How to choose the right EHS vendor (or, turning a minefield into a playground)

 

In today’s Internet-driven age, consumers are overwhelmed by an abundance of choices and information on every conceivable product on the marketplace.  The same is true for businesses looking to buy software solutions. Selecting an enterprise-wide EHS&S software solution can be a feat for any organization.

Whether you have been tasked to research vendors from the EHS shop window, or you are driving the data evolution in your business to move from spreadsheets (or worse – paper) to a 21st century-ready alternative— the task at hand can seem daunting and fraught with challenge.

Establishing a timeline and setting milestones along the way will help you break down your mission into manageable, bite-size chunks. Here are some helpful tips to find the right EHS vendor for you — and remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint!

 

Cartoon of EHS stakeholders considering a cloud EHS software solution

Different departments and stakeholders will have different goals– don’t forget to consider how the EHS software solution will help them, too.

Who are the stakeholders?

As the individual spearheading this project, you are not the only one with skin in the game, nor is this likely confined to your team. Multiple business units, divisions, and departments are not only going to have to use a new EHS software solution – they need to like doing so.

The different stakeholders also come with their own individual business goals, and they will be looking to the new EHS software solution to assist them.  Can you carefully engage different areas of your business to find the key drivers?

Even better – assign project leaders within business units to join your selection process, attending demos and providing critical feedback along the way. After all, more heads are better than one.

 

The nice-to-have’s vs. the need-to-have’s

Many of us in the EHS&S industry share similar passions, such as the desire to help reduce climate change and help businesses move to more environmentally-friendly ways of operating.

Sadly, this isn’t at the top of every company’s list of priorities.  But we can all agree that the most important and critical areas are compliance-driven.

Think about which local, state, and federal regulations you are bound by and must adhere to at all costs. It’s all well and good, having a software that can calculate CO2 emissions saved from a new “green” initiative.  But shouldn’t it also be smart enough to alert you when a permit is up for renewal?

Take time to compile a list of all areas you need to keep on top of.  The right software should be able to keep you one step ahead, not left scrambling around, collecting data from all of your sites to meet a certain deadline.

 

Who to engage? 

EHS conference attendees networking

Conferences such as those hosted by NAEM are a great place to network with other EHS professionals and ask your peers about their experience with specific software vendors.

Trying to select a shortlist of vendors to demo with is no easy feat, especially when an Internet search throws up 20 pages of results.  Fortunately, there are plenty of independent sources and conferences that exist specifically to help you in this endeavor.  The National Association of Environmental Managers (NAEM) is one example.  Networking with other EHS professionals can lead to recommendations and “been there, done that” advice on who the key players are.

It’s also important to remember that EHS vendors are not necessarily built for every terrain, and some specialize in different areas (i.e., health and safety, air emissions, waste management, etc.).  I have yet to come across two businesses with the exact same EHS needs and requirements, so remember to regard your own company as the unique entity that it is.

Once you have a feel for the vendors that are most suitable for your needs, you should start engaging sales professionals in initial 20-30 minute conversations on what you are trying to achieve, as well as finding out more from vendors on their potential suitability for your project.

 

EHS software demos are the easiest way to find out if the EHS software will meet your requirements

Before a demo, give the vendor as much detail about your unique requirements, business processes, and ultimate goals as you’re willing to share– this will help the vendor focus on the most relevant functionality for your needs.

Evaluating the market

Once you have a shortlist of worthy candidates, the next logical step is to schedule some demos.  I recommend a 60-90 minute demo to begin with – anything shorter is not worthwhile to get a full grasp on the software capabilities.

There seems to be two schools of thought regarding demos and how much information to provide to the vendor, prior to the big day.  Some companies like to keep their cards close to their chest and ask to see the “out-of-the-box” functionality.  Others choose to provide the vendor upfront with their detailed requirements, existing reports, and sample data, in order for the demo to focus specifically on what the customer is looking to solve.

