Dr. Andy H. Sakka took the final step toward his Doctor of Science degree in the Environmental and Energy Management concentration with a successful defense of his dissertation on December 3, 1999. Sakka, a senior executive with the Arthur Andersen Consulting Corporation, presented his work to develop a business model to evaluate the Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) function in large multinational corporations.
Sakka's research involved the identification and mapping of 62 EHS business processes, each of which was evaluated quantitatively at four large multinational corporations in the pharmaceutical, petroleum, manufacturing, and chemical industries. The work included conducting a workshop of EHS professionals in each of the four “test bed” companies. The results of the study indicate that, using the systems approach, EHS
managers can design and execute their functions much more effectively and efficiently, and can make their functions much more adaptable to their environments.
Sakka’s work demonstrates an important area of activity in the Environmental and Energy Program at GW - that of the rapidly growing area of corporate environmental management systems.