Locus Founder and CEO, Neno Duplan recently sat down with Grant Ferrier of the Environmental Business International to discuss a myriad of topics relating to technology in the environmental industry such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Multi-tenancy, IoT, and much more.
A growth in commitment from proactive organizations towards heightened ESG standards means that many professionals have seen their duties not only increase, but they have been made more diverse than before.
The Locus Waste Management application enables EHS professionals to manage wastes across their entire enterprise and prepare reports with just one click.
In August 2014, we wrote on the potential use of wearables for EHS professionals. Less than a year later, the Apple Watch was introduced, revolutionizing the market. Now, wearables in the EHS space aren’t a hypothetical. Roughly a fifth to a quarter of Americans wear a smartwatch daily. Wearables are undoubtedly one of the biggest trends in EHS, with a seemingly endless number of uses to promote a more efficient and safer workplace.
Despite recent growth, wearables are still in their infancy when it comes to EHS. Verdantix anticipates that companies will spend 800% more on connected worker devices in twenty years, an explosion in utilization. This year alone, over 20% of surveyed companies are reporting an increase in budget for wearables for EHS purposes. While demand from organizations is growing, most EHS software is yet to adapt to market needs, with few offering wearable support.
Locus is prepared to meet the needs of the market, by integrating wearable support with our mobile application. Here are a few ways to best utilize your smartwatch with Locus Mobile:
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Custom and priority notifications can be tailored to fit the needs of professionals in your organization, increasing engagement and response time.[/sc_icon_with_text]
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Calendar alerts directly to your wearable, so that no samples are missed by field technicians.[/sc_icon_with_text]
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Get alerted when you’re entering a safety zone that requires specific PPE.[/sc_icon_with_text]
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Track worker vital signs for faster response time in the event of an emergency.[/sc_icon_with_text]
If your organization is looking to implement wearable tech, Locus product specialists are ready to discuss your needs and how we can help.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 20 April 2021 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in multi-tenant SaaS EHS compliance and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting software, introduces the new ESG reporting application on its award-winning Locus Platform. The new ESG reporting application is integrated with other Locus SaaS applications and calculation engine. It is built to redefine how companies organize, manage, and calculate their key performance indicators (KPIs), greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories, water, energy, and waste management.
Today, organizations must measure and report their ESG performance for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and other initiatives. The transition from sustainability to ESG performance indicates a maturation of business practices and better definitions of KPIs. Most ESG metrics originate from EHS regulatory and voluntary reporting programs, but now include more precise measurements of a company’s performance, its impact on the environment, and the risk it carries for investors. As a result, companies need to improve the way they collect, track, and verify metrics for ESG reporting. The information feeding into the ESG reports must be accurately quantified, calculated, and supported. To address this industry challenge, Locus developed the new ESG reporting application on the versatile Locus Platform to unify EHS compliance and ESG reporting from a single set of data.
The Locus ESG application was designed with input from auditors who understand the need for full transparency and documentation for this type of reporting. This resulted in an unparalleled set of software tools that enable rapid visualization of ESG trends, as well as the analytics and supporting data needed to improve organizational performance.
The ESG application includes built-in support for many voluntary programs, including GRI, CDP, DJSI, SASB, GRESB, and DNSH. Within the greenhouse gas emissions segment, ESG reporting also includes more than 50 US EPA Mandatory Reporting Rule (MRR) subparts, state-specific reporting, eGRID, and other calculation protocols such as The Climate Registry and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Similarly, multiple reporting and calculation protocols exist for water, waste, social, and governance metrics. Locus can handle all related calculations and reporting requirements in one application, with all the required documentation.
“For over 20 years, Locus has led the industry with applications to simplify data management and reporting for water, air, energy, waste, and health and safety, with tools capable of handling these entire processes from start to finish,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus.
“The ESG application builds on this functionality and provides full transparency for these metrics, which ultimately become part of an organization’s ESG reporting. As the importance of ESG reporting continues to rise, Locus customers benefit from having all their supporting documentation and calculations assembled and audit-ready.”
