The Conflict Minerals disclosure requirements required companies to find information about the company’s products and supply chain that no one had captured before. What can be surprising are the things that a company may not know about its operations until they are brought together to solve a common problem. Different departments of one company can naturally develop “tunnel vision” that concentrates efforts only to knowing what that department does. How companies built conflict minerals disclosure compliance programs is a great example of the cross-functional nature of compliance within one business. More information about the Conflict Minerals disclosure requirements under Dodd-Frank is found via article links, below.
Lawrence Heim, CPEA, has been helping companies navigate the process of building compliance programs to meet the Conflict Minerals disclosure requirements since the law was passed in 2010. Mr. Heim is a Director of Elm Sustainability Partners LLC and The Elm Consulting Group International, LLC, with more than 28 years of experience environmental and sustainability management, focusing on audit programs and risk assessments. He began working on conflict minerals issues in 2010 as one of the original three audit firms approved to conduct Conflict Free Smelter audits, completing the first tantalum smelter audits under that program.
Mr. Heim was the only representative of the EHS consulting/auditing sector selected by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as an expert panelist in their 2011 Conflict Minerals Roundtable convened in developing the final regulation. He was selected by The Auditing Roundtable to lead the development of auditor guidance for use in applying GAO Performance Audit standards to audits of Conflict Minerals Reports. He is the firm’s lead on conflict minerals services, is the developer of the CMCheckPoint℠ tool and is currently assisting a range of industrial companies and retailers in assessing/developing their conflict minerals programs. Mr. Heim is a frequent contributor to the media on the subject of conflict minerals programs and auditing and has made numerous public presentations across the country.
LINKS
Elm Sustainability Partners LLC
Lawrence Heim mailto:lheim@elmgroup.com
U.S. Firms Struggle to Trace ‘Conflict Minerals’ Wall Street Journal, Aug. 3, 2015
Conflict Minerals: Is Your Supply Chain Compliant? Association of Corporate Counsel, November 2015
