Brian Schoening has spent the last four years as an independent sustainability consultant and GHG accounting specialist, working with mid-market companies to build credible, audit-ready inventories. Before that, he spent nearly 20 years at Northrop Grumman — one of the world's largest aerospace and defense companies — building and running their GHG accounting and corporate sustainability programs.

In this episode, Brian pulls from both sides of that experience to walk through what actually goes wrong in GHG inventories, how to prevent it, and how to build the minimum viable inventory that's still defensible.

We cover:

• The missing-locations inventory: a real case study of a multi-year inventory that required a complete re-baseline

• Why completeness failures are more common than clients expect — and how to catch them early

• The three audiences every inventory management plan must serve: your internal team, future consultants, and auditors

• Why precision is the enemy of efficiency in Scope 3 — and what a screening approach actually looks like

• The fractional sustainability leader model: what it is, why mid-market companies need it, and the Fractional Sustainability Leaders Collective (fslcollective.com)

• How Brian structures a portfolio of consulting services — fractional, carbon accounting, and project work — to manage the variability of independent practice

Brian is founder of One Small Step Sustainability Consulting (onesmallstepsustainability.com) and The GHG Shop (ghgshop.com), and co-founder of the Fractional Sustainability Leaders Collective (fslcollective.com).

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brianschoening

This episode is brought to you by North Star Carbon & Impact — the carbon and sustainability management platform built by sustainability professionals, for sustainability professionals. Visit northstarcarbon.com to learn more or request a demo.