Locus Wins Baldwin Park Operable Unit Superfund Site Professional Consulting and Engineering Services

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, 31 May 2002 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in groundwater consulting and engineering services, announced today that it has been selected by certain settling Cooperating Respondents to provide professional consulting and engineering services at the Baldwin Park Operable Unit (BPOU), a part of the San Gabriel Valley Superfund site. The San Gabriel Valley Superfund site consists of plumes of groundwater contamination in an area more than a mile wide and 7 miles long. The groundwater in this area is utilized for multiple purposes, including public water supply. Traditionally, local water companies simply shut down water supply wells to avoid service of impacted groundwater. Groundwater contamination extends from the water table to more than 1,000 feet below ground surface. The primary contaminants in groundwater are chlorinated volatile organic compounds (VOCs), perchlorate, N nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), and 1,4-dioxane. Contaminant concentrations measured in groundwater in the BPOU area range up to several tens of parts per million.

In March 1994, EPA issued a Record of Decision (ROD) and selected a cleanup plan for VOCs in the BPOU and, in 1999, subsequently issued an explanation of significant differences to the ROD requiring additional treatment systems as a result of the discovery of perchlorate, NDMA, and 1,4-dioxane in groundwater. EPA then issued a Unilateral Administrative Order on 30 June 2000, directing 19 potential responsible parties (PRPs) to complete the remedial design and make arrangements for the construction and operation of the BPOU groundwater extraction wells, treatment systems, and related cleanup facilities. The selected remedy, now in the design and construction stage, calls for large groundwater pump-and-treat systems capable of extracting and treating approximately 21,000 gallons per minute. Current plans approved by EPA call for the remedy to be built as four sub-projects, ranging in capacity from 2,500 gallons per minute to 7,800 gallons per minute. Each subproject will have two or more groundwater extraction wells and a series of treatment processes expected to include air-stripping, ion exchange, and UV oxidation. Clean, treated water will be distributed by local water purveyors for use in the public water supply system.

Locus’s contract is with several of the Cooperating Respondents that include companies such as Oil & Solvent Process Company, Reichhold, Inc., Azusa Land Reclamation Co., Inc., Fairchild Holding Company, Hartwell Corporation, Huffy Corporation, and Wynn Oil Company. “We are very pleased to be selected as consultants to one of the largest groundwater cleanup projects in the United States. This further demonstrates Locus’s ability to provide technical and strategic representation to its clients on complex, multidisciplinary groundwater sites. We will be working closely with the Cooperating Respondents to implement the groundwater remedy and restore the public drinking water supply” said Mr. Gregory Murphy, Vice President of Locus Technologies in charge of the program.

Locus Technologies implements comprehensive cross-tab reporting tool for its Internet-based Environmental Information Management (EIM) system

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, 23 April 2002 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a global leader in environmental information management, announced today that it has completed the development and testing of a comprehensive, cross-tab reporting tool for its Internet-based Environmental Information Management™ (EIM™) system. Cross-tab reports are the bane of the environmental industry. They are a required part of almost every deliverable associated with a site investigation, cleanup, or monitoring project. Yet even the most popular commercial report-writers often have difficulty producing these reports directly from a relational database. EIM™ is a module of LocusFocus(SM), an environmental portal that also includes applications for real-time monitoring, automating, operating, and controlling process and treatment systems; conducting environmental site audits; storing and retrieving documents; and collaborating on-line.

Locus’s cross-tab reporting module offers a wealth of functionality to engineers, scientists, and managers. Reports can be customized by the user, or saved formats can be retrieved and used.

Using various controls, such as drop-down list boxes and radio buttons, users can choose what data they want to include in a specific report, as well as what information they want to display in the row and column headings and the cells of the report. Given that trillions of different formatting permutations are available, no one should find the module lacking in flexibility.

Users who do not want to remain connected to LocusFocus(SM) after submitting a request can have their reports generated offline. When a report is complete, it is emailed to the user or another designated individual. Reports can also be set up to run at scheduled times in the future without the user having to log in at all.

“The Internet, or a private corporate intranet or extranet, is a very attractive environment for deploying environmental data to the business community. The most attractive aspect of using the Internet is that it minimizes the cost and complexity of distributing query and reporting software on each user’s computer. In many cases, the user need only have an Internet browser for accessing the database. LocusFocus’s(SM) web-based, cross-tab reporting module is an attractive tool in this regard. No specialized software is required to run it, and it is easy to use. As such, users can focus on the environmental task at hand, instead of having to struggle to install and learn a new and complex reporting tool,” says Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus.

