E-Learning
Environmental Liabilities eLearning Course
Price:
$495
About the Course
Since the development of Federal environmental laws, new accounting principles and stakeholder expectations have become part of the ASTM Standard setting activity. This course reviews five key ASTM documents (ASTM E2137, E2173, E2718, E3123, and E3228) covering the valuation, settlement and reporting of all types of environmental liabilities. Any scientific, project management, legal or accounting specialist seeking to grow within the strategic framework of a larger organization will improve their understanding of the challenges of environmental liabilities and how to address them.
This course can be completed in about six hours.
Audience
Attendees should include those providing estimation, valuation, auditing and attestation to one or more portfolios of environmental liabilities (asset retirement obligations, environmental obligations, commitments, contingencies and guarantees)
- Corporate officers performing financial reporting or due diligence responsibilities
- Members of due diligence or purchase price accounting teams
- Members of corporate or government agency remedial project teams
- Members of legal and accounting teams
- Members of investment banking and merger/acquisition/spinoff teams
- Members of real estate teams acquiring, redeveloping or selling environmentally-impaired properties
- Individuals providing support services to any of the above
Certificate and CEUs
Upon successful completion of this course, learners will receive a certificate of completion with 0.6 CEU's.
Learning Outcomes
Module One: Recognition and Derecognition of Environmental Liabilities
- Identify the five types of environmental liabilities (E3123)
- Identify six types of funding used to settle environmental liabilities: asset retirement costs, provisioned/reserved environmental costs, ordinary operating expenses, capital expenditures, second-party control/payment, and third-party reimbursement
- Identify conditions and transactions causing liability recognition
- Construct and manage a pre-recognition Watch List of unbooked environmental liabilities
- Identify conditions and transactions causing liability derecognition
- Construct and manage a post-settlement Watch List
- Review the purposes of environmental liability valuations
- Reliably value environmental liabilities
- Report valuations of environmental liabilities
- Apply the Watch List in valuations
- Demonstrate correlation between spending and reductions in booked environmental liabilities
- Report valuations of environmental liabilities
Module Three: Disclosure of Environmental Liabilities
- Understand the audience for environmental disclosures and needs of the audience
- Evaluate past reports of environmental liabilities
- Use common terminology for environmental disclosures
- Draft and review environmental disclosure statements
- Report progress in managing environmental liabilities
Module Four: Disclosures related to Climate Change and Emerging Contaminants
- Identify environmental liabilities related to climate change
- Identify environmental liabilities related to emerging contaminants
- Review disclosure examples for documenting current knowledge of evolving risks
- Use common terminology for summarizing portfolios of environmental liabilities
Module Five: Due Diligence Procedures for Environmental Liabilities
- Demonstrate competency in reporting environmental liabilities for due diligence purposes
- Demonstrate gap between booked liabilities and the fair value used in due diligence
- Identify five types of environmental liabilities at each location
- Determine obligating events and recognition benchmarks for each location
- Document key assumptions such as discount rates, currencies, and regulatory frameworks for baseline
- Document baseline reserve, operating expenses, capital expenditures, asset retirement obligations, and third-party recoveries
- Document escalation risks to Watch List
- Recall how to follow transaction close, recalculate all values during the purchase price allocation period, based on new information provided by acquiree's liability managers
Module Six: Environmental Knowledge Management
- Describe the importance of knowledge retention in environmental liability management
- Identify the types of knowledge to regularly collect and catalog
- Recognize the best practices and lessons learned in records storage and sorting
- Review evolving knowledge management needs
- Prepare to implement best practices to preserve key knowledge areas
About the Instructor
John Rosengard is a subject matter expert in environmental liabilities. His specialties include Environmental remediation liability forecasts, asset retirement obligation calculations, focused on oil/gas, ports, chemical manufacturing, pipelines, CERCLA/RCRA closures, environmental counterparty tracking, decision analysis, Monte Carlo modeling, Markov chain analysis of environmental default, and aerial photo interpretation.
John founded a software startup in 1994. He wrote ERCI's proprietary software, Defender, used by Fortune 500 corporations and public agencies for documenting their environmental liabilities (GAAP references IAS37, ASC 410-30, GASB 49) and asset retirement obligations (ASC 410-20, GASB 83). John developed software and related reports for 10-K disclosure, audit defense, decision support/budgeting, loss prevention and improvement of capital stewardship. He also conducted or supervised financial reporting for over 4,200 cleanup sites worldwide. In addition, John created GASB49 Defender version to support compliance by public agencies with pollution remediation obligations. He facilitated decision analysis for over 200 cleanup projects and led business process reengineering, lean sigma and software development teams, focused on environmental cleanup project portfolios and integration with enterprise software systems (SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, JD Edwards). John developed and administered financial assurance tracking systems for several Superfund PRP groups, continuously tracking participant viability, and directly enforcing successors/assigns documentation, need for additional guarantees or cash out. From 2000-2002 and from 2015 to 2016, John served on the ASTM committee which drafted and published the environmental reserve estimation (E2137) and disclosure (E2173) standard guides. Currently, John is a technical contact for ASTM E2173 (env disclosure). In January 2017, he started the ASTM workgroup on new standard E3123-17 for recognition/derecognition of env liabilities. From 1995 until 1997, member, later chair, of Restoration Advisory Board for two NPL cleanups at US Naval Weapons Station Concord (California). In 2009, John developed first parametric model for quickly bracketing river and harbor sediment cleanup costs with minimal data. Between 2010 and 2015, he wrote 24 webinar topics on environmental liabilities to over 500 registrants in 90 sessions; webinars posted on YouTube have over 1000 views.
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Access
All ASTM online courses are available for a 1 year subscription on ASTM's Learning Center for a Single User Only via username/password. Training cannot be shared. For multi-user access and pricing, contact sales here or call 1-877-909-ASTM.
Internet access is required.