I favor the latter approach, as it gives the vendor the opportunity to tailor the demo to the needs that are of most importance to the customer.  This helps both sides to focus the conversation on exactly how the software functionality will make the customer’s job easier.  Tell them what you want to achieve or what you’re struggling with, and let them do the work of showing you how their product will solve all your problems.  And quite frankly, if you are looking to catch out a vendor who doesn’t have everything you need, then the relationship is already off to a pretty bad start!

Longer sessions and “focus groups” can be arranged as a follow-up.  Second and third demos are par for the course in most selection processes.  These additional demos will give you a chance to whittle down the competition, plus give you the opportunity to reflect and to go back to the vendors with any additional questions, requirements, and clarifications.

 

Going steady

As you continue through the purchasing process, you will find yourself building bonds with the best vendors.  This working relationship is key to a lasting experience that assists your business in getting the “mission-critical” EHS work done.

EHS vendors collaborate with their customers

As your relationship with a vendor grows, you should start to see evidence of a cross-departmental team that is committed to your satisfaction and your business’s compliance success.

The best EHS vendors will have a healthy mix of subject matter experts, project managers, developers, and sales professionals – all dedicated to keeping your business compliant and happy enough to renew your subscription, year after year.

Pricing is obviously a concern for any customer, and it’s important that you fully understand what the vendor is going to charge you.  The last thing you want is to agree on a project and implementation process, only to be hit with a hefty bill once the software has been deployed – for what you felt was a minor change.

Useful questions to ask:

  • Is the software configurable?
  • How much support is available to me?
  • What happens when you upgrade to a new version?
  • How much data can I store on your platform?

Once you have settled on a vendor and are ready to embark on the implementation, the real fun begins.  Now you can start to reap the benefits of your carefully planned and executed selection process.

Good luck out there!

—

Still looking for the right EHS software to revolutionize your environmental and compliance initiatives?  Book a demo with us today!

 

Remy Leaf - Sales Engineer at Locus Technologies

About guest blogger— Remy Leaf, Locus Technologies

Remy Leaf has worked in the EHS industry for 6 years, since graduating from the University of the West of England with a BSc in Environmental Management & Sustainability. His current role with Locus is Sales Engineer, working with new and prospective customers to identify their EHS targets.

Improving Arsenic detection and keeping it out of drinking water

Arsenic, a naturally occurring element, is one of the many drinking water contaminants actively monitored by drinking water systems because it can result in adverse health conditions, including an increased risk for a range of cancers. U.S. EPA and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) are joining forces to launch the Arsenic Sensor Prize Competition for the development of new technology to detect arsenic in water. If you are interested in participating you can read more here:

https://blog.epa.gov/blog/2016/09/were-sensing-a-change-in-water-monitoring-introducing-the-arsenic-sensor-prize-competition/

The use of arsenic as a poison is widely documented. As a result, many people are alarmed when they hear that their drinking water, either from a public or private water system, may contain any amount of arsenic. Exposure to arsenic in drinking water at the level the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently deems as safe in the United States (10 parts per billion) still may induce adverse health outcomes. The U.S. EPA recently lowered the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for arsenic to 10 µ/L in public water supplies—a regulated level that is considered “safe” for a lifetime of exposure—yet concentrations of 100 µ/L and higher are commonly found in private, unregulated well water in regions where arsenic is geologically abundant, including upper New England (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine), Florida, and large parts of the Upper Midwest, the Southwest, and the Rocky Mountains.

Arsenic is a natural component of the earth’s crust and is widely distributed throughout the environment in the air, water and land. It is highly toxic in its inorganic form.

Arsenic in drinking water.

Measuring and testing for arsenic require expensive instruments and lab work, as well as time. However, with new and emerging technologies, a more efficient arsenic monitoring technology could help to improve the monitoring system, reduce costs, and better protect human health and the environment. Typically, samples are sent to a laboratory for analysis, with results available days to weeks later. New technology could accelerate this process by allowing for immediate detection of arsenic in water. This could reduce monitoring costs and help water utilities more effectively control treatment to remove arsenic from the drinking water supply.
The Arsenic Sensor Prize Competition aims to improve the existing process with upcoming and emerging technology. The competition is not exclusively restricted to sensor developers but seeks applicants from all fields, including information technology. For example, besides sensor technologies, a new data collection and transmission technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) can also accelerate water quality characterization process or better data management, visualization, and reporting via cloud-based SaaS technologies. Applicant criteria include anyone with ideas for how to rapidly, accurately, and cost-effectively measure arsenic in water.

