SNC-Lavalin, an engineering and construction company, has hired David Wilkins as chief compliance officer, effective March 1. He will report to President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Card.

Wilkins joins SNC-Lavalin from Dow Chemical Company, where he served as director of ethics and compliance since 2008. Prior to Dow Chemical, Wilkins served as general counsel of Union Carbide Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dow, and as vice president and chief diversity officer of the American Red Cross.

Wilkins will succeed SNC-Lavalin's current CCO, Andreas Pohlmann, following a transition period. After June 1, Pohlmann will move into a consulting role, with a strategic focus on ongoing World Bank compliance initiatives. He will work closely with Wilkins to ensure the continuance of the company's ethics and compliance initiative, the company stated. 

Compliance Program Details

In 2012, the company began work on implementing a company-wide ethics and compliance program. To date, those initiatives have included:

Providing more than 3,000 employees in high-risk functions with in-person training;

Creating a Business Partners Policy to ensure all third parties adhere to the highest ethical standards; and

Putting compliance officers in place throughout the company to provide oversight and ethical guidance to employees in challenging situations. 

 

Stefan Hoffmann-Kuhnt, head of SNC-Lavalin's compliance program, said his first priority is to protect the company against third-party risk. "One of the biggest risks we face as a company is the possibility that we could hire someone to do business on our behalf, and that they would go on to do the wrong thing in our name," he said. "That's why we created the new Business Partners Policy, to ensure that we only conduct business with partners who adhere to the same elevated ethics and compliance standards as we do, as set forth in our Code of Ethics and Business Conduct."

Additionally, SNC-Lavalin has begun to roll out compliance training for its more than 3,000 employees working in functions that expose them to a higher level of risk, Hoffmann-Kuhnt added. "This in-person training ensures employees have the tools they need to do business according to the highest ethical standards, no matter what regulatory circumstances they find themselves in, or external parties they are in contact with," he said.

Next up on the agenda, he said, is to do a comprehensive compliance risk assessment. That risk assessment will involve going to each business unit and each region "to fully understand their individual compliance risks."

More about the implementation of SNC-Lavalin's compliance program can be found here.