New ECTA Responsible care process
Let me start with a question – why do ECTA bother to collect ECTA RC KPI data from its RC members?
First and foremost, this was part of our commitment to Cefic when we signed the agreement to run the ECTA Responsible Care program for the European chemical industry. One of the requirements set out in the agreement is to “develop a set of performance indicators against which improvements can be measured”.
The value of gathering, and then consolidating, the data on key metrics within our sector is to provide benchmarking opportunities for individual members, to see trends over time which may warrant further investigation or action to address that trend and to identify opportunities for improvement which ECTA can then support through guidance documents and training.
There were some weaknesses in the ECTA RC KPI process last year. Firstly, although submission dates have improved, a significant number of companies failed to meet the deadline of the end of February. Secondly, when validating the ECTA RC KPI forms, a number of companies had to be contacted to resolve errors or omissions in their data.
this will be new
Based on this experience and the feedback received, a number of changes have been made to the process for the next submission (2024 data). These include;
- Data validation based on an expected data range for each field
- Locking of cells to prevent access to other parts of the form
- Guidance notes which appear when you hover over a cell
- Removal of fields which were not used for the data analysis
- Update of the supporting guidance
- New tab for including the number of sites involved in the RC program
- New tab for details around fatalities and rollover incidents
The deadline of the end of February 2025 for submission of the KPIs and annual improvement plans will be strictly enforced meaning that any companies that are late will not get their RC certificate renewed for 2025.
we will guide you through the changes
We have also considered how we can better support our ECTA RC members in meeting these requirements and so a number of changes have been made;
- New ECTA RC KPI forms will be available to download from the website from the end of October
- A best practice example of a completed Transport KPI form has been included
- We will run a Q&A webinar on 21st November to answer any questions people have about the forms
- We are available through January and February 2025 to answer any questions that arise as you are compiling the data – you know where we are.
Finally, having made some changes based on the feedback you provided last time, we hope you see that the process is more user friendly and clearer so that we get on time submissions that are right first time.