Mobile Field Data Collection | Page 3 of 6

Evergreen Natural Resources Selects Locus Technologies for Environmental Software

Locus will provide environmental field and analytical data management software for Evergreen Natural Resources.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 17 March 2020 — Locus Technologies, industry leader in environmental software, today announced that Evergreen Natural Resources, a privately-held energy company based in Denver, Colorado, has chosen Locus environmental software for their data collection and management.

Evergreen Natural Resources has selected Locus’ environmental software, EIM, after proof of concept and usability testing. They will seek to utilize Locus EIM as a laboratory database management system, and for regulatory report generation, while also taking advantage of Locus’ premium GIS tool, GIS+, as well as Locus Mobile.

“With over 2,600 unique locations that require routine sampling, Locus’ environmental and GIS software allows us to collect, manage, visualize, and analyze data. Locus EIM aligns with our strategy to increase availability and reduce our internal application infrastructure footprint,” said Cesar Zayas, IT Director of Evergreen.

“Evergreen Natural Resources is a rapidly emerging company in the energy sector, and their decision to utilize Locus’ powerful environmental software shows their objective to manage their data quality at the highest level. Our scalable software will match their continued growth,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus.

An EHS&S Look Into the Tech Used in the Iowa Caucuses

The Importance of User Implementation and Quality Assurance from an EHS&S Software Provider

After reading about the IowaReporterApp used during the 2020 Iowa caucuses, it struck me how remarkably similar it is in intended function to the EHS&S software developed by my employer, Locus Technologies. Both their application and Locus’ mobile technology collect large quantities of sensitive data from several remote users at multiple facilities, allowing for instant calculation and reporting. What surprised me though, is just how vastly different their user implementation and data management methodology was from what is standard operating procedure at Locus.

In this blog, I will highlight some of the pitfalls of the IowaReporterApp, and compare it to Locus’ EHS&S software. Note, this article is not a political critique, but is an examination of data collection and data quality methods used during the caucuses.

Implementation

Users were introduced to the IowaReporterApp just days before the caucuses and received no app-specific training. Many users were downloading the application on the night of the caucuses.

The Iowa caucuses have been held biennially for almost a half-century as the first major contest of the primaries. The date of the caucuses was a surprise to no one. As a result, app development deadlines should have given enough time for user implementation, through one-on-one training or presentations with appropriate support staff. If app deadlines were not met, there should have been a fallback to redundant reporting systems, like in the case of Nevada, who were also planning to use the app but have opted out after the debacle in Iowa.

When Locus introduces new users to our software, we take implementation seriously. Our customer support team is composed of domain experts who have actively built and used Locus software. We know the deadlines and the problems users typically face during the implementation process. From one-on-one and on-site training to quick turnaround, our support team does everything they can to ensure that users are comfortable with our product as soon as possible.

Untested Software/Quality Assurance

User implementation deadlines are all the more important given that the software had no real-world use to this point. While it is not advisable to go live with untested software, at the very least, having users stress test a product before field-use could have staved off a few issues.

This is something we see frequently with newer products and newer companies. Locus has over 20 years of experience creating EHS&S software used by U.S. government organizations and Fortune 500 companies. Our quality assurance team rigorously tests any update we bring to customers and doesn’t rush changes to sell a platform update, since every user is always on the same version of Locus software.

Data Redundancy

No one can question that Excel or Google Spreadsheets can perform math correctly, but what is frequently overlooked or not even considered, are the macros, custom functions, and calculations that are often added to spreadsheets when deployed for managing data and other tasks. If one fails, there need to be backups for reporting and storing data.

When the untested application predictably failed, users flocked to the phone lines as a redundancy. Manual data collection on such a scale created confusion and could not carry the load, and had no way of accounting for errors in data entry. At Locus, we understand the importance of EHS&S data, and maintain backups and full audit trails for all critical data, with quick restoration available so you can keep going if anything should happen.

Security

The IowaReporterApp was not released in time to get approval in Apple’s app store, and it was sent out through beta testing platforms which required suspension of smartphone security settings.

ProPublica, a nonprofit organization who produces public interest investigative journalism, did a report on the security of the IowaReporterApp after the Iowa Caucuses. Shockingly, they found security problems to be “elementary” and that the app was so insecure that vote totals, passwords, and other sensitive information could have been intercepted or changed. Luckily, there seems to be no evidence of hacking or tampering with results.

Locus understands the need for security with sensitive data, and hosts our entire infrastructure in the most secure and reliable cloud, Amazon Web Services. AWS has an unmatched portfolio of cloud services that Locus fully utilizes to the benefit of their customers.

Summary

Overall, I think that the mishaps related to the IowaReporterApp show just how easy it is for a data collection and management application to fail if not properly implemented and ran by those with years of practical expertise. Subverted data quality will always be extremely costly to your organization, both financially and otherwise, and should be avoided unequivocally.

