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Los Alamos National Laboratory Extends Contract with Locus Technologies for Four More Years

Locus to continue managing environmental data and information for the nation’s largest laboratory

SAN FRANCISCO, California and LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, October 28, 2013 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based environmental software, announced today that Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has chosen to extend its contract with Locus for four more years.

LANL is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security (LANS), located in Los Alamos, N.M. LANL conducts multidisciplinary research in national security, outer space, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing. LANL is one of three laboratories in the United States at which the government conducts classified work to care for the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

Modifications that accompany the extended contract include additional functionality for air data management and reporting that involves better flexibility for increased data transparency. LANL also will put more focus on field and mobile devices, and significant enhancements will be made to Intellus New Mexico, the public-facing website that Locus created for LANL’s data.

The original contract between LANL and Locus began in 2011, with the option of extending the contract for four additional years. LANL will continue to use Locus’ Environmental Information Management software (EIM) to address legacy site contamination and to take a better aggregate view of its operations for environmental stewardship.

“We are very proud that LANL trusts our EIM software to continue assisting it with its environmental data management requirements,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “We look forward to continuing to work with the team of talented professionals at LANL, and also continuing to assist DOE sites with their environmental data management challenges.”

“High-quality data is a crucial component in environmental stewardship and our commitment to transparency with the public,” said Chris Echohawk, office leader of the Laboratory’s Operations Improvement Office.

 

ABOUT LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, the Babcock & Wilcox Company, and URS for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.

LANL news media contact: Fred deSousa, (505) 665-3430, fdesousa@lanl.gov

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Locus Introduces New Platform for Environmental Enterprise Resource Planning

The new Locus platform offers a highly configurable, user-friendly interface to fully meet individual organizations’ environmental management needs

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 21 October 2013 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in cloud-based environmental and sustainability management software, introduces its newest platform to redefine how companies organize, manage, visualize, and report their environmental, sustainability, and compliance information.

Today, environmental, sustainability, and energy managers for organizations of all sizes face myriad options from software suppliers offering various single-domain applications. Challenged with an ever-evolving regulatory landscape, these managers must select a software provider that can adapt to new compliance constraints and the constant changes of existing regulations, often with multijurisdictional requirements; unfortunately, most software suppliers have rigid platforms or applications that fail to keep up with constantly changing needs, are hard to integrate, and are often obsolete before they are even implemented.

To address this industry challenge, the company designed the new Locus platform to provide rich functionality in a simple way so that it would be easy for customers to make the most of their data management and reporting requirements. In addition, the new platform helps companies avoid many of the costs generally associated with implementing traditional software systems thanks to its simple setup, navigation, and configuration options, thereby eliminating the need for expensive implementations, user training, and customizations.

Locus addressed common barriers to using environmental management software when designing the new Locus platform. Specifically, Locus conducted a gap analysis of current software offerings. It identified challenges through feedback from its end users and other industry professionals, and through customer surveys conducted by several industry research analysts’ firms over the last two years. Specifically, users were wary of complex and expensive systems and implementations; a rigid regulatory environment for businesses that made adapting to new systems costly and complicated; and integration of a new platform with legacy systems.

The resulting Locus platform offers an intuitive interface with the immense flexibility to incorporate features such as drag-and-drop forms creation, visual business-process modeling, Excel import/export integration, and a rich and configurable user dashboards and reporting interface. Locus created every feature with the end user in mind to promote quick and easy data capture and task management. Finally, customers should see significant savings over traditional software offerings both at the time of implementation and over the long term. Because the Locus platform’s system, upgrades, and maintenance are cloud-based rather than configured on individual user workstations, while users can configure the way they use the software, they do not need to pay for customization at the individual level.

“We listened to industry users and created configurable dashboards that are clean, dynamically driven, easy to read, and easy to access. This platform will improve companies’ data collection, analysis, and most importantly, reporting capabilities,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “The new Locus platform will make the required compliance and EH&S reporting expected of most companies more streamlined. The end result is the mitigation of regulatory risks and fines.”