Simplify your air quality data management and reporting with Locus’ unified software solution. Our Air Quality application resolves most common issues with managing and submitting your site emissions data. Locus handles all required regulatory data from your facilities in one centralized platform and makes it possible to streamline your tracking and reporting requirements for programs such as Title V, GHG, Fenceline, and LCFS.
OSHA has released their list of the ten most cited violations of the 2020 fiscal year. The same mistakes and mishaps from years before are still here, though some have moved around from last year. They are:
Locus can help your organization prevent, report, and track these workplace mishaps. From configurable smart notifications to follow-up assignments when accidents, near misses, or when other incidents are logged, Locus EHS&S compliance software offers assurance that your safety procedures can be followed promptly and correctly.
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 9 February 2021 — Locus Technologies, the leading provider of EHS Compliance and ESG software, was awarded a 15th consecutive award from Environmental Business Journal (EBJ) for growth and innovation in the field of Information Technology in the environmental industry.
EBJ is a business research publication providing strategic business intelligence to the environmental industry. Locus received the 2020 EBJ Award for Information Technology by growing and innovating their Software as a Service (SaaS) and related services.
Among the key drivers for Locus in 2020 was providing vital solutions to essential organizations during the earliest stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Locus provided fully digital waste tracking and the tools needed for groundbreaking work in embodied carbon relating to construction projects for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a potentially industry-transforming innovation.
Water utilities used Locus software to deliver over 150 billion gallons of clean water to tap, the equivalent of 235,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, for over five million consumers. Utilities also benefited from newly released Locus tools such as the direct XML export to the EPA, eliminating the need for custom reporting. Locus continued its work as a third-party verifier in Low Carbon Fuel Standard and Greenhouse Gas verifications, providing verification services for over 60 facilities totaling no less than 3.2 million barrels of crude oil, 2.6 million barrels of natural gas liquids, and 88 million bottles of wine.
“Locus continues to lead the environmental industry digital transformation with its forward-thinking product set, pure SaaS architecture and unified set of EHS Applications,” said Grant Ferrier, president of Environmental Business International Inc. (EBI), publisher of Environmental Business Journal.
“We would like to express our joy and gratitude for receiving the EBJ Information Technology award for the 15th year. We look forward to continue providing our customers with pioneering unified EHS and ESG software and services in 2021,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus Technologies.
In today’s world, organizations must measure and report their environmental performance and adherence to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles. Stakeholders, including regulators, investors, customers, rating agencies, research analysts, NGOs, and the public, are all starting to evaluate non-financial criteria in addition to companies’ financial health and performance. Companies also must comply with EHS regulations in the jurisdictions in which they operate. While most environmental regulations have been around for half a century, the gathering and reporting of sustainability, CSR, and ESG data is relatively new and is becoming an essential part of corporate annual reports.
Companies are increasingly discovering that data-driven ESG reporting has gone from a “nice to have” to a business requirement. But it’s challenging to keep up with such reporting when a company’s data is in spreadsheets or numerous unconnected silo applications. Companies suffer when their domain experts and others rely on manual and outdated processes to accomplish ever-increasing reporting requirements.
It appears imminent that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will in near future regulate ESG disclosure as a requirement by using some kind of universal reporting framework.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single enterprise and cloud-based software system to perform all EHS, ESG, and CSR reporting from a single software platform? That is what this article is about.
Until recently, it was common to refer to sustainability and ESG interchangeably. But over time, their meanings have grown apart. Sustainability can mean many different things, depending on the discussion context, whereas ESG has become the preferred term for capital markets and has frequently appeared in the headlines. The transition from sustainability to ESG performance indicates a maturation of business practices leading to more precise measurements of a company’s performance, its impact on the environment, and the risk it carries for investors when there is a low environmental performance or spotty compliance with EHS regulations. As a result, companies need to improve the way they collect and track metrics for ESG reporting.
To compare companies relative to their impacts on the planet’s climate or well-being, one must take a holistic approach that includes many factors. Among those to consider when assigning a score to a company are:
This holistic approach requires new, integrated, and interactive software tools. Such software, equivalent to the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software that made its appearance in the early nineties, should provide complex tracking of all kinds of emissions linked to company-owned assets and services in real-time (Scope 1 emissions). It should also include emissions attributable to its supply chain, known as Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions. Old ERP software applications integrate the processes needed to run a company in a single system: planning, purchasing inventory, sales, marketing, finance, and human resources. However, they do not typically integrate any technical information or activity related to emissions, waste, climate, environmental compliance, etc. Never mind that much of the ERP software in the market today is obsolete, running on the outdated technology of the seventies and eighties, and hard to integrate with anything.