Locus Technologies was founded in 1997. Locus’ environmental data management software currently handles over a half billion sensitive records taken from over one million unique locations and is used hundreds of organizations including the government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Aaron Edwards received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from UNC Asheville and is Marketing Associate for Locus Technologies. He is an active voter, and is unaffiliated with any political party.

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Mapping All of Space and Time

Today is GIS Day, a day started in 1999 to showcase the many uses of geographical information systems (GIS). To celebrate the passage of another year, this blog post examines how maps and GIS show time, and how Locus GIS+ supports temporal analysis for use with EIM, Locus’s cloud-based, software-as-a-service application for environmental data management.

Space and Time

Since GIS was first imagined in 1962 by Roger Tomlinson at the Canada Land Inventory, GIS has been used to display and analyze spatial relationships. Every discrete object (such as a car), feature (such as an acre of land), or phenomenon (such as a temperature reading) has a three-dimensional location that can be mapped in a GIS as a point, line, or polygon. The location consists of a latitude, longitude, and elevation. Continuous phenomenon or processes can also be located on a map. For example, the flow of trade between two nations can be shown by an arrow connecting the two countries with the arrow width indicating the value of the traded goods.

However, everything also has a fourth dimension, time, as locations and attributes can change over time. Consider the examples listed above. A car’s location changes as it is driven, and its condition and value change as the car gets older. An acre of land might start covered in forest, but the land use changes over time if the land is cleared for farming, and then later if the land is paved over for a shopping area. The observed temperature at a given position changes with time due to weather and climate changes spanning multiple time scales from daily to epochal. Finally, the flow of trade between two countries changes as exports, imports, and prices alter over time.

Maps and Time

Traditional flat maps already collapse three dimensions into two, so it’s not surprising that such maps do not handle the extra time dimension very well. Cartographers have always been interested in showing temporal data on maps, though, and different methods can be employed to do so. Charles Minard’s famous 1861 visualization of Napoleon’s Russian campaign in 1812-1813 is an early example of “spatial temporal” visualization. It combines two visuals – a map of troop movements with a time series graph of temperature – to show the brutal losses suffered by the French army. The map shows the army movement into Russia and back, with the line width indicating the troop count. Each point on the chart is tied to a specific point on the map. The viewer can see how troop losses increased as the temperature went from zero degrees Celsius to -30 degrees. The original thick tan line has decreased to a black sliver at the end of the campaign.

Charles Minard’s map of Napoleon’s Russian campaign in 1812-1813.

The Minard visual handles time well because the temperature chart matches single points on the map; each temperature value was taken at a specific location. Showing time changes in line or area features, such as roads or counties, is harder and is usually handled through symbology. In 1944, the US Army Corps of Engineers created a map showing historical meanders in the Mississippi River. The meanders are not discrete points but cover wide areas. Thus, past river channels are shown in different colors and hatch patterns. While the overlapping meanders are visually complex, the user can easily see the different river channels. Furthermore, the meanders are ‘stacked’ chronologically, so the older meanders seem to recede into the map’s background, similar to how they occur further back in time.

Inset from Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River.

Another way to handle time is to simply make several maps of the same features, but showing data from different times. In other words, a temporal data set is “sliced” into data sets for a specific time period. The viewer can scan the multiple maps and make visual comparisons. For example, the Southern Research Station of the US Forest Service published a “report card” in 2011 for Forest Sustainability in western North Carolina. To show different land users over time, small maps were generated by county for three years. Undeveloped land is colored green and developed land is tan. Putting these small maps side by side shows the viewer a powerful story of increasing development as the tan expands dramatically. The only drawback is that the viewer must mentally manipulate the maps to track a specific location.

Land Use change over time for Buncombe County, NC

GIS and Time

The previous map examples prove that techniques exist to successfully show time on maps. However, such techniques are not widespread. Furthermore, in the era of “big data” and the “Internet of Things”, showing time is even more important. Consider two examples. First, imagine a shipment of 100 hazardous waste containers being delivered on a truck from a manufacturing facility to a disposal site. The truck has a GPS unit which transmits its location during the drive. Once at the disposal site, each container’s active RFID tag with a GPS receiver tracks the container’s location as it proceeds through any decontamination, disposal, and decommission activities. The locations of the truck and all containers have both a spatial and a temporal component. How can you map the location of all containers over time?

As a second example, consider mobile data collection instruments deployed near a facility to check for possible contamination in the air. Each instrument has a GPS so it can record its location when the instrument is periodically relocated. Each instrument also has various sensors that check every minute for chemical levels in the air plus wind speed and temperature. All these data points are sent back to a central data repository. How would you map chemical levels over time when both the chemical levels and the instrument locations are changing?

