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.

Locus advises Adtranz and Lucchini Group on sale of manufacturing facilities in United Kingdom and Sweden

PARIS, FRANCE AND WALNUT CREEK, CA., 17 November 2000 — Locus Technologies International, LLC (Locus), a fully owned subsidiary of Locus Technologies, today announced that they acted as environmental consultant to ADtranz and Lucchini Group for environmental due diligence and site investigation during sale of ADtranz Wheelset manufacturing facilities in Manchester, UK and Surahammar, Sweden to the Lucchini Group of Brescia, Italy. The ADtranz facilities being sold produce approximately 50,000 wheels and some 3,200 assembled wheelsets annually for various railway applications. Together, the ADtranz Wheelset plants have more than two centuries of experience in the production of wheels, with the first such activities dating back to 1866 in Surahammar and 1908 in Manchester. Locus performed fast-track field investigation at the Surahammar facility and supervised field investigation performed at the Manchester site. Locus also assisted in review of legal documents and insurance guarantees related to environmental liabilities.

“We are very pleased that Locus was selected to assist ADtranz and Lucchini with this important transaction,” said Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus. “Locus was able to mobilize necessary resources in a short period of time and perform field investigation at manufacturing facilities that have been in operation over a century. This performance demonstrates our ability to provide excellent services to our clients around the globe on short notice. We are also pleased that Lucchini has expanded its relationship with Locus from environmental projects in France and Italy to include newly acquired sites in the UK and Sweden. We believe application of Locus’s award-winning Internet portal, LocusFocus™, to these environmental projects is a big reason for this expansion.”

The Lucchini Group, with 20 plants throughout Europe (10 in Italy, nine in France, and one in Poland), is a leader in the manufacturing of quality long-steel products. The Lucchini Group has annual revenues of 1.7 billion Euros. ADtranz is a leading global provider of railway services, systems, and rolling stock and operates under the legal name “DaimlerChrysler Rail Systems” and had 1999 total sales of 3.5 billion Euros.”

Monitoring Waste From a Safe Distance

ENR Magazine

Walnut Creek, Calif., 7 August 2000 — Locus Technologies announced June 26 that its Environment Information Management System has finished a testing period and is now being offered as a Web-based application.

Locus provides consulting, engineering and construction management services to help solve design and construction problems associated with hazardous materials handling and other waste management tasks.

The company’s EIMS system manages the large amounts of sampling, analytical, and geotechnical data that is typically collected during the investigation and cleanup of contaminated waste sites.

The system can be used to plan and schedule sampling events, input field data, upload electronic data from analytical laboratories, produce downloadable reports and files, perform statistical and trend analysis, and create and display plots and other graphics. It also is capable of sophisticated numerical modeling for surface water, groundwater and air and contaminant migration.

“We have a very comprehensive Website where we manage all information associated with contaminated sites,” says Neno Duplancic, Locus president and CEO. “We not only manage it but also provide a means to interpret the data and use automated systems that are plugged into the same Website to control treatment itself. We can press the buttons on the screen and turn on the pumps all over the world.”

Duplancic says the software can “eliminate the need for somebody to sit in a pickup truck and go to the site to change a filter or turn on a pump.”

By Tom Sawyer

Locus Technologies Discusses Brownfields’ Allure, The Business Journal

What’s a little contamination when land prices are surging?

Ted Cuzzillo — Contributing Writer
Contaminated land is a scourge in many urban areas, but in the booming South Bay it’s often more than worth the trouble of cleaning it up.

“Demand is so huge,” said real estate broker John Troughten of Cushman Wakefield, “the contamination doesn’t even matter.”

These aren’t the highly contaminated Superfund sites but rather their less dangerous and more easily reused relatives called brownfields. While there are certain technical standards for a city or other government entity to declare a site a brownfield, the term also has wide informal use for any land with contamination that temporarily limits its usability.