Locus Technologies is a software company that specializes in providing a SaaS-based solution for water quality management. Arsenic is one of  a key and prolific contaminants in our vast water quality databases. We have a keen interest in supporting this excellent and timely competition to help find a way to automate detection and data collection of arsenic and other contaminants in real time. To help shed some light on the  importance of arsenic in drinking water, we performed a quick check on a total number of arsenic records, hits, and locations across all customers in Locus SaaS EIM (Yes multi-tenant SaaS as otherwise, this statistic would be impossible to gather). This is what we found:

Total number of analytical records: >520,000,000
Number of Arsenic Records: 248,850
Number of Arsenic hits (above action limit MCL of 10 µ/L): 112,597
Number of Arsenic locations: 19,304

If you have ideas and  are interested in helping protect our nation’s drinking water, Locus encourages you to participate. We will have a special prize for the winner.

Historic binding agreement reached to cut greenhouse gasses from HFC

There are roughly 1.6 billion new air conditioning units expected to come on stream by 2050, reflecting increased demand from Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

On 15 October 2016 in Kigali, Rwanda nearly 200 nations have agreed a legally binding agreement to cut back on greenhouse gasses used in refrigerators and air conditioners, a significant move against climate change.
The International deal would require countries to phase out greenhouse gasses called hydrofluorocarbons beginning in 2019.

Under the agreement, developed nations, including much of Europe, the United States, China, and India commit to reducing their use of the gasses incrementally, starting with a 10 percent cut by 2019 with the goal of an 80% reduction globally by 2047. But many wealthier nations and companies have already begun to reduce their use of HFCs.

A parallel deal was struck last year in Paris to slow the growth of carbon emissions, the most prevalent greenhouse gas emitted by the burning of fossil fuels. That deal entered into force earlier this month. But unlike the Paris agreement, the Kigali deal is legally binding, has very specific timetables and has an agreement by developed economies to help emerging countries adapt their technology.

The HFC agreement comes in the form of an amendment to the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty undertaken nearly 30 years ago to protect the Earth’s ozone layer.

According to the Wall Steet Journal article, Chemours Co., a publicly traded chemicals company spun off from DuPont Co. last year (and Locus Technologies customer), said that it was introducing a new line of gasses to help replace HFCs for some industrial-scale refrigeration and air-cooling systems.

The deal is the latest installment in the US administration’s efforts to curb the global greenhouse-gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet with harmful consequences. Earlier this month, countries also agreed to limit carbon emissions from global aviation for the first time ( http://locustec.com/blog/epa-plans-regulate-carbon-emissions-aircraft/ ).

HFCs account for about 1% of global greenhouse-gas emissions and 1.5% of all U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But they are considered one of the fastest-growing greenhouses gasses in the world. The agency predicts HFC emissions could increase up to 15% a year globally if they aren’t limited.

As a greenhouse gas, HFCs are more potent than carbon dioxide. Their heat-trapping capacity can be hundreds or thousands of times that of carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Plus, some HFCs can stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, according to a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As a result, even small amounts can have profound, long-lasting effects on the environment.

HFCs belong to a family of compounds known as fluorinated gasses. Such substances don’t exist in nature; they are entirely man-made, according to the EPA. After the Montreal Protocol, HFCs were developed to replace another class of fluorinated compounds, known as chlorofluorocarbons, because these were depleting the ozone layer.

One of the industry challenges will be to track, organize, and report on avalanches of data stemming from the binding HFC compliance requirements. SaaS like Locus Platform is ready for the challenge.

