Locus offers practical tools to monitor water usage, anticipate demand fluctuations, and ensure compliance with environmental regulations.

Exercising best practice is essential when ensuring water quality and conservation. To assist in this effort, Locus’ domain experts have assembled 10 best practices for collecting, managing, visualizing, and reporting critical water data.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Jan. 16, 2024 — Locus Technologies, (Locus), the pioneer in water, Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) compliance and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) software solutions, announces expansion of its water management SaaS platform to include management of produced water within the oil and gas industry. This cutting-edge solution, seamlessly integrated with Locus’ suite of applications, underscores the company’s unwavering commitment to driving sustainable practices while optimizing operational efficiency.

Locus has engineered a comprehensive application designed specifically for the efficient and sustainable management of produced water. This latest addition to Locus’s suite of water solutions aims to address the complex demands of the oil and gas industry while ensuring compliance, conservation, and operational excellence.

The new application is seamlessly interoperable with other Locus solutions catering to the oil and gas sector, such as ESG, air emissions, waste management, and water quality management. Locus software empowers organizations to make informed decisions, mitigate risks, and enhance overall efficiency across their operations by streamlining data integration and providing actionable insights.

Locus’ CEO, Neno Duplan, emphasized the company’s dedication to delivering comprehensive water management solutions while driving advancements in technology for the beneficial reuse of water beyond the realms of the oil and gas, and energy industries. “We remain focused on delivering comprehensive water management solutions to our customers while advancing technologies for the beneficial reuse of water inside and outside of the oil and gas industry, which holds the promise of further improving the sustainability of our customer’s operations,” stated Duplan.

With a proven track record in providing leading-edge EHS and ESG software solutions, Locus continues to spearhead advancements in compliance, sustainability, and corporate responsibility across diverse industries and geographies.

About Locus Technologies

Locus Technologies, the global environmental, social, governance (ESG), Sustainability, and EHS Compliance software leader, empowers companies of every size and industry to be credible with ESG reporting. From 1997 Locus Technologies pioneered enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) for EHS Compliance, water management, and ESG credible reporting. Locus apps and software solutions improve business performance by strengthening risk management and EHS for organizations across industries and government agencies. Organizations ranging from medium-sized businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises, such as Chevron, Sempra, Corteva, DuPont, Chemours, San Jose Water Company, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Port of Seattle, Onto Innovations, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, have selected Locus.

Locus Technologies’ headquarters is in Mountain View, California.

For further information regarding Locus Technologies and its commitment to excellence in SaaS solutions, please visit www.locustec.com or email info@locustec.com.

Locus EHS/ESG Cloud will streamline Foster Farms EHS Compliance, ESG Reporting, and Water Quality Management.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 2, 2023Locus Technologies, the leading EHS Compliance and ESG software provider, today announced that Foster Farms, a top US provider of fresh, frozen, and prepared poultry products and the leading brand of fresh chicken in the Western U.S., selected Locus’s award-winning enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) to organize and manage their EHS compliance and ESG reporting.

Foster Farm subscribed to an integrated set of apps offered in the Locus Cloud Platform. Some apps include EHS Compliance Management, ESG and Sustainability, GHG Emission Factor and Calculation Management, Inspections, Configuration Workbench, Air Emissions Management, Storm Water, Wastewater, and well data management and reporting.

Locus Cloud is the first fully integrated multitenant platform created from the ground up to allow organizations to manage their environmental, energy, water, waste, carbon, air, health and safety, remediation, water quality, and compliance information in one place. The Locus Platform allows companies to configure their own management, tracking, visualization, and reporting through a graphically driven user interface. This feature enables organizations to configure the software to their needs without worrying about the expensive programming outlays usually associated with customization and single-tenant deployments.

When designing integrated EHS/ESG SaaS, Locus sought to make the complicated workflow and management of environmental data as simple as possible and to make it manageable from a single platform with shared components. The resulting platform offers immense flexibility and endless capabilities with minimal training thanks to the new, intuitive, user-friendly interface design.

