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EHS Compliance Software: The difference between configurability and customization

As you shop around for EHS compliance software, you’re quite likely to hear two similar words: “configurable” and “customizable.” You might hear these two words in answer to your question, “Can your software do _______ ?” Your implementation success will depend on which of the two words you put more weight in your selection of the vendor. Therefore, it is important to understand the difference between these two similar words.

Configurable means the software can do what you’re asking it to do “out of the box” with a few simple keystrokes. The software is designed to be easily modified by the end user (user developer) who has no programming background. For example, if exceeding water quality limit for a certain parameter in your software is called an “exceedance” but your new water utility customer is using the term “outlier”, configurable software lets you change the word on the form from “exceedance” to “outlier” without any programming or recompiling of the code involved, and without needing assistance from your software vendor. Often, the software will feature configuration options or a configuration workbench where you simply input all such terms and titles from a series of dropdown menus or drag-and-drop functionality. In other words, features and functions of the software are configurable if they are part of the off-the-shelf product.

Customization is a completely different feature. Unlike configurability, customization requires additional software programming (expensive), typically performed by software developers. Customizing software often incurs additional expense to the client. It also takes longer time and requires you to execute a change order—never a pleasant process.

Understanding the difference between configurability and customization also brings awareness of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your EHS software. Configurability is rolled into the software and has no additional fees. Customization requires expensive programming, usually for an additional charge (think “change order”). It is good practice to ask your software vendor upfront which features are configurable and which are customizable. The entire focus of EHS software selection should be on configurability.

I have seen many customers and their consultants and research analysts make a cardinal mistake by focusing on software features and functionality that exist in the software off-the-shelf without asking a single question about configurability. No wonder so many EHS software implementations fail or cost orders of magnitude more than the winning bid. It is not about features and functionality that exist in existing EHS applications, but it is about how easy it is to add, build, or configure features, functionality, or whole new applications that may not be present today using non-developers. It is about the flexibility of the platform, not about the rigidity of applications.

When you’re selecting configurable EHS software, make sure to consider this: If you have domain expertise in EHS and you know how to build a PowerPoint presentation, or you can draw a flowchart, or you can build a spreadsheet using formulae, with sorting tables and charts, then you can build any feature and functionality into your EHS software—provided the software is configurable off-the-shelf.

To put it in simple terms, you are a user developer. You will save your company lots of money and headache and avoid tons of change orders. I should also note that most of the end-user configurable software is built on multi-tenant SaaS architecture and offers drag-and-drop functionality.

Aquam Corporation selects Locus Technologies software for IoT integration

Aquam Corporation integrates Locus software to Orbis Intelligent Systems platform, ensuring a robust, reliable, and secure data platform

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 5 June 2018 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in multi-tenant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for environmental compliance and sustainability management, will provide its IoT integration capability to Aquam Corporation (“Aquam”), a global provider of risk mitigation technologies for water and energy transmission and distribution assets, to create a robust data platform for its customers via Orbis Intelligent Systems. The Locus software will be integrated with the Orbis platform to allow interconnectivity across multiple devices, data streams, and geographical locations.

Orbis Intelligent Systems is positioned to be a market leader in infrastructure and water quality data-driven monitoring for commercial, domestic and utility applications.

“We chose Locus software for the reliability and data security that enables our technology platform to operate with robust, data-driven communication for all Aquam customers around the world to utilize. With the integration of rapidly scalable Locus software, we are at the forefront of IoT and well-positioned to offer asset ‘active management’—a core value to our customers and value proposition,” said Danny Krywyj, president for Orbis.

Locus Technologies’ multi-tenant cloud platform can help organizations to manage, organize, and monitor the structured and unstructured data coming from various sources. This allows customers to create a centralized data repository to analyze the key indicators for environmental data management, sustainability, and environmental compliance.

“Aquam Corporation will reap the benefits of IoT integration for monitoring data generated by different streaming devices, by centrally connecting these sources in a scalable cloud-based application for better managing compliance. Real-time monitoring of data directly and effectively solves many challenges related to smarter environmental management and sustainability initiatives,” said Wes Hawthorne, president of Locus Technologies.