In both cases, traditional flat maps would not be very useful given the large amounts of data that are involved. With the advent of GIS, though, all the power of modern computers can be leveraged. GIS has a powerful tool for showing time: animation. Animation is similar to the small “time slice” maps mentioned above, but more powerful because the slices can be shown consecutively like a movie, and many more time slices can be created. Furthermore, the viewer no longer has to mentally stack maps, and it is easier to see changes over time at specific locations.

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

To use the time slider, the user must first construct a query using the Locus EIM application. The user can then export the query results to the GIS+ using the time slider option. As an example, consider an EIM query for all benzene concentrations sampled in a facility’s monitoring wells since 2004. Once the results are sent to the GIS+, the time slider control might look like what is shown here. The time slices are by year with the displayed slice for 3/30/2004 to 3/30/2005. The user can hit play to display the time slices one year at a time, or can manually move the slider markers to display any desired time period.

Locus GIS+ time slider

Here is an example of a time slice displayed in the GIS+. The benzene results are mapped at each location with a circle symbol. The benzene concentrations are grouped into six numerical ranges that map to different circle sizes and colors; for example, the highest range is from 6,400 to 8,620 µg/L. The size and color of each circle reflect the concentration value, with higher values corresponding to larger circles and yellow, orange or red colors. Lower values are shown with smaller circles and green, blue, or purple colors. Black squares indicate locations where benzene results were below the chemical detection limit for the laboratory. Each mapped concentration is assigned to the appropriate numerical range, which in turn determines the circle size and color. This first time slice for 2004-2005 shows one very large red “hot spot” indicating the highest concentration class, two yellow spots, and several blue spots, plus a few non-detects.

Time slice for a year for a Locus GIS+ query

Starting the time slider runs through the yearly time slices. As time passes in this example, hot spots come and go, with a general downward trend towards no benzene detections. In the last year, 2018-2019, there is a slight increase in concentrations. Watching the changing concentrations over time presents a clear picture of how benzene is manifesting in the groundwater wells at the site.

GIS+ time slider in action

While displaying time in maps has always been a challenge, the use of automation in GIS lets users get a better understanding of temporal trends in their spatial data. Locus continues to bring new analysis tools to their GIS+ system to support time data in their environmental applications.

Time slice for a Locus GIS+ query

Interested in Locus’ GIS solutions?

Locus GIS+ features all of the functionality you love in EIM’s classic Google Maps GIS for environmental management—integrated with the powerful cartography, interoperability, & smart-mapping features of Esri’s ArcGIS platform!

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About the Author—Dr. Todd Pierce, Locus Technologies

Dr. Pierce manages a team of programmers tasked with development and implementation of Locus’ EIM application, which lets users manage their environmental data in the cloud using Software-as-a-Service technology. Dr. Pierce is also directly responsible for research and development of Locus’ GIS (geographic information systems) and visualization tools for mapping analytical and subsurface data. Dr. Pierce earned his GIS Professional (GISP) certification in 2010.

A better way to manage all those ops readings

Manage all those ops readings without spreadsheets or paper forms

I am constantly reminded by the number of calls we receive, that no matter how robust a SCADA and HMI system is, there is always a requirement for in-field O&M verification and documentation. It’s almost universal, and spans a myriad of industries, large and small, the need to monitor and record thousands of periodic (daily/per shift/weekly, etc.) routine readings/recordings at a prescribed frequency often recorded on pen to paper field forms. The same processes sometimes use “template” spreadsheets for data collection that are then emailed/placed on shared file servers or otherwise sent to some central location for review and post processing. These processes are antiquated and subject to data quality and record keeping challenges.

It’s time for an upgrade!

Why simple form builders are not a good software solution for ops data

Electronic forms are great for collecting data and almost every business entity has built such forms in spreadsheets, word processing or simple databases to collect the information. In addition, there is a software category of form builders and they can certainly build forms. The question becomes is it a good fit so solve your business process issues?
Most customers have more sophisticated needs than simply collecting information on one or more custom forms – they want to do something with all the information collected far beyond what simple form builder tools can provide. Even customers with sophisticated spreadsheet forms, can’t manage them as they multiply exponentially or their Excel gurus retire.