LocusFocus(SM) is a multi-channel, dynamic Web portal that provides for all aspects of environmental site management. LocusFocus(SM) has the potential of bringing the benefits of Internet technology to the environmental industry and, as such, eliminate the many inefficiencies and incompatible technologies that afflict the industry.

ENR Magazine – Data run around costs clients

locus_photo_waste-pit-bohemia-2002_

ENR Magazine

Several days ago I was working late on a proposal. Stuck with writing a section on how a prospective client could benefit from using Web-based technologies, I decided to take a break to grab a hamburger across the street. Although it had been a long time since I had eaten at a McDonald’s, the company had been on my mind ever since I had read Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Several sections of the book, but mostly the discussion of the McDonald’s empire, had made me think about my own industry—environmental management—and its identity and perception problems. These problems were at the root of my struggles that day to write a winning proposal.

If you were to ask people, “What business is McDonald’s in?” most would answer with little hesitation that it’s in the fast-food business. But though its franchises are, the parent corporation is not. Rather, as Kiyosaki convincingly argues and as McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc himself once stated, the Kroc himself once stated, the company’s primary business is real estate. Similarly, if you were to ask executives of environmental firms what business they are in, most would answer “consulting” or “engineering.” I would argue instead that firms that perform site investigations, and then write up reports of their work and make recommendations, are primarily in the information gathering, storage, and distribution business. Unfortunately, most are not well-equipped for that work.

That is not likely to change anytime soon, given that there are few internal or external drivers to compel such a change in my industry or others. American consumers often wonder, if they call their telephone company and are handed from one call center to another, why they have to repeat their contact information and describe their problem all over again. It’s because each call center is a different profit center, perhaps even a different company. Each profit center charges the parent company for each call.

Something similar happens in the environmental business, where having satisfied clients is important but so is racking up billable hours. Technologies that would lower the costs of data acquisition, storage and retrieval, such as hand held electronic devices, remote control and automation systems, more accessible database management systems and electronic data validation, are not adopted much by consulting firms. Many lack the resources to invest in research and development or to lose billable hours while implementing new technologies.

Perhaps most telling is the level within firms at which decisions about environmental data management are made. Because firms do not perceive themselves to be in the information technology business, top-level management rarely gets involved. Instead, IT decisions are more often placed in the hands of environment al project managers. They often reject a new technology because the implementation costs are perceived to be too high to be borne by their project alone. Or they may permit a test run, but the review is placed in the hands of the very individuals whose workloads would be threatened by the new tool.

UNINFORMED. Clients of environmental firms cannot be depended upon either to demand the use of better tools and more efficient work practices. On many occasions in recent years I’ve met with clients that have many contaminated sites and I’ve asked to hear more about the general condition of their sites, the monitoring and reporting commitments that exist at each, and the status of the records (both paper and electronic) that document site conditions. Invariably, the people I speak with are quite knowledgeable about current and past site conditions and remediation measures that have been undertaken, but are not well-informed about anything pertaining to record keeping or information management. There seems to be little correlation between a client’s level of understanding of these matters and its business type, size, or most surprisingly, the sophistication of its IT infrastructure.

What accounts for such ignorance? Most records pertaining to a client’s sites and all of its sampling and analytical data are kept by its environmental consultants. When given the opportunity to dig into these matters, I find that the client’s data is stored in older systems or spreadsheets that are not accessible by either the client’s employees or its other consultants. As a result, the client, which has already paid for the data once, is charged again whenever it makes a routine call to request information. Worse, when one consultant has a data set that another needs, the “owner” of the data charges the client to download it while the other consultant charges to upload it.

Clients don’t need to accept this chaos. Technologies exist to deal with it, particularly those based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language). I encourage clients to move their records from individual (and often incompatible) data bases of their various consultants to a central Web based repository where they can be accessed by all parties involved, thus eliminating data transfer costs, issues of data inaccessibility, and endless need for synchronization that plague so many projects. For a large corporation that currently spends $100 million per year on environmental monitoring, the savings could add up to 30% or more.

Neno Duplan is the president and CEO of Locus Technologies in Mountain View, California.

Locus and Symbol team up to help the environment

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 20 February 2002 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a global leader in environmental information management, announced today that the company has entered into a joint application development and marketing partnership with Symbol Technologies, Inc. (Symbol). Locus and Symbol plan to develop and provide application software and business solutions focusing on data and information gathering and management in the environmental and waste management industries.

