“When the manufacturing company I worked for stopped manufacturing, I decided to take my 30 years of experience and help other companies come into compliance with environmental and safety regulations.”
About SAK Environmental
Stuart Kerkhoff is an Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) Consultant who opened SAK Environmental in 2022.
“SAK focuses on all three areas of EHS. If a business needs an environmental permit, whether it’s for air emissions, wastewater or stormwater waste, we can obtain those permits or help you come into compliance. We can meet with regulators if they show up on site to help you talk through issues with them. We can also help with emergency response. I ran an emergency response team at one facility for 20 years. If you have a release at your facility, we can help with cleanup.
When you get into safety, We can come in and help organizations with a safety audit. We can walk through your facility to see what you need to do to improve safety. If there are any issues, we can fix them before OSHA arrives. I have helped write job hazard analyses for the physicians in the facility.
If an organization is interested in obtaining the SHARP or STAR certification, which are safety certifications, I can assist with those as well as all the programs including confined space, respiratory lockout/tagout and training.”
What Customers Can Expect
SAK Environmental is able to help any company that needs assistance with EHS. And while many folks may think it’s mostly a concern for manufacturing entities, Stuart says that’s not the case.
“OSHA impacts everyone. For example, in a restaurant, if your floors are too greasy, you have a slip hazard. You could have electrical issues. You mainly think of manufacturing, but it also covers retail. If you block fire extinguishers or block exits, you have a safety issue. We are able to help any company that needs assistance with EHS. It can be something as simple as coming in and doing some training on OSHA issues. I ran a safety committee where I trained the hourly folks to know be more aware of potential issues. Sometimes, hourly workers may not come to a manager to discuss an issue, but they may discuss it with their peers. So those who were on the safety committee can be extra sets of eyes looking out for potential issues.”
One differentiator SAK Environmental can offer is the ability to take all the terms and items in sometimes very-involved permits and regulations and make them easy to understand.
“I had a customer who has had a stormwater permit since the stormwater program came into inception, which is 1994. But, they had never done any of the requirements in the permit. They thought the city was doing all their sampling. The city was sampling their wastewater, not their stormwater. So a stormwater inspector came in and told them what they had to do. We came in and wrote their plan and did their sampling within the timeframe the regulators wanted which was something like 30 or 60 days. I am proud of that one, because I brought them into compliance and helped them understand the process better.”
If you’re looking for help with your organizations EHS efforts, you can call SAK Environmental at (704) 904-0094.
Last modified: March 27, 2023