Here are some examples of where you may require software tools beyond a simple form builder:

Collecting equipment readings on each shift at multiple locations and report the data to centralized management, who review the data, look for trends/ issues.
Verifying and validating data at the point of data entry to eliminate data entry errors.
Automatically visualizing (charts or tables) information in near real time to make operations decisions.
Sharing the information with others.
Scheduling activities related to periodic or infrequent data collection events.
Receiving notifications when actions are due.
Automatically creating regulatory reports in prescribed formats.
Creating complex work flows and audited approval processes.
Creating intelligent forms with calculations based on past data or other criteria

Forms with Benefits

Locus Platform is a configurable platform with standard applications that are easy to configure to customers unique requirements. One of its many strengths is its powerful form builder capable of creating simple or complex forms with simple or sophisticated logic. So for customers looking to move from paper and spreadsheet templates, it’s an excellent option to consider, especially if you require more than a simple “fill in the blank” form for transmittal using mobile devices. Best of all, the data are securely stored in a database structure for reporting and alternative business uses and analyses, compared to the almost impossible management of hundreds of spreadsheets or paper forms.

Here are some examples where sophisticated forms are integrated with a flexible database:

Water Utilities – Tracking chlorination and aerobic digestion processes with daily inputs/outputs with a monthly summary and chart, and tracking well production across well fields.
Water Utilities – Tracking periodic sewer discharges and water samples for permit compliance.
Agriculture – Monitoring food processing equipment for compliance with optimum equipment operating parameters for air permits.
Pharmaceutical/Chemical Manufacturing Facilities- Tracking EHS daily, weekly, monthly, etc. investigations and in-house audits.
Universities – tracking chemical inventories.
Facility Engineering – Documenting O&M activities for groundwater treatment systems.
Electric Utilities – Monitoring water/energy/gas usage from old style meters for sustainability reporting with data entry validation.
Refineries and Terminals – Collecting O&M, usage and wastewater data.

If you still rely on paper forms and template spreadsheets and are ready to streamline your process and enhance the value of your data, give us a call and we can show you a range of options that will retire the paper forms for good!

Contact us to learn more about Locus Platform

Make your O&M mobile apps work harder for you!

Mobile apps for water and wastewater operation and maintenance (O&M) activities have been around for some time now. Most users are familiar with the benefits such as instant data collection and access to reference information for better, more reliable O&M monitoring. However, as new software tools are consistently becoming more powerful and more accessible, that “ground-breaking” mobile app that you purchased five years ago may now be looking a little dated. When you are ready to upgrade, here are some of the features that are the new “must haves”.

Unique and custom forms

For many O&M programs, you may have your own data collection needs that are specific to your facility or industry. Mobile O&M apps now allow you to tailor your input forms to add new data fields, remove unwanted fields, change some of the logic like making certain fields required, and make certain fields tied into established pick lists. Even better, you can match the mobile form to the original paper form, making the transition to mobile simple and intuitive for staff. And, the more the merrier, as modern mobile apps let you have multiple forms on the same app so you have everything you need in one place.

Real-time entry validation

It is not enough to just enter your O&M information into a mobile device. You also want to make sure you are entering correct data. Current O&M mobile tools can check your entry as you enter it and validate against whatever criteria are established for that data. So you make sure that you’re entering a pH reading of 7.2, rather than 72. You can also use configurable pick lists to limit data entry to your specific desired entries and not have to correct misspellings or 16 different ways to say “out of service”. Make sure that pick lists are configurable and can be shared with each of your company’s devices.

Barcode and QR code scanning

You are probably already using your phone to compare prices at your local store. It is amazingly easy to simply scan a product’s barcode and instantly see the best available price locally or online. Since virtually every phone/tablet now has a built-in camera, you can use that to scan barcodes or QR codes to associate data entry with a tagged sampling port or asset. This can save you from possible mismatch errors that can occur when simply selecting from a list or typing in data.

Use your voice

We are starting to use voice recognition technology in our mobile devices to quickly send out text messages. Why not use it for recording inspection/audit comments or field issues? Voice recognition is improving every year, and can provide your comments onto a data collection form much faster than typing and can be especially useful for conditions where gloves are required and typing or stylus input is not practical. Using the phone’s native abilities, take advantage of voice feature to streamline note taking, knowing that you can always fix up any issues back in the office.

Review, Sync, Repeat

Mobile apps should have a summary screen to review your data before sending it back to your database, such as a summary form for all data collected during a shift. And once you do sync your data back to the main database (you have a main database right???), instantly reset the form for the next day data collection event so you are always ready.

No Internet? No Problem!

Mobile apps that won’t function when there is no connection should be abandoned. You need to be able to collect data no matter the location and the signal strength. Look for mobile apps that function with zero connectivity, and save the data until a signal is found. Not every location at modern water and wastewater facilities has a hot spot, so be prepared with the right app.