The traditional approach of bolting-on another application to an existing software infrastructure is not the road to go down concerning ESG data collection and to report. Emissions tracking, sustainability, and other environmentally related verticals are typically “heavier” and more resource-intensive than antiquated ERP systems can handle without significant investment. Many legacy ERP systems, caving in under their weight, are hugely and unnecessarily complicated and are slowly being deprecated. New, cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) technologies hold more promise as they allow for the fast deployment and easy integration and sharing with third-party applications, suppliers, consultants, and even regulators. One such example is the Locus Platform or only LP. It is a SaaS that automates data collection, management, and reporting. It is of financial-grade, auditable, available, and actionable 24/7 from anywhere. This platform integrates EHS compliance and ESG reporting applications under a single system of record, giving users all necessary tools to optimize their compliance, sustainability management, and reporting.
To kill two birds with one stone! Or perhaps a friendlier version for bird-lovers is a German version, “mit einer Klappe zwei Fliegen schlagen” – which means to kill two flies with one swat. Or kill two mosquitoes with one slap! This English language idiom is not to be taken literally but instead refers to a single activity or action that accomplishes two (or more) goals or tasks. And that is precisely what any advanced EHS/ESG software should do.
Over the last twenty or so years, companies have spent considerable resources (in both time and money) buying and installing such EHS compliance-related verticals as permit management, waste, incident reporting, water quality, air emissions, greenhouse gases (GHG), sustainability, and so on.
More than one acquisition is often needed to cover their reporting needs, resulting in an assortment of tools that may or may not be compatible with one another.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, a new acronym, ESG, has recently shot to prominence. C-level executives are asking their EHS managers a question “Do we need more software to manage our ESG reporting? Smart companies should not rush and start searching Google for “ESG Software.” Instead, they should take a hard look at what they have on EHS compliance and sustainability management and augment it with ESG reporting. After all, everything that needs reporting or is worth reporting under the ESG acronym probably already exists and is hidden in their EHS compliance software, provided they selected the right one. Companies that have implemented integrated EHS compliance and sustainability management systems may already have most of the ESG data they need to report within their existing applications. If they do not, or if they have a “mutual fund” portfolio of EHS software already installed in unconnected silo applications, this is the time to clean house and switch to a unified reporting platform that integrates EHS and ESG into a single system of record and reporting. Companies that head down this path would not just be “killing two birds” but more: they would lower their costs, meet their new reporting needs, gain a better understanding of their environmental impacts, and potentially enhance their ESG reputation.
Locus specifically built its configurable Locus Platform to unify many current and future applications on a single SaaS platform. The LP offers a wide range of features and functionality to power sustainability measurement, management, and reporting across the entire corporation. But it also provides a launching pad for EHS-related and unrelated apps that are interoperable and share relevant information, thus avoiding any double input. Among its features are the following:
While EHS compliance applications are more comprehensive and dive deeper into the root causes of contamination and emissions, ESG reporting is much less complicated and requires fewer data to report and less scrutiny of such data. For example, federal and state standards such as Discharge Monitoring Reports (DMRs) require detailed water quality reporting, requiring companies to prove that their releases fall within allowable quantities (flow volume) and that chemicals in discharge samples do not exceed regulatory limits for the chemicals of concern. Consequently, the software to manage water quality for EHS reporting needs to provide automated tools to prove that: samples were collected correctly, sample holding time was not exceeded, the receiving laboratory tested samples using proper protocols, lab equipment, etc. Labs also must maintain calibration logs for equipment used in testing, testing details, and so forth.