ABOUT AQUAM CORPORATION

Aquam Corp is a global provider of technology solutions for water and energy distribution infrastructure. We ensure the health, longevity, safety, and reliability of vital resources for water and gas utility, municipal, commercial, residential, and industrial markets. Our award-winning proprietary technologies address water scarcity issues by the diagnosis, cleaning, and remediation of aging infrastructure. Aquam also provides end-to-end service solutions and technologies for the maintenance, life extension, and full rehabilitation of network distribution infrastructure, which include: Nu Flow Technologies, a leader in small-diameter infrastructure rehabilitation technologies; Specialized Pipe Technologies (SPT), a pipe assessment and rehabilitation services provider; Aquam Pipe Diagnostics, a global pipeline assessment specialist. Aquam services are available in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australasia, and the Middle East. For more information visit www.aquamcorp.com or contact aquam@missionC2.com.

Locus is ready for e-Manifest

EPA is establishing a national system for tracking hazardous waste shipments electronically. This system, known as “e-Manifest,” will modernize the nation’s cradle-to-grave hazardous waste tracking process. EPA is on schedule to launch e-Manifest on June 30, 2018.

Download the latest fact sheets for e-Manifest stakeholders.
These fact sheets provide an overview of the e-Manifest program and the impacts it will have on each stakeholder. Each fact sheet outlines basic information about the e-Manifest system, how the specific stakeholder will be impacted, and what actions they need to take to use the e-Manifest system.

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Have a question about Locus’ e-Manifest support?

Locus Technologies to offer its EHS multi-tenant SaaS Locus Platform on Amazon Web Services

Locus and AWS will simplify and expand how customers capture, analyze and take action on EHS compliance and sustainability activities

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 24 April 2018 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in multi-tenant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environmental compliance and sustainability management, today announced it will offer its award-winning EHS Locus Platform SaaS on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Locus announced it will deliver Locus SaaS services designed to simplify and expand how customers capture, analyze and take action on their data and EHS compliance activities. Additionally, Locus announced that the AWS US West (Oregon) Region will be the first new AWS Region supported in Locus’ planned international infrastructure expansion on AWS. Locus’ customers will be able to use the company’s core service—including Locus Platform and more—delivered on AWS, with general availability expected in May 2018. Locus Environmental Information Management (EIM) will be moved to AWS in early 2019.

Locus also plans to deliver integrations that will connect the Locus Platform with AWS Internet of Things (IoT), Amazon CloudFront, and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). Locus intends to leverage AWS IoT by building a new native integration to help businesses generate value from the billions of events generated by connected devices such as real-time environmental monitoring sensors and environmental treatment systems controls.

AWS IoT is a set of cloud services that let connected devices easily and securely interact with cloud applications like Locus Platform and other devices. Locus IoT Cloud will connect with AWS IoT to combine device data with customer data in Locus Platform, allowing businesses to create meaningful customer experiences based on real-time activity and emissions monitoring across all their connected sensors and devices.

For example, a water utility company that maintains millions of IoT-enabled sensors for water flow, pressure, pH, or other water quality measuring devices across their dispersed facilities can use AWS IoT combined with Locus Platform as a whole solution to ingest and manage the data generated by those sensors and devices, and interpret it in real time. By combining water sensor data from AWS IoT with Locus IoT customer data, the water utility company will be able to automatically create an emergency shutdown if chemical or other exceedances or device faults are detected and will be better prepared to serve their customers.

By combining the powerful, actionable intelligence and rapid responsiveness through Locus Platform with the scalability and fast-query performance of AWS, customers can seamlessly analyze large datasets on arrival in real time. This will allow Locus’ customers to instantly explore information, find insights, and take actions from a greater variety and volume of data—all without investing the significant time and resources required to administer a self-managed on-premises data warehouse.

Locus Platform offers a highly configurable, user-friendly interface to fully meet individual organizations’ environmental management needs. “Locus Platform, when combined with the power and security of AWS, can improve companies’ data collection, analysis, and most importantly, reporting capabilities, resulting in streamlined EH&S compliance and the mitigation of regulatory risks and fines.” said Wes Hawthorne, President, Locus Technologies.

Shape of Water: Cape Town running out of drinking water

The city cut daily water use limits first to 87 liters and then 50 in a bid to avert shutting off supplies.

The city had set a 50-liter daily limit and had told citizens “Day Zero” was approaching when people would have to queue at standpipes.
But water-saving efforts in the South African city have seen the day pushed back from April to 27 August. Seasonal rains should mean that date is now averted, the city said. The shortages follow three years of low rainfall. The city had resorted to increasingly drastic measures to clamp down on water usage, including “naming and shaming” the 100 addresses using the most water and fining residents who failed to comply with the 50 liters (13 gallons) limit per person.