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5 time-saving tools for EHS compliance

We all know the struggle of getting things done with shortened staff without compromising the quality of our work, especially in EHS. Locus Technologies’ Locus Platform (LP) offers multiple options to ease your complexity by providing a truly SaaS platform packed with some nifty apps. Here are some tools in LP that can help you utilize your workforce much more efficiently:

1) Dashboards tailored to your needs

Every software has built-in report and dashboards, but they may not meet all your needs when purchased off the shelf. If you need a new report, chart, or other visualization of your data, it usually incurs a custom software development charge, but not with Locus Platform (LP). LP allows you to assemble the information you want in your chosen format (bar or line charts, maps, tables, treemaps, diagrams, etc.) and share your custom dashboards and real-time information/data with your team. In addition, the views and dashboards export to Excel, so you can easily integrate with commonly used tools and further mine the data. At the enterprise level, powerful dashboards will help you understand the status of each facility based on a matrix you design. With the LPs flexibility, facility information can be automatically populated based on the user credentials, saving your team time and frustration.

2) Simplified Sustainability Reporting

Locus Platform’s Sustainability application and calculation engine support simultaneous calculations using multiple methods for various reporting programs including EPA, California ARB, CDP, TCR, DJSI, and others. This allows users to input data only once and utilize it to report to multiple federal, state, and voluntary reporting programs, according to their required format. The application will also support direct electronic reporting formats for many reporting programs, so that additional manual transcription and submittal of data are no longer necessary. This is a very powerful tool and a huge advantage to customers in terms of improving efficiency, while reducing costs.

3) Integration

Integration, if done correctly, can save you a great deal of time and headache during some of the most tedious and cumbersome tasks in EHS data management. Locus Platform (LP) has built in a unique point and click integration application to enable connection with major databases or third-party systems that have open API (Access privileges). Some integration, database, and communication standards and methods that are supported include OLE compliance, SOAP, COM, Java, XML, web services, ODBC/ODMA/SQL/Oracle, VIM, and MAPI. LP also works well with MS Excel and provides a powerful two-way synchronization allowing users to download parts of the database to Excel, then work, edit, and verify or append data on their local copy of Excel where they have no internet connection. Any revisions they perform to the downloaded data in Excel can be automatically synchronized back to the Locus Platform application. During the process, a complete audit trail will be preserved. This can be a great time saver especially when you are sending large volumes of valid values in a database or if you are migrating any historical data.

4) Mobile

Locus’ Mobile application allows you to sync with your server to create data collection profiles on a mobile device, whether it’s your phone or a tablet. It will allow you to click through and enter data on the device even when you are offline. Data validation is performed in real time and is stored locally on the device, once the phone reaches an internet signal, it will sync with your server, and the data will automatically be updated in Locus’ cloud-hosted solution. What’s more, Locus Mobile works seamlessly with both EIM and Locus Platform.

Using Mobile you receive the benefits of data entry directly on the mobile device, with immediate data availability on the cloud when you reach an internet signal. Other advantages of using Mobile include location metadata and mapping integration, bar-code/OR code scanning, voice recognition, and form customization. If you’d like to know more about the Locus Mobile application, check out the Top 10 cool features in Locus Mobile.

5) XML Exports

Locus has prioritized enhancing its GHG application in Locus Platform to make it easy to manage GHG emission inventory tracking and reporting requirements. Locus Technologies is the only software vendor that is a certified GHG verifier under the State of California’s AB32, and has performed the most GHG verifications in California since 2015. The State and Federal eGGRT web portals are notoriously cumbersome and require a significant amount of your time to input all the required data and generate your report. But with XML support, you can bypass almost the entire data entry process, and complete your submittal within a few minutes. XML reports support many greenhouse gas subparts, including EPA GHG Subparts C, D, W, and NN. And because data entry for EPA and CARB is consolidated in the XML GHG application, it eliminates the need to maintain separate agency spreadsheets and software. Additional reporting programs are also adding support for XML submittals, such as EPA’s eManifest. This functionality can be a huge time saver for anyone working with these online regulatory reporting tools.

Solving water utility data management challenges—one conversation at a time

Last month I got the opportunity to attend AWWA Water Quality and Technology Conference in Toronto, Canada. I was very enthusiastic to interact first hand with end-users of different water technology tools, and interact with other water technology professionals. It’s one thing to design software and support it, it’s a whole different thing to sit and talk with the real customers and real end users and get unfiltered feedback.

As a Product Manager, I’m usually connected with our customers by the various email and messaging systems that provide an endless amount of documentation, but nothing can substitute for an in person conversation. I heard first-hand how there is a need to change existing business practices and stop using older, non-integrated systems that only provide part of the data solution. This scenario is not a new problem; there is a need by most water entities to centralize data, and more easily load, share, analyze and report data. I have had this general conversation many times, but the more in depth, one-on-one conversations about sample planning and data collection provided the most useful feedback. I had the opportunity to give a brief demonstration on “Scheduling and collecting routine water samples using Locus Mobile and EIM” at AWWA, which provided a great venue for candid feedback. Based on these conversations, I have summarized a list of frequent challenges that users encounter during their water sampling process and how they can be solved using the right tools or better communications.