Data acquisition, storage, and management have been the Achilles Heel of the environmental industry for years. The investigations and cleanups of contaminated waste sites produce enormous amounts of data on the nature and extent of contamination at a site. At larger, more complex sites, it is not uncommon to drill several thousand boreholes and wells, collect tens of thousands of samples, and then analyze each of these for several hundred contaminants. Long-term monitoring of conditions at such sites, even after the initial cleanup is complete, can last for decades and cost thousands to several million dollars per year per site. Given that there are an estimated 300,000-400,000 contaminated sites in the United States alone, it is clear that both industry and government face significant “stewardship” costs for decades to come, and that much of these costs will be charges related to data collection and information management.

The data overload is not just limited to contaminated waste sites. The operation of water/wastewater treatment plants and various emission and process monitoring systems at industrial plants also generate enormous quantities of data.

The Locus and Symbol partnership will enable the collection of environmental data which can be facilitated using Symbol Technologies hand-held devices equipped with bar code readers feeding information directly into LocusFocus (SM), Locus’s award winning environmental web-portal and environmental information management (EIM) system. Locus’s existing Palm Pilot and PocketPC applications for Environmental, Health and Safety audits (eSurvey) and water level readings (eWell) will be ported to Symbol devices. Possibilities for expansion of these applications into other areas are limitless.

“A substantial reward awaits those companies with the vision and the will to take advantage of new technologies. Those companies that adopt hand-held wireless applications and web-based systems for data acquisition and storage, that bring greater automation to their environmental information management processes, and that otherwise eliminate inefficiencies stand to gain a substantial return on their investment, “ said Mr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus.

“We are very pleased to join forces with Locus to bring the next generation of wireless and mobile computing products and solutions from Symbol to the growing environmental market.

Locus is in a leading role to improve field data collection. By automating field data acquisition, companies dealing with environmental problems stand to lower their operating cost, while helping to improve the environment at the same time,” said Mr. Stanley P. Jaworski, Vice President of Worldwide Channels and Alliances.

 

ABOUT SYMBOL TECHNOLOGIES
Symbol Technologies, Inc., winner of the National Medal of Technology, is a global leader in mobile data transaction systems, providing innovative customer solutions based on wireless local area networking for data and voice, application-specific mobile computing and bar code data capture. Symbol’s wireless information appliances connect the physical world of people on the move, packages, paper and shipping pallets, to information systems and the Internet. Today, some 10 million Symbol bar code scanners, mobile computers and wireless LANs are utilized worldwide in markets ranging from retailing to transportation and distribution logistics, manufacturing, parcel and postal delivery, government, healthcare and education. Symbol’s systems and products are used to increase productivity from the factory floor to the retail store, to the enterprise and out to the home. Information about
Symbol is available at www.symbol.com, or by telephone at (631) 738-2400 or (800) 722-6234.

Alstom and Locus announce strategic alliance agreement

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, AND STUTTGART, GERMANY, 31 January 2002 — Locus Technologies (Locus) and ALSTOM Power Environmental Consult, GmbH (ALSTOM Consult) announced today that the two companies will enter into a Strategic Alliance Agreement (SAA). Locus provides comprehensive consulting, engineering, Internet-based remote control, automation, and information management services for the environmental market. ALSTOM Consult is a leading provider of services in the areas of compliance audits; permitting; storage tank management; environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) management; and all aspects of the investigation, assessment, and cleanup of contaminated sites.

The SAA primarily covers the area of advanced information technology in the environmental industry and will provide increased value to Locus’s and ALSTOM Consult’s industrial clients by formalizing and expanding the companies’ collaborative efforts on numerous environmental projects in Europe. Under the agreement, ALSTOM Consult will become a distributor and an operator of Locus’s award-winning, web-based suite of applications, LocusFocus(SM). This suite includes modules for: (1) automating, operating, and controlling process and treatment systems for water, groundwater, wastewater, air, and soil; (2) managing environmental data; (3) conducting site audits; (4) storing and retrieving documents; and (5) collaborating on-line. In addition to innovations in technology, Locus and ALSTOM Consult will also benefit from teaming on professional and technical environmental projects in Europe and North America.

“We are very pleased to formalize our existing and long-standing relationship with ALSTOM Consult. This agreement will help Locus better serve our European-based clients and will facilitate deployment of our web-based technologies in Europe. With ALSTOM Consult’s distributed network of offices throughout Europe, we can now extend our services to an important market for our company,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus.

“ALSTOM Consult is very happy to start using and bringing Locus’s web technologies to the European market. We are also excited to expand our current relationship to provide value added technologies to existing and new markets in Europe and North America,” said Dr. Peter Rissing, Managing Director of ALSTOM’s environmental consulting business.