Because they can more easily be put back into productive use, brownfields have prompted several state and federal programs to subsidize remediation and help define liability.

But in the booming Silicon Valley, simple economics usually obviate slow-moving government programs.

 

Changing Economics
The rule-of-thumb discount on land with a contamination stigma–whether formally designated or not–is 30 percent. That’s generally plenty to pay for remediation.

Perhaps more important, said Mr. Troughton, are rapidly appreciating values on land and the value of any development on it. While the cost of remediation and building remains almost the same, values are soaring. “The monstrous amount of profit that’s happening is because of super demand,” he said.

The growing scarcity of commercial land has forced sites that were once not even considered for development out onto the market, said Mr. Troughton. “It used to be that you could pick between two or three pieces of property, but now you’re lucky if you get one.”

Preparing a site for reuse is called remediation, not cleanup, since few sites are ever cleaned to their original states. Factors determining how clean “clean” is include pressure on site owners from their attorneys, technical consultants, regulatory agencies, the general public and their representatives, according to Michael Lane, a principal at Greenbrae Environmental in Marin County.

 

How it got that way
Brownfield remediation in the South Bay is generally easier than in San Francisco,
Emeryville or other areas around the bay with more varied industrial histories.

The bulk of Silicon Valley contamination can be traced to the 1950s and ’60s manufacture of semiconductors by such companies as Raytheon, Fairchild Semiconductor and GTE. They used a solvent known as trichloroethylene, commonly known as TCE and at the time believed to be nontoxic.

Toxic or not, it wasn’t supposed to escape the underground fiberglass vaults used to store it. Fortunately, TCE readily dissipates when exposed to air. Also, land can be used even as remediation continues — usually with the lowest possible profile.

“Brownfield in Silicon Valley is probably the best kept secret,” said Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus Technologies.

And while they may not be as bad as Superfund sites, brownfields aren’t innocuous. Mr. Duplancic cites an article published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine (www.nejm.org) that says 80 to 90 percent of cancers are due to environmental exposure, not genetics (Unfortunately, this article has been removed).

“Yet in the past 15 years, the explosion of molecular genetics has overshadowed environmental explanations by revealing genetic mechanisms underlying cancer,” the article says. Mr. Duplancic called the research “a significant boost for environmental industry.”

 

Pump, scrub, or let it be
The Netscape Communications campus in Mountain View, cited by many as an example of successful reuse, employs ongoing remediation.

Machines continuously pump groundwater up and over activated charcoal within structures resembling 1950s-style science-fiction rockets. These “air scrubbers” reduce what are already unmeasurable levels of concentration with no evidence of risk to health, Mr. Duplancic said.

The process is analogous to rinsing detergent from a sponge. After many rinses, it still seems to have more in it.

Old gas stations were another source of contamination in the form of petroleum distillates. Like TCE, gasoline dissipates easily in the air. Another, newer technique is to use petroleum-eating microbes.

Builders can also help avoid the effects of remaining underground contamination. For example, instead of disturbing contaminants by hammering piles, some builders use a “spread” foundation — a concrete pad underneath the entire building — and vapor barriers to stop gases from leaking upward into the building, perhaps concentrating in a closet that’s opened only once or twice a year.

The new Microsoft campus on Torre Avenue in Cupertino used both techniques to remediate dangers from effects of leaks from an old paving company’s 20,000-gallon underground diesel tank.

A controversial new trend is “monitored natural attenuation,” said Mr. Lane. Contaminants are left in place and monitored at regular intervals.

The legal environment has evolved over the last few years. Historically, prospective land buyers feared being held liable even if they had no involvement in polluting.

“The liability hasn’t changed,” said Jim Hanson, the Region 9 brownfields coordinator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco. “but now there’s a lot of new policy and enforcement discretion.”

A new lender liability policy clarifies that unless a lender had some involvement in management of site, the EPA won’t consider it potentially liable. Also, when property sits above a contaminated aquifer but was not the source of pollution, the land owner will not be held responsible.