A day in the presidential life

 

Follow the new President of Locus, Wes Hawthorne, through his typical week to see the big picture of running a successful environmental cloud software company

Wes Hawthorne is the newly appointed President of Locus Technologies, having been promoted to this position after 17 years of working at Locus. Wes comes from a background of environmental engineering and geology, and he previously worked as VP of Operations, overseeing Locus’ operations and product management teams.

In his new role as President, Wes is quickly learning about all the aspects of the company, and what roles come together to keep it operating smoothly and successfully.  As part of this, he has been getting a crash course in departments that were previously outside his scope of job responsibilities (such as sales and marketing).

Let’s follow Wes through some highlights of his typical week as the new President of Locus to see what kind of things he works on day to day.

Monday

10 a.m. – Met with our marketing team to discuss some upcoming conferences.  It’s looking like it will be a busy conference season, and each conference takes months of careful planning— from booth design, to presentations, to setting up demos of our mobile app for conference attendees— but our marketing team works hard to make sure we have everything mapped out well in advance of the events.

Locus President Wes Hawthorne at computer

Getting organized and ready for a busy week at Locus…

11 a.m. – Reviewed emissions and environmental data acquisition equipment for a cement manufacturing facility. One of the things I really love about working at Locus is the opportunity to work with so many industries, each with their own specific needs and requirements for managing their environmental data.

2 p.m. – Met with sales team to talk about some ongoing sales opportunities.  We also talked about the kinds of company values our sales team members are communicating to our clients. Everyone agreed that one of Locus’ core strategies is having all the stakeholders involved initially, before the kickoff of the project. We have a strong cross-disciplinary team involved in making sure that every new customer has their data migrated and their personnel trained, and that they are totally satisfied with how the system is configured.

4:30 p.m. – Discussed new configurable reporting options with product management and development teams for Locus Platform. There is some really innovative work coming out of our Platform team, and no shortage of exciting ideas in the pipeline!

Tuesday

9 a.m. – Met with USEPA to discuss data management and reporting requirements for bioremediation projects. These projects have special data collection and analysis needs, which our EIM system handles in a very simple way.  I just took a tablet into the field and was able to redesign a monitoring program on the spot with the regulator. As a result, the project is taking another step towards closure, bypassing a process that used to take months.

11:30 a.m. – Prepared an evaluation of potential uncertainty associated with cap and trade emissions credits for a winery. With cap and trade programs, the metadata related to the reported emissions and product data are just as important as the reported totals themselves. Using a transparent data set and calculation engine, I can not only review reported data, but also quantify uncertainty and sensitivity of the inputs.

Locus President Wes Hawthorne meets with Locus Platform dev team 2016

Meeting with the Locus Platform dev team

3 p.m. – Met with product development team for Locus Platform to preview upcoming features, including new tools for managing Internet of Things (IoT) data feeds.  The dev team showed some really interesting new features related to using IoT data, such as showing live data connection and viewing real-time dashboards. We also have some new tools that are developed to configure those features— not just to view them, but also for setting them up in Locus Platform, using its existing integration tools to pull that data in, drive actions for meeting compliance goals, and process it.

The product and development of Locus Platform is something that I’ve been involved with for several years now, but it’s still so gratifying to see the product continually evolve, and to have a hand in saying how it should grow.

Wednesday

8:30 a.m. – Spoke with California Air Resources Board about GHG verification requirements for cogeneration plants. I frequently interact with many regulatory agencies. Because most of our products and services are driven by regulations, I use these conversations to keep our work aligned with the current and upcoming requirements.

12 p.m. – Joined welcome lunch at Doppio Zero in downtown Mountain View for new employee Venk Madabhushi.  We’re always growing and finding new recruits, and we welcome new employees and support their growth.

The company culture at Locus is a very friendly, workable atmosphere; people just get along. We have people in a lot of different multi-disciplines— you have people from the environmental engineering background, the software developers, marketing and sales personnel, field technicians, and others. It’s just a huge variety of people to learn from.