The European market for environmental goods and services is currently $149 billion and is expanding at the rate of approximately $4 billion dollars per year (California Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency, 2001). With Locus’s strong presence in North America and ALSTOM Consult’s high profile in Europe, the SAA is expected to bring significant benefits to both companies and their respective clients.
ABOUT ALSTOM
ALSTOM Power Environmental Consult is a recognized expert in environmental management services with an emphasis on contaminated land management, due diligence service in mergers and acquisitions, implementation of EH&S management systems, and ISO 14001, as well as occupational EH&S services. ALSTOM Power Environmental Consult is part of ALSTOM Power, which offers a range of boilers, energy recovery, and environmental equipment. ALSTOM has annual sales in excess of 22 billion euros and employs approximately 120,000 people in over 70 countries. The Company is listed on the Paris,London and New York stock exchanges. More information on ALSTOM can be found at www.alsto.com.

Mobile Computing Improving EH&S Management

EH&S Software Online

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 1 January 2001 — Mobile computing has been around for a long time, but EH&S professionals are just beginning to realize its potential. Judging by the recent increase in the number and variety of applications, the EH&S software industry has embraced mobile tools as an integral component of the future of EH&S automation. But the market still seems to be a few years behind the technology.

Most of us think of mobile computing in terms of laptops or notebooks, or those Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) that are nothing more than a battery-operated Rolodex and appointment calendar. Despite the computer industry’s continuing efforts to make lighter, more portable, and more powerful tools, most people continue to view these devices as an extension of the desktop with limited potential for hardcore field work. We listen to the rhetoric about new capabilities for data entry and retrieval using a variety of handheld devices, but remain skeptical that these promises can actually be realized.

Meanwhile, many analysts are predicting an increase in the use of mobile computing, especially in the business sector. According to IDC, the market for smart handheld devices will grow from 12.9 million units in 2000 to over 63.4 million by 2004. These include devices like PDAs, smartphones, keypad handhelds, and pen-based notepads. Some offer wireless access to the Internet or to a local area network (LAN), while others can be used in the field to collect data, then transported back to the office to upload the data to a PC.

According to an article in PDA News, companies that incorporate handheld computing devices into their daily business operations have experienced “greater efficiency and faster fulfillment of client requests due to: reduced double handling of information; greater interaction with ordering systems; and a reduction in the number of mistakes made due to keying errors.”.

Despite these advantages and recent advances in technology, EH&S applications for mobile computing have evolved more slowly than the industry as a whole and have yet to achieve broad acceptance in the market. But that’s all about to change. If you’ve been following the EH&S Software News over the past few issues, you may have noticed that the number and variety of information systems that include applications for handheld computers or PDAs is on the rise. With the right combination of software and hardware, you can now track hazardous materials, record sampling data, audit EHS compliance, or retrieve material safety data sheets (MSDSs) whenever and wherever they are needed, anywhere within your facility or out in the field. Following are some examples.

Hazardous Material/Waste Tracking
Handheld computers/PDAs are helping Penn State Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) personnel enhance field operations and automate government-mandated record keeping [www.psu.edu]. Harold L. Brungard III, a member of Penn State’s hazardous waste (HazWaste) management staff, has been participating in the field tests of the new paperless system. He estimates that the PDAs are saving 5 to 10 hours a week of data entry time as well as improving data management accuracy. Brungard explains that the HazWaste staff respond to between 75 and 150 requests to collect and manage hazardous waste each month. The materials include flammable solvents, corrosives, toxic materials, and other hazardous wastes. On average, the team picks up about 500 containers and more than 15,000 pounds of waste each month.

With the new system, University personnel who want to dispose of waste material, visit the University’s EH&S website where they complete an online form to send information about the waste electronically to the EH&S department. The information from a completed form is then loaded into a database. The HazWaste staff uses the database to generate an itinerary for their daily collection rounds. They can also download information from the database into their 3-Com Palm III computers and edit this information while en-route.

The Rockwell Science Center developed a prototype, called EnvInv, for inventorying hazardous materials using a PDA.  According to Corinne Clinton Ruokangas, a member of the technical staff, “PDAs serve as low-cost information collectors – providing a level of accuracy and feedback not available with paper forms – and support the automatic transfer of data to workstations and central databases. She suggests that “PDAs can also be used as handheld manuals” to display diagrams, suggest scheduling and routing locations, and provide maintenance or diagnostic information to a user in environments where laptops may not be feasible.
They can provide “remote access to reference materials which may be hyperlinked.”