The launch of the latest Locus platform follows the same guidelines and goals that the company established during the original inception of ePortal in 2000. This version is the latest embodiment of Locus’ industry differentiation: to offer an integrated solution so that companies can manage all of their environmental, energy, water, waste, carbon, air, health and safety, and compliance information in one place.

“We’ve updated the platform based on industry wants and needs,” remarked Duplan. “This isn’t a product of different solutions pieced together to look like one; it is the ‘whole solution.’ We have always created our products in this same vein because it means less time to configure, less time to implement, and far fewer support requirements. And it means a dramatically lower cost than customers have seen in the past with the ERP providers or point solutions from different vendors. Budget has long been a barrier to implementation and we are stepping up to the plate to solve that problem.”

Locus will conduct the first live demonstrations of the new platform at the Locus booth at the National Association for Environmental Management 2013 EHS Management Forum from October 23-25 in Montreal.

California’s Cap-and-Trade Program Gains Confidence

At last month’s carbon allowance auction, the fourth ever held, the California cap-and-trade program reached an important milestone. The auction of “current year allowances”, or permits that companies can use for this year’s carbon pollution, have sold out at every auction thus far- but this was the first time the auction completely sold out of its permits for future carbon pollution, for the year 2016 to be exact.

California sold almost 10 million future year permits at a clearing price of $11.10 per allowance, and almost 14 million current year permits at a clearing price of $12.22 per allowance. Never before has there been this great of a demand for future permits. Most believe this surge in interest reflects a growing confidence in California’s cap-and-trade program, and increasing recognition by state businesses that this program is here to stay.

The cap-and-trade program, that took effect in 2012, was enacted to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced in California that cause climate change. The programs intention is to aid California in meeting its goal of reducing GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and overall accomplishing an 80 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2050.

The recent carbon auction is a small achievement toward reaching this long-term goal. Locus fully supports these efforts; we were one of the first accredited verification bodies for greenhouse gas emissions, and our staff have also been certified as carbon offset verifiers under the California Air Resources Board. From our years of experience reporting greenhouse gases, Locus knows that participants in the cap-and-trade program have many options available to them in how they calculate and report their GHG data, and it is our personal goal to help them choose the best methods, through our technical experts or by using Locus’ cloud-based GHG software.

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The Value of True SaaS for EHS Compliance

What if there was a better way to manage your EHS, compliance, and sustainability information?

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Rogue Disposal & Recycling, Inc. Selects Locus Technologies’ ePortal Software for Compliance Management

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 12 August 2013 — Rogue Disposal & Recycling, Inc. (Rogue), a company that’s been providing Southern Oregon with innovative solid waste disposal and recycling services for over 73 years, has selected Locus Technologies’ cloud-based ePortal software for its compliance management.Rogue will use ePortal to take a more holistic view of its operations, and to proactively manage all compliance activities associated with its Dry Creek Landfill site. The company’s decision to use ePortal for compliance management stems from its continuous commitment to environmental responsibility. Rogue has always strived to become an environmentally conscious leader, and has enacted various innovative “green” policies and programs in order to do its part to both improve and protect the environment.

“Rogue’s overall goal is to be the leading environmental company in Southern Oregon,” said Lee Fortier, Dry Creek Landfill’s General Manager. “Locus’ ePortal system will help us to actively monitor all of our environmental compliance activities as we embrace the environmental regulations as our minimum commitment to our clients.”

“We are very pleased Rogue has chosen Locus to assist it with managing its compliance,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “We believe Rogue will reap the benefits of tracking and reporting on all compliance activities in a single cloud-based secure system.”

About Rogue Disposal & Recycling, Inc.
Rogue management’s goal is to be the greenest company in Southern Oregon. The company has worked hard to become an environmentally conscious leader by continually looking at ways to both improve and protect the environment. The company features: solar panels at its main transfer station facility to produce clean, renewable energy; two waste collection trucks powered entirely by compressed natural gas (CNG); and the innovative Dry Creek Landfill gas-to-energy facility that converts methane gas from landfill refuse to electrical energy. Rogue is dedicated to new technology and the best management practices that exceed governmental mandates in a continued effort to provide superior service, affordable rates and a commitment to recycling and environmental protection.