Other new tools include insurance that kicks in if property is remediated and then more contamination is found.

Are there more brownfields in the making? It’s a lot less likely today. In Mountain View, for example, pharmaceuticals is the only manufacturing industry now, said Michael Percy, principal planner for the city. And the controls are “a thousand times more strict” than in the past.

Ted Cuzzillo is a freelance writer based in Point Richmond. Contact him at
theodore@cannolo.com.

Copyright 2000 American City Business Journals Inc.
Click for permission to reprint (PRC# 1.1641.325135)

Locus Technologies announces release of Internet-based environmental information management system

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., 26 June 2000- — Locus Technologies (Locus) announced today that it has completed the development and testing of the environmental industry’s first Internet-based Environmental Information Management (EIM™ system. This system is designed to manage the vast quantities of sampling, analytical, and geotechnical data that are typically collected during the investigation and cleanup of contaminated sites. EIM includes the capability to plan and schedule sampling events, input field data, upload electronic data from analytical laboratories, produce downloadable reports and files, perform statistical and trend analyses, and create and display plots and other graphics.

EIM™ represents yet another addition to Locus’s award-winning Internet-based transaction and information platform, LocusFocus. This suite of e-business services and systems include project and document management tools, as well as remote-control and automation of treatment systems that can be accessed and controlled using a web browser and wireless devices.

“The release of EIM constitutes the completion of the third pillar in Locus’s goal to develop LocusFocus into the world’s largest, most comprehensive portal for environmental information and services,” says Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus. “We plan to continue adding functionality to the existing modules, as well as expand into other areas, such as cross-team communication and collaboration, environmental and compliance management, health and safety, and real-time monitoring. We are extremely excited about the future prospects for LocusFocus and look to organize all of our work around it in the months and years ahead.”

LocusFocus is used by a number of Fortune 50 companies and constitutes the fastest growing business sector of Locus. LocusFocus has the potential to bring the benefits of Internet technology to the environmental industry and, as such, eliminate the many inefficiencies and incompatible technologies that afflict the industry. These benefits include increased opportunities for collaboration; remote-access to environmental information; better project coordination; improved reliability of information management systems; more control of, and easier and better access to, project information and documents; and, ultimately, lower project costs.

Since its inception in 1997, Locus has been at the forefront of the environmental industry with respect to providing Internet-based services and systems. Currently, the company is exploring the possibility of allying with one or more other companies to accelerate its product development cycles, expand its offerings, and gain a greater share of the market for on-line environmental services.

Locus Technologies announces formation of Locus Technologies International and the award of project to perform “Etude De Sol” studies in France

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., 10 May 2000 — Locus Technologies announced today the formation of Locus Technologies International, LLC, (LTI) a fully owned subsidiary of Locus Technologies, to focus on international markets. LTI has opened its first branch in Paris, France.

LTI, in partnership with ALSTOM Environmental Consult, S.A.R.L. of Paris, also announced today the award of a project to perform environmental assessment studies (Etude de Sol) under French regulatory framework for all Ascometal plants in France. Ascometal, a member of the Lucchini Group of companies from Brescia, Italy, is Europe’s largest producer of sheet metal. The Lucchini Group operates steel plants in Italy, France, and Poland.

“We are very excited to continue our relationship with the Lucchini Group and Ascometal, which started during 1999 environmental due diligence for acquisition of Ascometal plants by the Lucchini Group. Our client has realized the enormous potential of Locus Technologies’ Internet-based solutions for the environmental industry, and we are pleased to expand these services into the rapidly growing European environmental market,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus Technologies and LTI.

In addition to Part A and Part B soil studies required under French environmental laws, LTI will also apply its LocusFocusTM Internet-based technology to provide Ascometal with a comprehensive environmental portal to manage all aspects of their environmental program, such as document management, collaboration, and analytical information management.