can play a key role in helping companies manage the whole process, says Tim Jessel of IT business Trasys.

Last week Chemical Watch held its first (I hope of many) REACH Clinic in London. As my colleagues at the Watch report on pages 5-6 about what happened when my fellow panelists and I came face to face with you, the Chemical Watch reader, I am going to take a different approach, and give you my take on the event.

This was not my first REACH/CLP event – I have participated in, spoken at and chaired many over the years. Whilst most, if not all of these were really good events, they usually had the same format where learned speakers would impart their wisdom to the audience, and perhaps respond to one or two questions.

This event was different. We panelists did get a little time to prepare with pre-submitted questions, but when it came to it on the day it was the four of us versus the audience, with no power point slides or pre-prepared speeches to fall back on. So it was with some trepidation that we waited for the audience to file in: actually we were in the middle of our own argument on the best way for firms to deal with not having all of the information available in time for the first Registration deadline – a good way to hide our nerves perhaps.

Would we get a TV debate style roasting? Would the audience have sufficient understanding to be able to cope with the finer points (or indeed would we, the panelists?)

What resulted was nothing of the sort. The panel, rather than merely the experts, became the focus for a wider debate. It was clear that we had a very well informed audience, and that they had come to discuss real issues. These issues, by and large, begged more questions than answers; the process for changing your Only Representative, for example. The process for doing this is reasonably straight forward; you use the legal entity change functionality within REACH-IT, follow the process set out, pay the fees and, well that’s it really. Except there is more to it than that: this month I feel the need to keep you in suspense, so I will tell you why at the end of this month’s column.

Persistent worries

So, as a panelist, I found the event hugely energising, interesting and engaging – I learned a lot too. But in speaking to some of the audience members during the break, some concerns were raised, concerns that have always been there and that just aren’t going away. The audience for the Clinic was mostly, if not entirely, made up of very well informed representatives of larger companies. Everyone that I spoke to had had the benefit of in-depth exposure to the issues and was educated to a high enough level to understand the discussions.

REACH demands this, particularly from manufacturers and importers and we have grown used to this over the years. What is clear is that CLP demands this too. CLP is the supporting actor to REACH’s starring role but in terms of its footprint it covers far more ground – all those specialist substances marketed below 1 tonne for starters. Perhaps it’s not overly harsh to say that considering CLP as the adjunct to REACH was a mistake we all made – it’s better to think of REACH and CLP as completely separate, equally demanding pieces of legislation. And whilst with REACH, it may be difficult to spot non-compliance without an investigation, for CLP you will be able to see it on the product label printed in black and white – red too for that matter.

Awareness campaigns

Are the many thousands of companies affected, including many SMEs, prepared and going to be able to cope? More than one of the audience members I spoke to didn’t think so, and they were very concerned as unaware or unprepared companies are in everyone’s supply chain. How do you make sure that the people in your supply chain are ready?

We have had awareness campaigns before, both at national competent authority level, and Europe-wide. I would think, as someone who has been involved in such campaigns, that it is fair to say that these were not universally effective. We ended up speaking to the same well-informed people that would have made sure they were ready, awareness campaign or no.

So what can be done about it? I think the answer is not to try to do this again at the macro-level. The answer is, I think, is: do more supply chain communication. Companies need to develop standardised mechanisms to speak to both their suppliers and customers, alert them to the issue and, crucially, offer support where continued supply is critical to your continued business. If you have only a handful or so of suppliers and customers you can do this yourself by picking up the phone. If you have many customers, you will probably need to look for another solution.

If, like many if not most, you have written numerous emails and letters to your suppliers and customers and not had the desired response, writing yet more letters and emails is perhaps not the answer. I would advise you to have a look at what IT systems can offer to simplify, standardise, manage and control the whole process. Indeed one Chemical Watch Clinic audience member I spoke to, and quite unprompted by me I would add, thought that if REACH/CLP had been viewed as IT projects from the start, life would be much simpler. As someone that works in the IT industry I found that very refreshing to hear!

Supply chain communication

Putting the right IT in place makes the supply chain communication process easy and enables you and your customers to standardise and better manage your requests for information, allowing a far greater understanding of where any issues may lie. Many chemical manufacturing and importing firms are now rolling out supply chain communication IT tools and finding them hugely beneficial.

They allow them to prioritise and make decisions about whether to look for a new supplier, to offer additional support to existing suppliers, or whether to support a customer’s use of your substances. You can use the same systems to do other things too, for example making sure that your customers have declared that they use any substances you supply as intermediates under strictly controlled conditions.

Switching ORs

So just to finish for this month, I need to address my point above about switching your OR. It seems that many companies are doing this because they appointed their OR in haste in the run-up to pre-registration, and subsequently realised that they were not up to the job or lacked the necessary resources. The legal entity change functionality of REACH-IT has to be initiated by the legal entity that you are changing from, in order to pass control to the legal entity you are changing to. So your original OR has to start this process and has to be a willing participant in it. I would therefore advise anyone not happy with their current OR to read through your agreement with them carefully first, and do your best to stay on good terms with them – otherwise changing your OR may be far less straightforward than the official process would lead you to believe.

This is yet another example of the need to be aware of the interaction between compliance, business, people and IT. This for me was the key theme that developed throughout the Clinic last week; regular readers will know that this is a subject that interests me greatly. It is sure to come up again when you read my column next month too.

Tim Jessel works for leading information systems business Trasys where he helps companies implement business-led efficient compliance information management solutions. He is a former director of the Chemical Industries Association and also of REACHReady Tim.jessel@trasys.co.uk

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