Pollution Prevention and Control Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Environmental Managers, HSE Managers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-EM-112

Before you join: Participants should have basic workplace experience in environmental, health and safety, facilities, operations, engineering or compliance roles.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Pollution prevention and control requires more than operating treatment equipment or responding to spills. Environmental professionals must identify where pollutants originate, understand how they travel through air, water and land, assess consequences for receptors, and establish controls that meet permit conditions and internal standards. Weak source control, poor chemical storage, incomplete monitoring and unreliable contractor arrangements can result in regulatory action, remediation costs, production disruption and loss of stakeholder confidence.

This course develops the practical knowledge needed to prevent pollution at source and manage residual emissions, discharges and wastes. Participants work through environmental aspect and impact identification, pollutant pathway analysis, mass balances, cleaner production options, BAT selection, effluent treatment, air-emission controls, waste classification, chemical management and environmental monitoring. They learn how to connect operational controls with permit requirements, performance indicators, incident response and management review.

Instruction combines concise technical briefings with sector-based cases, group analysis, calculations, control-selection discussions and incident simulations. Cases may include industrial wastewater non-compliance, solvent emissions, contaminated land risks, hazardous waste storage and chemical releases. Participants leave with a pollution prevention action plan, supported by practical templates for aspect registers, monitoring plans, spill controls and corrective-action tracking. The course suits professionals responsible for environmental compliance, facility operations, HSE management, engineering, procurement or contractor oversight.

What you will be able to do

  • Construct an ISO 14001 environmental aspects and impacts register using significance criteria.
  • Map pollutant pathways from source to receptor using conceptual site models.
  • Apply pollution prevention hierarchy decisions to process, material and waste controls.
  • Select air-emission and effluent-treatment controls using BAT and performance criteria.
  • Develop monitoring plans with sampling methods, quality controls and trigger levels.
  • Assess chemical, waste and contaminated-land risks using hazard and exposure information.
  • Investigate environmental incidents using causal analysis and corrective-action methods.
  • Produce a prioritised pollution prevention action plan with owners and indicators.

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Greater confidence interpreting emission, discharge and waste-control requirements
  • Practical methods for identifying significant pollution risks before incidents occur
  • Improved ability to challenge inadequate contractor, chemical and waste arrangements
  • Stronger evidence for environmental improvement proposals and capital-control requests
  • Reusable templates for monitoring, incident investigation and pollution prevention planning

For your organisation

  • Earlier identification of pollution sources, loss points and weak operational controls
  • Better alignment between permit conditions, monitoring records and site activities
  • Reduced risk of spills, uncontrolled discharges and hazardous waste mismanagement
  • Lower material losses through cleaner production and resource-efficiency measures
  • More credible environmental performance reporting for management and regulators

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can identify pollutant pathways and assess environmental risks using structured criteria.

  • Pollution pathways from source through receptor to environmental endpoint
  • Distinguishing emissions, discharges, waste, nuisance and contaminated land liabilities
  • Pollutant fate using persistence, mobility, bioaccumulation and transformation concepts
  • Risk matrices combining consequence, likelihood, exposure duration and receptor sensitivity
  • Legal duty mapping for permits, consent conditions and reporting obligations
  • Stakeholder expectations from regulators, communities, customers, lenders and insurers

Participants can build an aspects register and identify significant pollution sources within process operations.

  • ISO 14001 environmental aspects and impacts register construction
  • Significance scoring using severity, frequency, controls and stakeholder concern
  • Process flow diagrams locating inputs, outputs and loss points
  • Mass balance calculations for water, materials, energy and pollutants
  • Operational control criteria linked to significant environmental aspects
  • Change-management review before new chemicals, equipment or production volumes

Participants can evaluate source-reduction opportunities using pollution prevention and cleaner production methods.

  • Pollution prevention hierarchy: avoid, reduce, reuse, recover, treat, dispose
  • Cleaner production assessment from material losses and process inefficiencies
  • Substitution screening using hazard, performance, cost and supply criteria
  • Good housekeeping controls for spills, fugitive emissions and avoidable waste
  • Process modification options: closed systems, segregation, recirculation and automation
  • Life-cycle thinking when shifting impacts between media or suppliers

Participants can select and evaluate controls for point-source and fugitive air emissions.

  • Emission inventories using point, fugitive, mobile and area source categories
  • Stack emission parameters: flow, temperature, oxygen, moisture and concentration
  • BAT selection using BAT Reference Documents and permit limits
  • Particulate control technologies: cyclones, bag filters, electrostatic precipitators, scrubbers
  • VOC controls through enclosure, adsorption, condensation, oxidation and recovery
  • LDAR programmes for valves, flanges, pumps and connectors
  • Ambient monitoring plans defining locations, frequency, methods and trigger levels

Participants can assess wastewater risks and define appropriate effluent-control arrangements.

  • Water balance diagrams separating abstraction, process use, losses and discharge
  • Effluent characterisation: pH, COD, BOD, solids, nutrients, metals and toxicity
  • Sampling plans covering composite samples, preservation, chain-of-custody and laboratories
  • Treatment train selection: equalisation, neutralisation, biological treatment, clarification, filtration
  • Oil-water separation using gravity separators, coalescers and dissolved air flotation
  • Discharge compliance against consent limits, monitoring schedules and reporting requirements

Participants can prevent soil and groundwater contamination through containment, waste and spill controls.