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Locus Makes ENR’s Prestigious List of Top 200 Environmental Firms

Locus is a part of ENR’s Top 200 Environmental Firms

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Locus Achieves a Microsoft Gold Application Development Competency

Locus demonstrates best-in-class capability and market leadership through demonstrated technology success and customer commitment

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 30 July 2013 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in cloud-based environmental compliance and information management software, today announced it has attained a Gold Application Development competency, demonstrating a “best-in-class” ability and commitment to meet Microsoft Corp. customers’ evolving needs in today’s dynamic business environment and distinguishing itself within the top one percent of Microsoft’s partner ecosystem.

To earn a Microsoft gold competency, partners must successfully complete exams (resulting in Microsoft Certified Professionals) to prove their level of technology expertise, and then designate these certified professionals uniquely to one Microsoft competency, ensuring a certain level of staffing capacity. They also must submit customer references that demonstrate successful projects (along with implementing a yearly customer satisfaction study), meet a revenue commitment, and pass technology and/or sales assessments.

“This Microsoft Gold Application Development competency showcases our expertise in and commitment to today’s technology market and to providing our customers with the most advanced technology and functionality available,” said Neno Duplan, President & CEO of Locus. “We plan to accelerate our customers’ environmental data management success by combining this and other advanced web technologies with our deep domain expertise.”

“By achieving a gold competency, partners have demonstrated the highest, most consistent capability and commitment to the latest Microsoft technology,” said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft Corp. “These partners have a deep expertise that puts them in the top one percent of our partner ecosystem, and their proficiency will help customers drive innovative solutions on the latest Microsoft technology.”

Earning the Application Development competency helps partners differentiate themselves as a trusted expert to their customers through development and deployment of commercial or custom applications built using core Microsoft technologies.

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Locus Ranked Second Largest Environmental Firm in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Business Journal ranked the biggest environmental firms by the number of professionals in Silicon Valley. Locus Technologies is second out of twenty-five.

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Obama Speaks on the Fight Against Climate Change

Yesterday, 25 June 2013, President Obama braved the heat and took to the stage at Georgetown University to give a speech on his climate change plan. Addressing his audience, Obama began with a bold statement that brought the real impacts of the subject at hand immediately to the surface. “It was important for me to speak directly to your generation, because the decisions that we make now and in the years ahead will have a profound impact on the world that all of you inherit,” he stated.

The president proceeded by defining the reasons for why this speech was necessary, and why climate change is such an important topic in the United States today. He stated the scientific facts: that the measurement of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has dramatically increased since the 1950’s, and that 12 of the warmest years in recorded history have occurred in the past 15.

Obama further emphasized the evidence by referencing the droughts, floods, storms, and heat waves that the U.S. has recently experienced- all weather events that may not have been caused by global warming, but were directly affected by it. The progress made in recent years, such as the reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase in both sun and wind generated electricity was addressed, but ultimately referred to as a ‘good start’.

President Obama stated that he would direct the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to put an end to the excessive carbon pollution from power plants, and create standards for new and existing power plants. Other highlights included Obama’s call to develop a better plan to help us prepare for climate change impacts, and his pledge to seek greater international engagement in regards to climate change.

On par with every other hot political topic, the president’s speech did not come without controversy, and certain parts were hailed by some and criticized by others. However, a few key takeaways are as follows: the severity of the United States climate change situation and the urgency to make this a top priority have been made clear.

This means it is more important than ever for organizations to take full responsibility for their GHG and carbon emissions, and energy consumption. The need to properly track and manage all their operational environmental and compliance information is apparent, and will play a crucial role in the fight to subdue climate change. Locus will continue to work it’s hardest to develop the most comprehensive software available to assist companies with the management of their critical, big data, and provide them with the necessary tools to not only comply with new and anticipated regulations, but also to harvest their data for actionable information to lower operating costs.

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Locus Software Automates Discharge Monitoring Reporting

Locus Technologies has expanded its Environmental Information Management (EIM) software to automate the generation of discharge monitoring reports (DMR), which can help companies realize immediate cost and time savings, Locus says.