“The accurate tracking and reporting of critical environmental resource usage is a necessary part of our compliance responsibilities, and a major component of our efforts to ensure that we are a sustainable producer. The Locus application software will make a significant contribution to our resource management capabilities,” said Don Hill, Foster Farms Director of Environmental Affairs.

“We are delighted that Foster Farms recognized the power of the Locus Cloud platform. Businesses do not want to shop for point solutions from different vendors only to be left with the nightmare of integration, security, synchronization, and vendor management. They want one-stop shops and to avoid having to deal with vendors that don’t integrate well with one another or have spotty service and limited support. Locus will provide Foster Farms single platform through which they can accomplish all their environmental and compliance management needs on a single, fully customer-configurable platform,” said Neno Duplan, President, and CEO of Locus. “Keeping the end user’s perspective in mind, we’ve packed the same 26-plus years of domain expertise that Locus has been offering all along into a highly configurable and scalable software platform built from the ground up on the latest web technologies,” remarked Duplan.

ABOUT FOSTER FARMS

Foster Farms is dedicated to providing families across America with great food. From ready to cook chicken and turkey, to chicken nuggets and corndogs, Foster Farms portfolio of fresh, frozen, and prepared foods, are always welcome whether it’s dinner time or snack time. Since its founding in 1939 Foster Farms has gone on to become one of the largest quality poultry producers in the United States. Headquartered in Livingston, Ca with facilities in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana, the company has nearly 12,000 Team Members, and is committed to building a “culture that nobody wants to walk aways from.”

There is a need for most water entities to centralize data, and more easily load, share, analyze, and report data. Locus Technologies’ customizable software makes scheduling and collecting routine water samples is made easy by using Locus Mobile and EIM. Below is a list of frequent challenges that customers have encountered during their water sampling process and how they can be solved using the right tools from Locus. or better communications. 

Challenge 1: Finding a flexible sampling planning tool 

Planning tools need to allow flexibility in terms of different sampling intervals and date ranges, different field and analytical parameters, and account for location grouping. Using a well-designed application can pull together all of this detailed information and can provide a summary view of the individual samples. A manager can easily view sample status, and whether the sample is complete, in process, or planned.  A well-designed application can also generate the chain of custody (COC), and lab and sample shipping date information and labels per sample, which is a huge time saver. This type of sample tracking detail seemed to be very useful to many conference attendees to help ensure they are in regulatory compliance with required sampling frequencies. A key feature to look for is an application that is flexible enough that it can allow one-time, unplanned sample events such as water main breaks, customer complaints and schedule changes, and can handle complex multi-year routine sampling with ease. As a plus, it’s easy for you or your manager to know where you stand at any time. 

LocusPlatform_Water_Sampling

Challenge 2: Eliminating data entry errors caused by hand data entry 

Data entry errors and fixing bad data when it was transcribed from field notes to Excel or other programs is a persistent problem with the old way of doing things.  Your company needs a better way to streamline the error prone data collection process.  Many clients are interested in an alternative to the pencil/paper/clipboard method and had goals to move to tablet or smartphone for data collection.  The universal wish list for mobile field applications included: 

  • Easy to use and set up 
  • Built in data validation to catch data entry errors at the source 
  • Direct upload to a data system so the end of the day all the daily samples were in the system with the push of a button 
  • Prepopulating locations especially for large water systems 
  • Complete field instructions for samplers on what to collect and where to collect it to eliminate missed samples 
  • Smart tracking to know on a daily/weekly basis, what samples were collected and what samples were still outstanding 
  • Integrated with sample planning tools (See challenge 1) to automate the sampling instructions and track the data collection activities vs plan 

Locus-Mobile-Water-Sampling

Challenge 3: Getting the most out of their software, especially regarding updates 

Everyone is aware that software updates all the time.  Sometimes its security enhancements and sometime feature enhancements or bug fixes.  A source of frustration is getting a software update and not knowing what was updated or how best to incorporate a new feature/enhancement into their established process.  There was also concern for impact to an established routine with field crews that were used to the existing way of doing things. Even if a functionality improved the workflow, enhancements are only valuable to a user if they understand how to use them and how to incorporate them into their existing process. 