  • Spill scenarios linking chemical properties, pathways, receptors and consequences
  • Secondary containment sizing for tanks, drums, loading bays and transfer points
  • Spill prevention control and countermeasure planning for credible releases
  • Contaminated land investigation stages: desk study, sampling, conceptual site model
  • Waste classification using composition, hazard properties, codes and acceptance criteria
  • Segregation and storage controls preventing incompatible waste mixing and leakage

Participants can identify waste-reduction opportunities and strengthen waste-management controls.

  • Waste hierarchy decisions supported by quantities, contamination, costs and outlets
  • Material flow analysis identifying scrap, yield losses, by-products and recyclables
  • Packaging reduction through specification changes, reusable systems and supplier requirements
  • Resource efficiency indicators: water intensity, energy intensity and waste intensity
  • Contractor due diligence for transporters, treatment facilities and final destinations
  • Waste transfer documentation, manifests, weighbridge records and retention periods

Participants can prioritise chemical risks and establish controls for hazardous and persistent pollutants.

  • Chemical inventory design including quantities, locations, hazards and safety data
  • Substance prioritisation using hazard bands, exposure potential and release pathways
  • Storage compatibility matrices for acids, alkalis, oxidisers, solvents and cyanides
  • Control of microplastics, PFAS, pesticides and persistent organic pollutants
  • Procurement specifications requiring lower-hazard materials and supplier environmental information
  • Chemical spill response roles, notification thresholds and post-incident sampling

Participants can establish monitoring, assurance and reporting arrangements for pollution-control performance.

  • Monitoring strategy matched to permit conditions, risks and control performance
  • Sampling quality assurance through calibration, blanks, duplicates and detection limits
  • Environmental KPIs: emissions intensity, compliance rate, waste diversion and incidents
  • ISO 14031 indicators for management, operational and environmental condition performance
  • Internal audit evidence: records, interviews, observations and corrective actions
  • Root cause analysis using five whys and barrier failure review
  • Management review inputs: trends, nonconformities, objectives, resources and improvement actions

Participants can investigate environmental incidents and prepare a prioritised pollution prevention action plan.

  • Environmental incident classification using severity, extent, duration and regulatory thresholds
  • Initial response priorities: stop source, protect people, contain and notify
  • Incident investigation using event timelines, causal factors and corrective actions
  • Emergency preparedness for spills, fires, flooding and treatment plant failure
  • Pollution prevention action plan with owners, dates, measures and indicators
  • Implementation roadmap aligning projects with budgets, permits and operational constraints

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. ISO 14001 aspects and impacts register template
  2. Pollutant source-pathway-receptor analysis model
  3. Pollution prevention hierarchy decision checklist
  4. Environmental monitoring and sampling plan template
  5. Chemical and hazardous waste control checklist
  6. Prioritised pollution prevention action plan

Who should attend

  • Environmental Managers — responsible for compliance systems, permits and improvement programmes
  • HSE Managers — accountable for integrating pollution controls with site risk management
  • Environmental Officers — required to monitor performance and maintain environmental records
  • Operations Managers — responsible for production controls affecting emissions, discharges and waste
  • Process and Maintenance Engineers — involved in equipment reliability, containment and treatment systems
  • Procurement and Facilities Managers — responsible for chemicals, contractors and resource-use decisions

Skills and tools covered

Pollution pathway analysisEnvironmental aspect assessmentEmission control selectionEffluent managementWaste minimisationEnvironmental monitoring

Tools and standards

ISO 14001, ISO 14031, BAT Reference Documents, Source-Pathway-Receptor Model

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to establish technical principles, followed by cases drawn from manufacturing, infrastructure, energy, commercial facilities and public services. Participants analyse process flows, pollutant pathways, monitoring data, permit-style requirements and incident scenarios. Group work tests control options against technical performance, cost, operational constraints and environmental risk. Simulations address spill response, investigation and corrective actions. Each participant develops an application plan for priority pollution risks within their own work context.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have basic workplace experience in environmental, health and safety, facilities, operations, engineering or compliance roles. They should be familiar with their organisation’s activities, main materials, waste streams or environmental procedures. Prior exposure to permits, incident reporting, ISO 14001 or environmental monitoring is useful but not essential. The course does not require an environmental science degree, prior auditing qualifications, advanced chemistry, specialist modelling software or detailed knowledge of a particular country’s environmental legislation.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

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

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Basic familiarity with workplace operations, materials, waste streams or HSE procedures is sufficient. You do not need prior environmental qualifications, advanced chemistry knowledge or auditing experience.

Bring examples of your site’s key activities, environmental concerns, permits, monitoring records or incident reports if these can be shared appropriately. A laptop is useful for working on templates, although it is not required.

It is intended for environmental, HSE, operations, engineering, facilities, procurement and compliance professionals with pollution-control responsibilities. It is particularly relevant to people moving from general HSE duties into environmental management work.

ISO 14001 courses focus primarily on environmental management system requirements, while auditing courses focus on audit planning and evidence. This course concentrates on technical pollution sources, prevention controls, treatment options, monitoring and incident management.

Participants can use the provided templates to review significant aspects, map pollutant pathways and strengthen monitoring or spill controls. The final action plan helps them prioritise practical improvements, assign owners and track progress.

The ten modules are taught in sequence across five instructor-led days. Each day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides approximately 6.5 contact hours through briefings, cases, group work, simulations and application planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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