EcoOnline Chemical Safety Management Training Course

Course overview

Chemical safety records often fail at the point of use: safety data sheets are difficult to locate, chemical inventories are incomplete, risk assessments do not reflect current products, and employees cannot quickly identify the correct controls. This creates compliance exposure under COSHH and CLP requirements, weakens emergency readiness, and makes it difficult for HSE teams to demonstrate control to auditors, insurers, and operational leaders. This course equips participants to use EcoOnline Chemical Manager as a practical system for maintaining accurate chemical information and turning it into safer workplace decisions.

Participants learn how to structure a chemical register, add and maintain product records, manage safety data sheets (SDSs), classify substances using hazard information, and assign chemicals to sites, departments, and storage locations. They practise linking SDS data to chemical risk assessments, applying the hierarchy of controls, defining exposure and storage controls, and producing role-relevant chemical information for workers. The course also covers approval workflows, review cycles, audit trails, reporting, and data-quality checks that make a Chemical Manager implementation dependable rather than merely populated.

Teaching combines instructor demonstrations in EcoOnline, guided configuration exercises, realistic workplace scenarios, and peer review of chemical-control decisions. Participants work through a case involving a multi-site operation with cleaning agents, solvents, compressed gases, and maintenance chemicals. They leave with a completed Chemical Manager implementation pack: a sample register structure, SDS governance workflow, chemical risk-assessment template, reporting plan, and a prioritised 90-day action plan for their own workplace.

The course suits HSE practitioners, facilities and operations teams, laboratory coordinators, and system owners who need to administer or improve an EcoOnline chemical safety process. It serves both new users building a foundation and experienced users seeking a more controlled, auditable operating model.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Configure an EcoOnline Chemical Manager register using site, department, location, and product-record structures
• Upload, validate, archive, and assign safety data sheets through a defined SDS lifecycle workflow
• Interpret GHS hazard statements, precautionary statements, pictograms, and supplier classification data
• Build chemical risk assessments that connect hazardous properties, exposure routes, existing controls, and residual risk
• Apply COSHH and CLP requirements to chemical inventory, labelling, storage, and worker-information decisions
• Create user roles, approval responsibilities, review schedules, and audit-trail controls for chemical data governance
• Produce chemical inventory, missing-SDS, review-status, and hazardous-substance reports from EcoOnline data
• Develop a 90-day Chemical Manager improvement plan with data-clean-up priorities and implementation measures

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• HSE Advisors and Managers — who must demonstrate effective control of hazardous substances across operational sites
• Chemical Safety Coordinators — who maintain chemical registers, SDS libraries, and assessment review schedules
• Facilities Managers — who oversee cleaning, maintenance, storage, and contractor chemicals in occupied workplaces
• Laboratory Managers and Technicians — who need traceable chemical inventories and accessible hazard information
• Operations Supervisors — who must ensure teams use approved products and follow documented controls
• EcoOnline System Administrators — who configure user access, workflows, data structures, and reporting processes

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course and does not require previous EcoOnline experience. Participants should be comfortable using a web browser, entering structured data in online forms, and reading basic workplace safety documentation. Familiarity with common terms such as safety data sheet, hazardous substance, risk assessment, PPE, and chemical inventory is helpful, but the course explains them in context. A complete beginner should expect a practical introduction to GHS, COSHH, and CLP concepts before using them in EcoOnline exercises. No programming, database administration, chemistry qualification, or prior chemical-management system configuration is required.

Training methodology

The five days are delivered through live instructor-led demonstrations, guided work in an EcoOnline training environment, and facilitated analysis of supplier SDSs and workplace scenarios. Participants configure records, assess chemical-use tasks, test permissions and workflows, and produce reports rather than only observing system features. Small-group workshops compare control decisions for laboratories, facilities, and maintenance operations. Each day closes with a practical output that feeds the final implementation pack, followed by an end-of-course clinic to refine participants’ 90-day workplace action plans.

Course outline

Day 1: Chemical safety foundations and EcoOnline setup

• Chemical safety management system roles and accountabilities
• COSHH duty-holder responsibilities and evidence requirements
• CLP and GHS hazard communication fundamentals
• EcoOnline Chemical Manager navigation and workspace orientation
• Chemical register hierarchy for organisations, sites, and departments
• Product-record fields, naming conventions, and unique identifiers
• User roles, permissions, and access-design principles

Workshop: Participants map a case-study organisation into an EcoOnline register structure and create role-based access rules for its HSE, facilities, and operations teams.

Day 2: SDS management and chemical inventory control

• Safety data sheet section-by-section interpretation
• SDS upload, version control, approval, and archival workflow
• Supplier, manufacturer, and product metadata management
• Assigning chemicals to locations, tasks, and storage areas
• Inventory verification and physical stocktake reconciliation
• Identifying duplicate, obsolete, and unapproved chemical records
• Missing-SDS and expiry-status reporting

Workshop: Participants load and validate a set of supplier SDSs, reconcile them against a stocktake list, and produce an exceptions report.

Day 3: Risk assessment and operational controls

• Hazard statements, exposure routes, and health-effect analysis
• Task-based chemical risk-assessment methodology
• Using the hierarchy of controls for hazardous substances
• Exposure controls, PPE, ventilation, and safe-handling measures
• Storage compatibility, segregation, and container-labelling controls
• Emergency response information and spill-management planning
• Linking assessments, controls, and worker instructions to chemical records

Workshop: Participants complete and peer-review a chemical risk assessment for a solvent-based maintenance task, including controls and residual-risk justification.

Day 4: Governance, assurance, and reporting

• Chemical data ownership and record-stewardship model
• Review frequencies, triggers, and automated reminder design
• Approval workflows for new products and revised SDSs
• Audit trails and evidence for inspections and internal audits
• Chemical inventory dashboards and management-information measures
• Overdue assessment, high-hazard, and location-based reporting
• Data-quality rules and periodic register assurance checks

Workshop: Participants design a governance workflow and build a reporting specification for overdue reviews, missing SDSs, and high-hazard substances.

Day 5: Implementation planning and workplace application

• Chemical Manager implementation scope and success measures
• Legacy data cleansing and migration preparation
• Pilot-site selection and phased deployment planning
• Worker communication and chemical-information access methods
• Supervisor training and local ownership arrangements
• Audit readiness and continuous-improvement review cycle
• Ninety-day action planning and stakeholder presentation

Workshop: Participants assemble and present a Chemical Manager implementation pack containing their register design, governance workflow, reporting plan, and 90-day action plan.

Tools & standards covered

EcoOnline Chemical Manager, Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS), Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH), Classification, Labelling and Packaging Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 (CLP)

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions