"Environmental compliance auditing is an evaluation process whereby an organisation is inspected to determine whether its operations and business practices comply with regulatory requirements. Compliance and liability audits are similar and are usually carried out by buyers to ensure that they are not acquiring an environmental liability."

Compliance audits entail three phases:

• A preliminary site-specific review
• A detailed environmental audit or assessment of property conditions and business practices
• Implementation of or improvement to an existing Environmental Management System (EMS)

• Because you and your company care for the environment
• To avoid liability and prosecution
• You and your staff would like to work in a healthy and safe environment
• To avoid loss in real estate value
• To avoid acquiring another company's environmental liability
• Your customers and markets will require you to operate a clean site
• To monitor compliance, evaluate performance and assess an EMS's long-term effectiveness