Challenge 1: Finding a flexible sampling planning tool

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

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

Everyone I talked with had dealt with data entry errors and fixing bad data when it was transcribed from field notes to Excel or other programs. Everyone wanted a better way to streamline the error prone data collection process. Many attendees were interested in an alternative to the pencil/paper/clipboard method and had goals to move to tablet or smartphone for data collection. As a field data collection mobile product manager, this was my area of expertise. The universal wish list for mobile field applications included:

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

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

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

Some suggestions from the attendees included:

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

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

Take Aways

In person feedback beats everything
Communication is key.
Software tools are available and can solve a lot of the common data management challenges, but know what you want, know the problem you are trying to solve, and know it will take some time and effort but the end result will significantly improve your business processes.

About the author—Bill Donaldson, Locus Technologies

Mr. Donaldson has 5 years experience in SaaS systems, performing Product Management and QA/QC of Locus Mobile iOS application and Locus’ Environmental Information Management system (EIM). While completing his B.S., Mr. Donaldson held several paid internships, where he configured a Relational GeoDatabase and a Database Management System (DBMS), for biological data entry.

Cut your monitoring costs with EIM sample planning

Sample planning can be a valuable and necessary tool for many in highly regulated fields, including water utilities, where adherence to regulatory defined sampling schedules is essential. Moreover, if you have reviewed the drinking water requirements, you know the regulations require complex and variable schedules ranging from monthly samples at routine locations for a set list of parameters to once every five, seven, or nine years at other locations for a completely different list of parameters. Missing a required sampling event can mean fines and public notice to customers.

Other industries face similar complex sampling needs and the financial and reputational impacts can be hefty for missing required samples. So if you are currently an EIM user, or considering an environmental information management system, don’t forget about sample planning components that will save you time and money.

Here are some benefits of Sample Planning that may make you a believer.

Streamline routine or repetitive sampling – set it up once and reuse or modify as needed

Sample Planning in EIM excels in streamlining repetitive sampling, such as required drinking water samples, or quarterly monitoring well samples. Any sampling events with a schedule from daily to once every 10 years can be planned in EIM’s module and reused again and again, even with tweaks to the schedule for the samples to be collected. Imagine the time savings and the simplicity of having your regulatory requirements all lined out for the year and not have to worry about missing required samples. For water utilities, this is especially valuable given the very strict schedules and the public health implications of missing sampling events.

Automatically generate COCs and bottle labels

When samples are planned in EIM, it is a few simple clicks of the mouse to generate COCs, work lists, and bottle labels for the field crew. This saves time for the field and office staff, and helps ensure they collect the needed samples and not miss a collection or a field or laboratory parameter. Moreover, higher levels of accuracy and fewer transcription errors are ensured as sample IDs and requested analyses are printed electronically rather than entered by hand.

Its fully integrated with Locus Mobile – you can send your Sample Plan to field staff to ensure they collect the samples needed

For customer’s considering using Locus Mobile to streamline their field data collection, Sample Planning is a natural fit. All the samples planned in the Sample Planning module can be delivered directly to Locus Mobile for one or more field staff. You can even have multiple different events sent to the field crew so they can plan ahead in the field. All the collected data is uploaded to EIM in real-time (if service is available) or later (if not) for review and final checks after the field event is concluded. Imagine giving your sampling teams the weekly plan and tracking the progress each day as they sync their data. A handy feature of Locus Mobile, it can remove all the previously collected samples from the plan each day to make your field sampler’s life much simpler.

Larger drinking water utilities will find the integration of Sample Planning and mobile quite appealing, especially with daily sampling by multiple sampling teams and a large number of required routine samples.

All your required field sample information is already in EIM for your sampling event.

When lab data comes back from the lab, you no longer need to enter in the field sample information, it will already be in EIM.

For drinking water utilities, where you may be sampling daily for chlorine at your sample locations, imagine seeing the results across your distribution system instantly, and ability to see it on a map in near real time. Even better, you can share the results with your operations team with a simple dashboard link.

Always know where you stand on your sampling activities

By using Sample Planning, you will know exactly what samples have and have not been collected. You will also know which ones were collected late, and which ones are yet to be collected. This type of information can help ensure you don’t’ miss required samples, and identify schedule impacts when collection is not going according to plan.

When missed samples are identified, its easy to add to the next day’s sampling and send that information to field teams using the integrated mobile app.

Gain ability to track receipt of laboratory results with fine precision

For customers that need to track laboratory results down to the method and analyte level, Sample Planning will make that tedious task easy. Therefore, if you ordered an EPA Method 6010C analysis and no result for lead is reported, you will know immediately when the results arrive back from the lab that the deliverable is incomplete. EIM will also tell you when the lab substituted one method for another. You can then decide whether this change is acceptable or not. Because most regulations include a long list of required analytes and acceptable methods, this type of detail is invaluable to help ensure that you remain in compliance.