Some suggestions from the attendees included:
  • Concurrent documentation updates with software updates 
  • “Quick start” guides for new functionality 
  • Online training on the new functionality with recording for later viewing 
  • Heads up on what is coming in the next several months so they can do strategic planning (sharing the roadmap) 
  • Sandbox environment to test the enhancements before going in production so they can plan how to incorporate the features into their process and train field crews 

Mobile applications, which appear very simple to the users, are in reality complex software and require careful integration with the receiving database for a range of complex use cases.  This makes rolling out new mobile features challenging for both the developers and the users.  Enhanced customer/developer communication along with a sandbox environment can go a long way towards solving some of the inherent issues with rapid innovations and updates associated with cloud and mobile software. 

Locus-Technologies-Training-and-Support

Software tools are available and can solve a lot of the common data management challenges, but know what you want, know the problem you are trying to solve and know it will take some time and effort, but the end result will significantly improve your business processes. Though these challenges are present when choosing a software, Locus Technologies has the experts to help you hurdle the challenges to find the solution that is best for your business. 

Request a demo

Send us your contact information and a Locus representative will be in touch to discuss your organization’s needs and provide an estimate, or set up a free demo of our enterprise environmental software solutions.

    Name

    Company Email

    Phone

    Tell us about your company's needs

    Locus is committed to preserving your privacy.

    Tracking your data is made easy within our software as a service (SaaS), Locus Platform (LP). Your company can take advantage of LP’s mobile-aware browser functions, giving you the capability to do all your fieldwork with your existing phones or tablets.   When cellular connections are unavailable or unreliable, Locus also has a Mobile app which supports the offline capabilities you need to keep your workflow going. 

    Regardless of your mobile approach, each mobile form can be easily configured to capture the data you require in the field such as photos and the sampling results.  

    Along with easy mobile data collection, Locus Platform can help you to:
    • Track and report your daily results, such as chlorine, nitrite and temperature to water treatment operators, for real time adjustments.
    • Monitor lab results from routine sampling. 
    • Flag out of range data in real time for notifications or data entry corrections. 
    • Analyze data geospatially to understand situations impacting water quality. 
    • Report average monthly chlorine results. 
    • Track water quality complaints and illicit discharges overtime.  
    • Generate Nitrification Reports.  
    • Prepare Monthly Flushing reports. 
    Of course, those are not the limits of Locus Platform. Our software can also help you to: 
    • Track and manage all types of tasks and regulatory commitments. 
    • Track any type of permit and associated requirements. 
    • Generate notifications for defined events, such as data entered above limits. 
    • Produce PDF and Excel reports for regulators and customers. 
    • Keep all your information in an easy-to-use secure system and basically future proof your program. 

    Whether in the office, or out in the field, Locus Technologies is with you every step of the way during the tracking process. Contact us to find your solution. 

    Request a demo

    Send us your contact information and a Locus representative will be in touch to discuss your organization’s needs and provide an estimate, or set up a free demo of our enterprise environmental software solutions.

      Name

      Company Email

      Phone

      Tell us about your company's needs

      Locus is committed to preserving your privacy.

      The ability to visualize your field and analytical data across maps, logs, and charts is a crucial part of managing environmental information. Locus makes it easy to visually display and export data for sharing in reports and presentations. We’ve compiled 7 of the most useful visualization tools in our environmental information management software.

      Data Callouts

      View your data in easy-to-read text boxes right on your maps. These are location-specific crosstab reports listing analytical, groundwater, or field readings. A user first creates a data callout template using a drag-and-drop interface in the EIM enhanced formatted reports module. The template can include rules to control data formatting (for example, action limit exceedances can be shown in red text). When the user runs the template for a specific set of locations, EIM displays the callouts in the GIS+ as a set of draggable boxes. The user can finalize the callouts in the GIS+ print view and then send the resulting map to a printer or export the map to a PDF file.

