Company assessment - the approach in the past
Most chemical companies utilize 3rd party logistic service providers to store, handle and transport feedstock, intermediates and finished products. The chemical companies had always the obligation to assure that these operations were carried out in line with their EH&S standards. In the past this has been achieved through periodic company audits.

Change to industry assessment schemes- the new concept
Since the early 90’s chemical companies have started to develop industry inspection schemes (Safety and Quality Assessment Systems) to avoid multiple assessments by individual companies. Although schemes vary by transport mode the basic concept is uniform. An independent qualified expert carries out the inspection periodically with a standard assessment document and produces a report. Chemical companies access and evaluate these reports applying their internal EH&S standards.

Next to the advantages is a side effect : Thousands of questions
The shift from company to industry assessment resulted in extended assessment documents comprising hundreds of questions. The marine and terminal protocols (CDI-Marine and CDI-Terminals) consist of more than 2000 questions. The snapshot of the service provider, taken during the assessment and documented in an assessment report by means of yes/no/not applicable answers and some comments, differs considerably from a personal impression gathered during a company audit in the past. The evaluation of the assessment protocols requires experts having profound knowledge of the service providers equipment, organization and management.

Tendency for outsourcing of assessment services
On the other hand their is a tendency in the chemical industry to focus on core activities and competencies, so that chemical companies do not want anymore to hire, train and retain experts for the evaluation. The evaluation of assessment documents will gradually change to 3rd party risk assessment.

ChemServe was founded to provide these evaluation services.
The integration of ChemServe activities can be viewed in the supplier selection process