Make review of laboratory invoice easy as pie

Trying to review laboratory invoices, especially for large sampling events or complex sampling programs, can be a chore. With EIM’s Sample Planning module, most of the hard work is already done for you. Once you have all your data back, EIM will tell you:

If the quantity invoiced is more than the order
If an invoiced line item has been invoiced previously
If an invoiced line item total cost and/or unit cost is incorrect

5 tools to get more EHS tasks done with less staff

EHS software can be a boon or a bane of your life at work. Here are the 5 time- saving tools Locus’s EIM provides that can be the difference between the former versus the latter.

1. Mobile

Do you enter field data onto a paper form, and then have to manually type it into a spreadsheet or database when you get back to the office? Or have you ever been in the field and entered data into your remote mobile device and have lost the data due to the lack of internet signal? Locus’ Mobile application allows you to sync with your server to create data collection profiles on a mobile device, whether it’s your phone or a tablet. This application will allow you to click through and enter data on the device and store the data, even when you are offline. As a result, data only need to be entered once on your device, and then they are seamlessly loaded into your cloud-hosted solution.

Using Mobile you have data entry directly on the mobile device, with immediate data availability on the cloud when you reach an internet signal. Other advantages include location metadata and mapping integration, bar-code/or code scanning, voice recognition and form customization. If you would like to know more, check out the Top 10 cool features in Locus Mobile.

2. EDD Loader

With EIM’s electronic data deliverables (EDD) loader, you can upload and validate several thousand records within a minute. Laboratories are not required to use the same reporting format, yet the results will still end up at the same place in the database where sample data came from. Locus EIM also has a special lab interface so that your labs (with your permission) can upload their own EDDs. You no longer need to spend time receiving and processing EDD files from your lab. The labs simply log in directly, upload your reports, and they are immediately available to you.

EIM provides you access to popular features such as a planning module, forms for entering field data, a utility to upload EDDs, built-in mapping tools, and an extensive reporting and plotting module. It also has a calendar module for viewing information on sampling events and uploaded EDDs, automated exceedance notifications, and sophisticated statistical evaluation tools designed specifically for environmental data.

3. Sample planning

Setting up and implementing a complex sampling plan can be a time-consuming effort. Depending on the purpose and extent of the sampling plan, you may have dozens of analyses to complete at varying frequencies and locations. You may also have multiple compliance programs with overlapping requirements. EIM’s sample planning can save you valuable time and effort by assembling your requirements into a concise calendar, preprinting all of your chain of custody records and bottle labels, and tracking the collection of samples from the field to the lab. As an added bonus, the automation of this process ensures you’ll never miss another required sample.

4. Discharge Monitoring Reports

Locus’ EIM DMR tool solves the problem of time-consuming, labor-intensive, and expensive manual report generation by automating the data assembly, calculations, and formatting of Discharge Monitoring Reports. Depending on the type of discharge and the regulatory jurisdiction, you may be required to report information such as analytical chemistry of pollutants, flow velocity, total maximum daily load, and other parameters. For companies that report from 100 to 1,000 facilities, producing a DMR also becomes a major expense.

Thanks to Locus’ DMR reporting tool, companies can generate DMRs within minutes with validated data in approved formats, with all of the calculations completed according to regulatory requirements. Companies can set up EIM for its permitted facilities and realize immediate cost and time savings during each reporting period.

5. Formatted Data Tables

For most environmental database systems, getting the right data out is just the first step in assembling your reports. Comprehensive systems rarely store data in a format that is ready to submit to a regulatory agency or other party. Typically, you have a labor-intensive process of restructuring, labelling, footnoting, formatting, and paginating the data into tables that can be readily interpreted. EIM’s formatted reporting tools allow you to set up any number of table formats with specific grouping, sorting, footnotes, headers, and other data processing steps. Then you just select your data range, pick your format, and the table is ready to download or print directly from your web browser. And if you make a mistake, the report can be instantly regenerated without any effort.

Getting the most out of EHS mobile apps

Mobile tools for EHS have been around for some time now. By now, most users are familiar with the benefits such as instant data collection and access to reference information for better, more reliable EHS programs. However, as any tech-savvy individual knows, new software tools are consistently becoming more powerful and more accessible, and that is certainly true for mobile applications. That “ground-breaking” EHS mobile app that you purchased five years ago may now be looking a little dated if your software provider has not actively updated it. Here are some of the beyond-the-basic features that you probably really want, but perhaps never knew existed for your EHS mobile app.