Locus employees, Wes, and Neno discussing new mobile app tools

Reviewing and brainstorming about a new mobile tool for managing compliance for drinking water utilities

And culturally, I think Locus is great.  Well, I’ve been here for 17 years, so I obviously think it’s a great place to work.  When our customers interact with an implementation team or our products team, they can tell that we’re constantly communicating and working together, talking daily about their projects and how to keep moving forward. Keeping a positive atmosphere around how we work helps ensure that we’re all aiming towards the same goal of delivering the best product possible.

3 p.m. – Met with account management and product management to start work on a new mobile tool for managing compliance information for drinking water entities. An exciting part of our work at Locus is identifying new needs for our current customers and then finding new ways to use our technologies to meet those needs.

4 p.m. – Reviewed cap and trade applicability for a supplier of petroleum products with operations in California. Fuel marketers have very different needs for their data management when it comes to cap and trade, because the reporting is organized around regulatory boundaries rather than facilities. We used integration with the transaction database to quickly assemble the data and avoid potential transcription errors.

Thursday

9 a.m. – Prepared a monitoring program for a theme park to address surface water runoff issues for permit compliance. This is a project where regulatory compliance tools are integrated with software for compiling and analyzing analytical data, in order to optimize a monitoring program that meets the specific sampling requirements of the permit.  It also meets the objective of identifying the source to target future mitigation efforts.

GIS+ screenshot- query layers on night basemap

A sample map with graduated symbols and custom layers, from our forthcoming GIS+ platform

10 a.m. – Reviewed the latest build of our GIS+ functionality with development team.  As all of our customers know, Locus has provided cutting-edge mapping and visualization tools with our software for many years, and we continue to invest in those features.

But I’m really excited about GIS+, a new platform that we’re rolling out, which has amazing new tools for data analysis using Esri technology.  We’ve seen our mapping and other visual analysis tools become more and more popular every year, thanks to the increasing volume of data being collected for environmental projects.

The new GIS+ is more powerful than anything we’ve offered before.  It’s an all-in-one tool to give you quick visual analysis of contours or other geographic distribution of data, to give you a visual display of where things are located, make quick interpretations, and then generate report-ready deliverables.  I can’t wait until our customers get a chance to try it out!

1 p.m. – Completed GHG verifications for an oil and gas producer, a distribution company for natural gas, and nine cogeneration facilities. Locus is one of the largest accredited verification bodies for GHG emissions in California. This gives us a unique perspective when it comes to this type of data, which is why we put a lot of emphasis on the quality and transparency of data in our software development.

4:30 p.m. – Reviewed applicability of data management requirements for air emissions from a power generation facility under 40 CFR Part 75. For this facility, we reviewed the system configuration to make sure that data substitution procedures were correctly applied. I’ve worked with many continuous emissions monitoring systems over the years.  For the most part, I’ve found that they collect a huge volume of data, but the tools for extracting useful findings out of that data are usually limited. Fortunately, we’ve learned some quick methods for reviewing this data that help to immediately identify potential issues.

Friday

Locus President Wes Hawthorne drawing on whiteboard

Hashing out ideas on the whiteboard

8 a.m. – Updated a compliance monitoring program for a school site that is managing arsenic issues with a surface cap. For compliance programs, you really need to look at the variety of regulations that apply to specific sites, which can be difficult and challenging.  You have to not only identify them initially, but then you have to help them manage all the associated requirements. This specific project had a lot of issues with making sure they stay on top of these requirements.

At the heart of a lot of environmental remediation sites is risk management. And school sites have a particular sensitivity regarding risk. While you’re in the process of cleaning up these problem areas, there’s a real risk exposure, and minimizing the potential impact to those risk receptors is extremely important. Eventually, you need to have all of the risk receptors addressed before you can close the project.

Our team helped this particular school district to consolidate their EHS compliance requirements and develop a calendar with notifications, in order to ensure all their obligations are met.

10 a.m. – Worked on a management system for handling community outreach documentation associated with large environmental projects. Occasionally, Locus gets involved in projects that go somewhat beyond the traditional scope of “environmental data”.  This could be financial data associated with environmental projects, or in this case, the public outreach documentation.