By comparison, the average California consumer uses some 322 liters (85 gallons) of water per day. Water use in California was highest in the summer months of June through September, where it averaged 412 liters per person per day. By comparison, during the cooler and wetter months of January through March of 2016, average per capita water use was only 242 liters per person per day.

Although the risk that piped water supplies will be shut off this year has receded, politicians and environmentalists warn that the water crisis is there to stay in Cape Town, as year-on-year rainfall levels dwindle.

Shipping industry to discuss cuts in CO2 emissions

International shipping produces about 1,000 million tons of CO2 annually – that’s more than the entire German economy.

A meeting of the International Maritime Organisation in London that starts tomorrow will discuss how shipping industry can radically reduce its CO2 emissions. The shipping industry, if it does not change the way it operates, will contribute almost a fifth of the global total of CO2 by 2050. A group of nations led by Brazil, Saudi Arabia, India, Panama, and Argentina is resisting CO2 targets for shipping. Their submission to the meeting says capping ships’ overall emissions would restrict world trade. It might also force goods on to less efficient forms of transport. This argument is dismissed by other countries which believe shipping could benefit from a shift towards cleaner technology. European nations are proposing to shrink shipping emissions by 70-100 percent of their 2008 levels by 2050.

The problem has developed over many years. As the shipping industry is international, it evades the carbon-cutting influence of the annual UN talks on climate change, which are conducted on a national basis. Instead, the decisions have been left to the IMO; a body recently criticized for its lack of accountability and transparency. The IMO did agree on a design standard in 2011 ensuring that new ships should be 30 percent more efficient by 2025. But there is no rule to reduce emissions from the existing fleet.

The Clean Shipping Coalition, a green group focusing on ships, said shipping should conform to the agreement made in Paris to stabilize the global temperature increase as close as possible to 1.5C. The pressure is on the IMO to produce an ambitious policy. The EU has threatened that if the IMO doesn’t move far enough, the EU will take over regulating European shipping. That would see the IMO stripped of some of its authority.

Some say huge improvements in CO2 emissions from existing ships can be easily be made by obliging them to travel more slowly. They say a carbon pricing system is needed.

WM Symposia 2018 provided an excellent showcase for Locus GIS+ in LANL’s Intellus website

At the annual WM Symposia, representatives from many different DOE sites and contractors gather once a year and discuss cross-cutting technologies and approaches for managing the legacy waste from the DOE complex. This year, Locus’ customer Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was the featured laboratory. During their presentation, they discussed Locus GIS+, which powers Intellus, their public-facing environmental monitoring database website.

If you haven’t been to LANL’s Intellus website recently, you are in for a surprise! It was recently updated to better support casual users, and it features some of the best new tools Locus has to offer. Locus reimagined the basic query engine and created a new “Quick search” to streamline data retrieval for casual users. The guided “Quick search” simplifies data queries by stepping you through the filter selections for data sources, locations, dates, and parameters, providing context support at each step along the way.

While a knowledgeable environmental scientist may be able to easily navigate a highly technical system, that same operation is bound to be far more difficult for a layperson interested in what chemicals are in their water. Constructing the right query is not as simple as looking for a chemical in water—it really matters what type of water you want to look within. On the Intellus website (showing the environmental data from the LANL site), there are 16 different types of water (not including “water levels”). Using the latest web technologies and our domain expertise, Locus created a much easier way to get to the data of interest.

Just querying data is not necessarily the most intuitive activity to gain insights. Locus integrated our new GIS+ visualization engine to allow users to instantly see all the data they just queried in detailed, context-rich maps.

Intellus GIS+ map showing “Quick search” query results for chromium levels in the LANL area

Instead of a dense data grid, GIS+ gives users an instant visual representation of the issue, enabling them to quickly spot the source of the chemicals and review the data in the context of the environmental locations and site activities. Most importantly for Intellus users, this type of detailed map requires no GIS expertise and is automatically created based on your query. This directly supports Intellus’ mission to provide transparency into LANL’s environmental monitoring and sampling activities.