None of these QC results and associated metadata are necessary for ESG reporting under voluntary reporting protocols such as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), The Climate Registry (TCR), or GRESB, the leading ESG benchmark for real estate and infrastructure investments. Those protocols mainly require information to be assembled on volumes (quantities) of clean water used, water sources, and contaminated water discharge volumes. They may also include some identification of chemicals in releases but with no details and no testing protocols required. The GRI 303 standard on water and effluents, for example, requires companies to collect information on water use from withdrawal to consumption and discharge and to report on associated impacts on people and ecosystems, including at a local level. This standard enables investors to assess a company’s overall exposure to water risk, as it addresses the whole supply chain.
There are plenty of overlaps in this undertaking. Smart software like the Locus Platform can help avoid any double input between EHS compliance data and ESG reporting. For example, once inputted, facility information is instantly available to all apps, whether the final output of the app is for EHS or ESG reporting. If a spill incident is created and recorded in the EHS Incident App, another app for waste or groundwater contamination can track and manage that spill’s consequential emissions. Even a small spill could become costly if the spill creates long-lasting contamination of soil and groundwater below it. Reporting for spill under EHS compliance regulations is very different from reporting for ESG, yet the two can use the same database. Examples like this are numerous.
Locus continuously adds new features to its Locus Platform to expand EHS, Sustainability, and ESG interoperability and avoid and minimize data’s double input. Companies need a single system of record to house their sustainability data, EHS Compliance, and ultimately report ESG information across multiple reporting standards. Locus’ ESG SaaS delivers in this regard. Moreover, it can grow with customers’ needs thanks to its off-the-shelf configurability.
In short, the Locus Platform is an all-in-one sustainability management software tool that helps companies streamline data collection, improve data quality, benchmark performance, and communicate more effectively with internal and external stakeholders. Locus’s software automates collecting, reducing, and managing data to monitor and track critical metrics around EHS, CSR, and ESG performance. Once the data is in the Locus Platform, the software creates ESG, sustainability, and other reports adhering to multiple reporting standards to improve communications with stakeholders and show greater transparency.
Many large companies must report to various regulatory or voluntary bodies. A company’s software of choice should support all the major reporting requirements to avoid double input or separate calculations for some jurisdictions. This is particularly true for GHG reporting.
When selecting its software system of record for EHS and ESG reporting, a company should strive to “enter once, report many times.” The gold standard is to have a system configured to report to multiple agencies from a single dataset. Before selecting software, companies should review their reporting requirements to see if their software handles them. Essential reporting requirements include state or federal regulations, internal CSR, and ESG based on whatever standard their organization adheres to, such as CDP, GRI, or more recent World Economic Forum (WEF) attempt to standardize many voluntary standards.
Companies also must consider export formats. For example, when selecting a GHG management software, the company must ensure their software of choice includes exports to XML, a standard format for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California Air Resources Board (CARB) reporting, and an option for reporting to other agencies. Having such outputs easily generated from the software will save time and money during the reporting season. The XML report generation capability allows facilities to directly upload their GHG data instead of completing the complex web forms found in the EPA Electronic Greenhouse Gas Reporting Tool (e-GGRT) and CARB reporting worksheets (Cal e-GGRT).
Locus provides direct XML exports to the GHG application in its Locus Platform software. Locus is the only software vendor that is an approved GHG verifier by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) under AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Since the program’s inception, Locus has performed more GHG verifications than any other company and learned much by observing GHG reporting practices at many companies. As a result, Locus has prioritized enhancing its GHG software to make it easier for customers to manage GHG emission inventory tracking and reporting requirements. Locus’ GHG application is fully integrated with compliance tracking, asset management, and IoT automation (including remote sensing). This ability to generate XML reports further streamlines customers’ report submission process to the EPA and CARB.
For example, data entry for EPA and CARB is consolidated in the GHG application, eliminating the need to maintain separate agency spreadsheets and software. This supports robust trend tracking and reporting, reducing data entry, reporting time, and error opportunities. For many greenhouse gas subparts, including Subparts C, D, W, and NN, the software automatically generates XML reports. These can be easily configured for any greenhouse gas industry segment.
From our experience, many of our customers have experienced frustration with the speed and difficulty of entering their data into the state and federal GHG reporting tools. The Locus Platform XML reporting tool lets customers bypass those clumsy interfaces completely. This saves time, helps companies avoid transcription errors, and ensures consistency with GHG data submitted to multiple reporting programs. As more and more regulatory and voluntary programs embrace automated report submittal through the XML format, Locus continues to expand this functionality to simplify reporting for our customers.