Previously, this “tangential” environmental data had to be managed in separate spreadsheets, but Locus now has the tools for building applications that are tailor-made for handling this information, and allows it to be directly integrated with the tools for managing compliance tasks or analytical data.  It’s a huge time-saver to be able to maintain information on all these affiliated activities in one system.

3 p.m. – Modified a corporate compliance reporting tool for health and safety incidents for a railroad operator.  A lot of times, our customers are able to teach us about how they manage and analyze their EHS data. For this project, our customer gave us some great ideas which we merged into a master template for incident reporting. Even after so many years, I’m still learning quite a bit with every new project.

5:30 p.m. – Made it through the Bay Area traffic and got my daughter to soccer practice on time. After a full and exhausting week, it was quite rewarding to relax and just watch her run around for an hour. In two more days, I’ll be re-energized to start up a few new projects and finish work on a few others. Though, if the past 17 years are any indication, on Sunday evening I’ll already be lining up my activities for the week and figuring out what new challenges Locus will tackle in the next five days.

 

Locus Technologies President Wes Hawthorne- Locus employees

About guest blogger— Wes Hawthorne, Locus Technologies

Wes Hawthorne has been with Locus Technologies since 1999, working on development and implementation of services and solutions in the areas of environmental compliance, remediation, and sustainability. As President, he currently leads the overall product development and operations of the company.

Aviation industry agrees to cap CO2 emissions, other transportation industries to follow

The first deal limiting greenhouse gasses from international aviation has been sealed after years of negotiations. Carbon emissions from international aviation will be capped under a global agreement to limit the impact of commercial flights on the climate. The deal launches a voluntary compliance system from 2021 that would become mandatory in 2027. Airlines spent about $181 billion on fuel last year, and this deal would add between $5 and $24 billion in additional costs, depending on the price of carbon at the time. The aviation carbon cuts were agreed in Montreal by national representatives at the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO.

The deal comes in a critical week for climate policy when the Paris agreement to stabilize climate change passed a key threshold for becoming law. International aviation is responsible for putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year than the whole of the Germany or the UK. And until now, there has been no global consensus on how to address aviation emissions.

CO2 will be allowed to grow to 2020, but after that, emissions will need to be offset. The deal will be voluntary to 2026, but most major nations are expected to take part. Airlines that pollute more than the prescribed level after 2020 would have to purchase carbon-offsetting credits.

The offsetting proposal is especially controversial. Airlines are striving to make planes more efficient, but the industry can’t innovate fast enough to contain its dynamic growth.

That led to the proposal for offsetting – but sometimes offsetting by planting trees is not enough and is prone to double-counting.

One way to offset emissions, besides planting trees, is using trees’ and other plants spoils to make sustainable fuels. The effort to use sustainable fuels has already started, and manufacturers and airlines support of alternative fuels is high.

To that end, the US biofuels leader, Amyris, Inc is developing an alternative aviation jet fuel made with a sustainably-sourced hydrocarbon using Amyris’s proprietary synthetic biology platform. It is one of the most promising developments in aviation fuels in decades.

Amyris’ jet fuel can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 percent compared with petroleum fuels, when compared unmixed to petroleum fuels on a one-to-one basis, according to Amyris.

Attempts have been made for nearly two decades to include aviation and shipping in the UN’s climate agreements, but both sectors have managed to avoid firm targets.

US EPA earlier this year issued a final scientific assessment that concluded that carbon emissions from aircraft endanger public health and welfare, a legal prerequisite the agency must take before regulating those emissions in the US. It is widely expected that EPA will introduce its set of rules for regulating domestic aircraft emissions in the US. Domestic aviation represents about 40% of total carbon-dioxide output from commercial flights.

Environmental groups said they hope the action to curb airline emissions will spur a similar cap on maritime CO2 production. Maritime emissions aren’t covered by the Paris climate deal even though the industry is considered a major carbon emitter.

All these emissions trackings must be managed and verified and will require companies to install scalable and intelligent database systems like Locus SaaS-based EIM and Locus Platform that already help many companies comply with various emission laws and regulations around the world.