IHMM Board Chair Richie Spangler and Hazardous Materials Society Board Chair Bob West today announced the launch of the Hazardous Materials Society [HMS].

HMS is a 501[c][3] non-profit corporation designed to provide a wide variety of services to IHMM certificants in key areas of greatest concern and demand of our certificants. The Hazardous Materials Society [HMS] is an outgrowth of the strategic planning process undertaken by the Board and Staff of IHMM in 2019. We identified six areas where we had to do a better job caring for the needs of our certificants.

The creation of HMS as an entity separate from IHMM is due to our need to protect our status as having credentials accredited by the American National Standards Institute [ANSI]. With HMS, we can do many things that would have been difficult for us to accomplish under the sole umbrella of an credentialing organization.The six areas, and growing, where HMS focuses its energy for the next year are as follows:

  • Defending and promoting our private credentials among government and the private sector
  • Developing and delivering the highest quality education and training programs serving the hazardous materials | dangerous goods | environment | health & safety communities of practice by engaging the very best programs from around the nation and the world and presenting them in one platform
  • Providing the strongest Networking platform in the nation, Higher Logic, that facilitates our communities of practice to be able to collaborate on their professional challenges as well as exchange information and ideas that benefit their future development
  • Providing Conferences that provide opportunities for us to gather together around the nation and the world to learn together and enjoy each other’s perspectives on all of our professional challenges, and to enrich our experiences together.
  • Providing Affinity programs that leverage our vast numbers and reach into incredible companies around the world to reduce our costs of many of the things we buy.
  • Over at IHMM, creating a student level credential that captures the imagination of students pursuing careers in environmental science or engineering, chemistry, biology or geology and getting those students into mentoring and internship programs through our Networking software and building the next great generation of environmental leaders.

It’s just the beginning.          The press release issued by Spangler and West is here.