ESG reporting and EHS compliance are inherently cross-functional and coupled activities. Managing them together rather than separately is better. Locus built its platform on a highly secure, scalable, configurable, and efficient multi-tenant software platform. The traditional approaches to using a separate app or a spreadsheet for EHS compliance, sustainability management, or ESG reporting were ripe for digital transformation to a single platform of record. This is the main reason that we built the Locus Platform from scratch to take advantage of the latest cloud technologies and flexible and domain-driven reporting requirements.
Quality of data and standard protocols remain one of the biggest challenges to evaluating companies’ ESG performance. Such data are only credible if they come from the existing sources of EHS compliance data that are much more scrutinized and verified by regulators. Any potential conflict between two sets of the same data can spell disaster for the reporting entity. The perceived value of sustainable investments and practices is inevitably linked to data accuracy, consistency, and reproducibility.
The Locus Platform empowers companies to gain a holistic view of their sustainability performance by providing the means for them to assemble and report their EHS and ESG data from within a single system. Sustainability managers need comprehensive digital tools and real-time, AI-driven insights to keep up with the latest ESG disclosure requirements, trends, and stakeholder requests for information. Whether an organization is just getting started with sustainability initiatives or doing it for a while, Locus Technologies combined EHS and ESG software, explicitly tailored for multi-jurisdictional and multi-media reporting, can help companies make better and faster decisions and reduce the reporting cycle time. By quickly transforming corporate EHS compliance to ESG reporting, companies can improve their ESG score while lowering operational risks and costs. Locus software breaks down silos and provides a stable platform to work collaboratively with diverse teams of experts across the customer organization, its consultants, and its suppliers.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 28 January 2021 — Locus Technologies (Locus), is pleased to announce that The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (Port Authority) has selected Locus Platform, a multi-tenant SaaS for EHS, to streamline embodied carbon calculations for construction projects as part of its ongoing environmental stewardship and sustainable and resilient development. The Port Authority has been using the Waste Management application on the Locus Platform since 2019. A key factor for Port Authority was the out-of-the-box configurability of the Locus Platform.
The Port Authority announced last September the implementation of a Clean Construction Program, which will reduce carbon emissions throughout the design and construction processes. It is one of the most ambitious programs of its kind among U.S. transportation agencies.
The Port Authority performs large-scale infrastructure projects that include airport redevelopments and critical routine maintenance at bridges and tunnels. The Clean Construction Program will reduce embodied carbon from on-site construction activities and materials’ manufacturing and transportation. It will also promote the circular economy by reusing materials to increase their lifespans and reduce air pollution from construction across all facilities.
The Clean Construction Program diverts a minimum of 75% of concrete, asphalt, and steel construction waste from landfills. The Program advances environmentally friendly infrastructure design, increasing the Port Authority’s commitment to reducing emissions and leading the transportation sector towards a low-carbon and more sustainable future.
The Clean Construction program is a critical element of the Port Authority’s sustainability plan by aggressively reducing greenhouse gas emissions outlined in the agency’s first-in-sector commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement. The Port Authority has committed to reducing emissions by 35 percent by 2025 and 80 percent by 2050.
“The Locus Sustainability Application will enable the Port Authority of NY & NJ to have a better understanding of the environmental impact of our construction programs,” said Dorian Bailey, Sr. Environmental Project Manager at Port Authority.
“The construction sector is one of the largest in the world economy, with about $10 trillion spent on construction-related goods and services every year. The construction and transportation sectors, when combined, generate the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions. We are happy that the Port Authority selected Locus Platform for the Port Authority’s ambitious goal of leading the construction industry to reduce construction projects’ carbon emissions. Construction Projects Embodied Carbon application combines the advantages of off-the-shelf software with Locus Platform’s powerful configuration tools. The Port Authority will get precisely the software solution they need to fit their business processes for the Clean Construction Program with the ability to incorporate other EHS and Sustainability data on the same unified platform in the future. We are excited to have this excellent organization select Locus,” said Neno Duplan, CEO of Locus.