Data Collection in the Field
PDAs are particularly helpful for recording data in the field. Several software developers are now offering products to meet these needs. For example, EarthSoft recently announced the development of Pocket EQuIS, for collecting and managing data at the point of generation [www.earthsoft.com]. Similarly, FieldWorker Products Limited offers FieldWorker Pro, which allows relational data collection projects to be developed on the desktop or on a mobile device. Field workers can refer to images stored on the device’s desktop, or link data to a specific image, then connect to a GPS receiver to create point, line, and polygon geographic information. The company claims the product can be used with a variety of mobile devices, from laptops to palm tops to smart phones [www.fieldworker.com].

Potential data collection applications extend to just about any EH&S-related activity, such as natural resources inventories, water testing, and air emissions monitoring. For example, Two Dog Forest Inventory Software, by Foresters Incorporated, is a software suite with data collection, processing, and inventory capabilities. The product is used on handheld and desktop computers to inventory forests and to collect data on flora, fauna, and other site attributes in support of multi-resource inventories and certification.

DataPort, a hand-held data entry unit by AllMax Professional Solutions Inc. targets the field data collection needs of municipal and industrial wastewater and water treatment facilities. These devices include built-in scanners and fit in your pocket. Users can download data (e.g., material inventories or meters/gauges that must be monitored) from a PC to the DataPort device, then use the device to print barcode labels, scan barcodes,
enter field data, and upload the information back to the PC.

LEADERS™ LDRS by Environmental Monitoring Service is fugitive emissions software based
on a relational database. Features include LEADERS FieldSmart™ handheld software and DeskSmart™ desktop software.

Locus Technologies announces hosting agreement with Intel® Online Services, Inc.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 23 March 2001 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in environmental information management, today announced that they will host LocusFocus(TM), Locus’s environmental Application Service Provider (ASP) web portal, with Intel Online Services.

Locus will be using AppChoice(sm) Managed Hosting Service from Intel Online Services to provide optimal reliability, scalability and performance for LocusFocus. The LocusFocus portal includes remote control and monitoring of treatment systems, Environmental Information Management (EIM[TM]), and document management and collaboration tools. The EIM(TM) database is designed to manage the vast quantities of sampling, analytical and
geotechnical data that are typically collected during the investigation, cleanup and monitoring of contaminated sites.

“We chose Intel Online Services for the reliability of the Intel Online Services managed service offering,” said Mr. Neno Duplancic, president and chief executive officer of Locus.” By taking advantage of these capabilities, we can focus our attention to reducing costs in the environmental industry through the application of a centralized web-based system that Locus now offers.”

 

ABOUT INTEL ONLINE SERVICES
Intel Online Services, Inc., provides global Web services that manage the complexities of eBusiness computing. Intel Online Services uses integrated technologies and proven processes to deliver a range of Web services for optimal reliability, scalability and performance.

Locus Technologies takes environmental industry wireless

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., 30 November 2000 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a global leader in environmental information management, today announced they have released the environmental industry’s first wireless Internet application for recording water level data in the field. The application is called eWell and uses the popular Palm® operating system. It can be used as an independent wireless application or with LocusFocus™, Locus’s environmental web portal. The system has been deployed on several large groundwater monitoring sites in California. The LocusFocus™ portal includes remote control and monitoring of treatment systems, Environmental Information Management (EIM™), and document management and collaboration tools. The EIM™ database is designed to manage the vast quantities of sampling, analytical and geotechnical data that are typically collected during the investigation, cleanup and monitoring of contaminated sites.

eWell is the first in a series of wireless applications for the LocusFocus™ Environmental Co Pilot Suite that is designed to bring the full functionality of Locus’s environmental-based Internet technologies to wireless devices. Locus intends to expand wireless applications to operate on a Pocket-PC® platform and Symbol Technologies™ devices equipped with barcode readers.

The release of eWell brings the power of LocusFocus™ to wireless cyberspace and completes the delivery triangle (Internet, microcomputer and wireless handheld device) for Locus’s Internet-based environmental services. “This new wireless technology application equips field technicians and engineers with the tools they need to stay productive while working remotely. The system eliminates manual entry of information into the project database and makes validated information available to engineers instantly. By extending our Internet offerings to include wireless devices, we are one step closer to our vision of a totally automated, Internet-based data collection, management, retrieval and reporting system that can be accessed from anywhere at anytime,” said Neno Duplancic, President and CEO Locus Technologies.

“The immediate benefits of the system include less data entry and transcription, simplified QA/QC, better access to key information and a reduction in the time required to upload field-generated records into the project or site database. Ultimately, the system promises to significantly reduce the overall cost of environmental monitoring and sampling,” said Duplancic.