Location metadata and mapping integration

Your coordinates are actively being recorded every time your phone moves. Why not record that data as part of an incident report or sample collection? Or use that information to locate the position of a monitoring well or other asset? Much of EHS information is associated to a specific location, so automatically storing your location can help ensure that you know where your data are originating.

You may be thinking that phone/tablet GPS is not very accurate, and you would be correct…..for now. According to GPS.gov, phone accuracy is typically accurate to within a 4.9 m (16 ft.) radius under open sky. While this may be accurate enough for some situations, it will not be sufficient for others. However, according to the IEEE, a respected technical engineering association, 2018 and beyond will bring new more accurate chips to phones that will improve GPS accuracy to about 30 centimeters, which should be much more useful for field locations especially when identifying the scene of a spill or accident.

So start thinking about what can be improved with your business process by getting more accurate location information, and start looking at upgrading mobile devices in the next year or two.

Barcode and QR code scanning

You are probably already using your phone to compare prices at your local store. It is amazingly easy to simply scan a product’s barcode and instantly see the best available price locally or online. Since virtually every phone/tablet now has a built-in camera, you can use that to scan barcodes or QR codes to associate data entry with a tagged location or asset. This can save you from possible mismatch errors that can occur when simply selecting from a list or typing in data.

For users with thousands of locations/assets, it’s also a huge time saver when you can skip the long list of locations and just point and click. Moreover, for anyone tracking assets or even chemical inventory, barcodes are essential. In fact, many facilities have been using barcodes for years, but now they don’t need a specialized device. Barcodes or QR codes can be incorporated into mobile apps in new and unexpected ways to streamline business process and do more in the field with less physical overhead.

Therefore, the next time you are doing an audit, you can easily examine an instrument and immediately determine its calibration and maintenance status along with reporting any audit findings.

Real-time entry validation

It is not enough to just enter your EHS event information into a mobile device. You also want to make sure you are entering correct information. Modern EHS mobile tools can check your entry as you enter it, to match whatever criteria are established for that data. So you make sure that you’re entering a pH reading of 7.2, rather than 72. You can also use configurable pick lists to limit data entry to your specific desired entries and not have to deal with misspellings or 16 different ways to say “cloudy”. Make sure that pick lists are configurable and can be shared with each of your company’s devices.

Use your voice

We are starting to use voice recognition technology in our mobile devices to quickly send out text messages. Why not use it for recording audit comments or field issues? Voice recognition is getting better and better every year, and can get your comments onto a data collection form much faster than typing and can be especially useful for conditions where gloves are required and typing or stylus input is not practical. Using the phone’s native abilities, take advantage of voice feature to streamline note taking knowing you can always fix up any issues back in the office.

Unique and custom forms

For many EHS programs, you may have your own data collection needs that are specific to your facility or industry. Mobile EHS apps now allow you to tailor your input forms to add new data fields, remove unwanted fields, change some of the logic like making certain fields required, and make certain fields tied into established pick lists. Even better, you can match the mobile form exactly to the original paper form, making the transition to mobile simple and intuitive for staff.

Along with form customization options, modern mobile apps let you have many different forms in one app, so the folks tracking waste shipments have their form, while to folks performing facility audits have their forms, which may be specific to the facility of the audit itself. One app with many forms greatly streamlines the training aspect of deploying mobile and gives EHS managers great flexibility to easily update forms when regulations change.

The Importance of User Implementation and Quality Assurance from an EHS&S Software Provider

Implementation

Untested Software/Quality Assurance

Data Redundancy

Security

Summary

Space and Time

Maps and Time

GIS and Time

Interested in Locus’ GIS solutions?

Manage all those ops readings without spreadsheets or paper forms

Why simple form builders are not a good software solution for ops data

Forms with Benefits

Contact us to learn more about Locus Platform

Unique and custom forms

Real-time entry validation

Barcode and QR code scanning

Use your voice

Review, Sync, Repeat

No Internet? No Problem!

1) Dashboards tailored to your needs

2) Simplified Sustainability Reporting

3) Integration

4) Mobile

5) XML Exports

Challenge 1: Finding a flexible sampling planning tool

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

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

Take Aways

Streamline routine or repetitive sampling – set it up once and reuse or modify as needed

Automatically generate COCs and bottle labels

Its fully integrated with Locus Mobile – you can send your Sample Plan to field staff to ensure they collect the samples needed

All your required field sample information is already in EIM for your sampling event.

Always know where you stand on your sampling activities

Gain ability to track receipt of laboratory results with fine precision

Make review of laboratory invoice easy as pie

1. Mobile

2. EDD Loader

3. Sample planning

4. Discharge Monitoring Reports

5. Formatted Data Tables

Location metadata and mapping integration

Barcode and QR code scanning

Real-time entry validation

Use your voice

Unique and custom forms

Locus Technologies

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