GIS+ also allows users (albeit with a bit more experience in GIS mapping) to integrate maps from a wide range of online sources to provide even more insight to the available data. In the example below, we overlaid the publicly-available US Fish and Wildlife critical habitat maps with data from the LANL site to show the relationship of the site to critical habitats. This type of sophisticated analysis is the future of online GIS. Locus takes full advantage of these opportunities to visualize and integrate data from varying sources with our GIS+ tools, made simple for users and integrated with ArcGIS Online by Esri.

Intellus GIS+ map showing imported layers of US Fish and Wildlife critical habitats in relation to LANL environmental sampling data

Overall, Locus is very proud of our cross-cutting environmental information management tools. We were one of many WM18 attendees enjoying LANL’s presentation and getting even more ideas from the audience on the next steps for better environmental visualization.

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Webinar: IoT technology for enhanced environmental compliance

IoT is considered one of the fastest growing trends in technology and has a potentially huge impact to automate how we manage water quality, air emissions and other key environmental performance indicators for data monitoring.

EHS&S in the age of blockchain technology

Blockchain is a highly disruptive technology that promises to change the world as we know it, much like the World Wide Web’s impact after its introduction in 1991. As companies look to the blockchain model to perform financial transactions, trade stocks, and create open market spaces, many other industries are looking at utilizing blockchain technology to eliminate the middleman. One sector well-positioned to benefit from blockchain technology is the data-intensive Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability (EHS&S) space.

In particular, I see three major ways that the EHS industry can utilize blockchain technology to change how they manage information: 1) Blockchain-based IoT monitoring, 2) emissions management, and 3) emissions trading.

My belief is that blockchain technology will help to quantify the impact of man-made emissions on global warming trends and provide tools to manage it. One cannot manage what one cannot measure!

Imagine this: every emissions source in your company, whether to water, air, or soil, is connected wirelessly via a sensor or another device (thing) to a blockchain ledger that stores a description of the source, its location, emission factors, etc. Every time that the source generates emissions (that is, it is on), all necessary parameters are recorded in real time. If air emissions are involved, equivalent tons of carbon are calculated and recorded in a blockchain ledger and made available to reporting and trading entities in real time.

Blockchain ledgers may exist at many levels. Some may record emissions at a given site. Others at higher levels (company, state or province, country, continent, etc.) may roll up information from lower level ledgers.

Suppose that emissions are traded so that they are not yours anymore. In that case, someone else owns them, and you do not need to report them again, but everyone knows that you were the generating source. The same logic can be applied to tier 1, 2, and 3 level emissions. Attached to the emissions ledger are all other necessary information about the asset generating those emissions, financial information, depreciation schedule, time in service, operating time, fuel consumption, operators’ names, an estimate of future emissions—the list goes on.

To learn more how blockchain technology will impact emissions monitoring, management, reporting, and trading click here.

Salt River Project selects Locus SaaS for waste information management

Locus Platform provides “out-of-the-box” configurable software to streamline SRP’s Waste Management compliance tracking and reporting

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 27 February 2018 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in EHS, sustainability, and compliance management software, is pleased to announce that Salt River Project (SRP) selected the multi-tenant SaaS Locus Platform to streamline its waste management and tracking, as part of its ongoing environmental stewardship and sustainability initiatives. A key factor for SRP was the “out-of-the-box” configurability of Locus Platform, plus the ability to perform their own data migrations and build APIs to integrate with internal tools, such as their LIMS system.

“The scalable, easy-to-use configuration in Locus Platform will allow us to standardize our waste management and reporting process, and integrating with Locus Mobile will simplify data collection and container management at our waste-generating facilities,” said Noah Manwaring, environmental systems development lead at SRP.

”Locus Platform will help our Waste Management resources to more effectively track, manage, and report information to regulatory agencies, facility managers, and corporate staff, and we can completely customize the solution using the built-in Configuration Workbench tool.”

Locus Platform’s Waste application allows waste-generating facilities to manage waste cradle to grave—including waste streams, processes, detailed profiles, container details and weights, and storage locations—and to produce various report outputs like labels, manifests, and LDR generation.

At the enterprise level, powerful dashboards and reports show users how each facility is generating and managing its waste, and built-in labeling and tracking streamlines workflows to create a full EHS compliance solution.

“By taking our existing Waste application and adding in their API integrations, SRP is combining the advantages of off-the-shelf software with Locus Platform’s powerful configuration tools. This means SRP will get exactly the software solution they need to fit their business processes,” said Wes Hawthorne, President of Locus.