      Locus GIS Data Callouts


      Graduated Symbols

      Locus GIS features high-quality and industry specific graduated symbols so that you can compare relative quantitative data on customizable maps. Choose graduated symbol intervals, sizes, and colors from a large selection of color ramps and create multiple layers for data analysis. It also features a location clustering option, ideal for large sites, a historical challenge for mapping.

      Intellus GIS+ maps


      Charting

      Multiple charts can be created in EIM at one time. Charts can then be formatted using the Format tab. Formatting can include the ability to add milestone lines and shaded date ranges for specific dates on the x axis. The user can also change font, legend location, line colors, marker sizes and types, date formats, legend text, axis labels, grid line intervals or background colors. In addition, users can choose to display lab qualifiers next to non-detects, show non-detects as white filled points, show results next to data points, add footnotes, change the y-axis to log scale, and more. All of the format options can be saved as a chart style set and applied to sets of charts when they are created.

      Screenshots of EIM chemistry plots menu with two sample plots


      Time Sliders

      Locus has adopted animation in its GIS+ solution, which lets a user use a “time slider” to animate chemical concentrations over time. When a user displays EIM data on the GIS+ map, the user can decide to create “time slices” based on a selected date field. The slices can be by century, decade, year, month, week or day, and show the maximum concentration over that time period. Once the slices are created, the user can step through them manually or run them in movie mode.

      GIS+ time slider in action


      Augmented Reality

      Locate and identify inspection and/or monitoring locations on your mobile device. View real-time and historical environmental data to quickly find areas of interest for your chemical and subsurface data. Use your camera to get precise geotagged information for spills, safety incidents, historical chemical sources, subsurface utilities, or any other type of EHS data.

      Locus Augmented Reality


      Boring Logs

      Create and display clickable boring logs of your sample data—using custom style formats and cross-sections. Show depth ranges, lithology patterns, aquifer information, and detailed descriptions for your samples.

      Locus GIS+ boring logs on groundwater contour lines


      Contours

      Create and visualize custom contours using multiple algorithms. Because visualizations let you chunk items together, you can look at the ‘big picture” and not get lost in tables of data results. Your working memory stays within its capacity, your analysis of the information becomes more efficient, and you can gain new insights into your data.

      Contour map for groundwater in Locus GIS+

       

      Contact us to see more

      Send us your contact information and a Locus representative will be in touch to discuss your organization’s environmental data management needs and provide an estimate, or set up a free demo of our enterprise environmental software solutions.

        Name

        Company Email

        Phone

        Tell us about your company's needs

        Locus is committed to preserving your privacy.

        Are stricter PFAS standards coming your way?

        PFAS chemicals were first invented in the 1930s and have since been used in several applications from non-stick coatings to waterproof fabrics to firefighting foams. In recent years, PFAS studies and research funding have increased remarkably, but as of right now the EPA has yet to implement regulations on the chemicals. Many states have leapfrogged the EPA by implementing regulations on PFAS use, safe PFAS levels in drinking water, and by suing manufacturers of PFAS chemicals. This creates a complex set of regulatory requirements, depending on where you operate.

        Updated August 30, 2021

        PFAS Lawsuits and Drinking Water Limits in US

        Locus offers software solutions for PFAS management and tracking. Our EHS software features tools to manage multiple evolving regulatory standards, as well as sample planning, analysis, validation, and regulatory reporting—with mobile and GIS mapping functionality. Simplify tracking and management of PFAS chemicals while improving data quality and quality assurance. With future PFAS regulations being an inevitability, the time is right to adopt a software that can track and manage these and other chemicals.

        Contact us to see Locus’ PFAS management solution

          Name

          Company Email

          Phone

          Tell us about your company's needs

          Locus is committed to preserving your privacy.

          Locus Technologies founder and CEO Neno Duplan provides a wealth of experience on water quality in the cloud. Neno began cloud-based data work before any of us knew what the cloud even was. He does a great job explaining the steps needed to undertake and the significant benefits of a cloud-based digital transformation, and much more!