Locus Technologies Establishes Asheville, NC Operations

SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 15, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based water, energy, and environmental software, announced today that Dr. Todd Pierce rejoined the company in their newly established office in Asheville, NC. Dr. Pierce will lead Locus’ Web-based Geographic Information Services and Augmented Reality Group.

Dr. Todd Pierce returns to Locus as Director of Geographic Information Systems. Dr. Pierce has over twenty years of experience in geographical information systems and Web programming and holds a doctorate in geography from the University of Oxford, U.K. He previously worked for Locus from 2003-2007, when he developed the mapping components of Locus’ EIM application. Dr. Pierce is now coming back to Locus to manage the implementation of all R&D for Locus GIS applications. He will lead efforts to develop subsurface 3D visualization, Augmented Reality (AR), and real-time sensing into Locus’ GIS-based applications.

Locus believes that GIS technology coupled with AR creates a new framework for studying water, energy, and global climate change issues by allowing users to inventory and display large, complex spatial datasets. GIS can also be used to analyze the potential interplay between various factors, getting us closer to a true understanding of enterprise sustainability.

While GIS is already widely used by planners, engineers, and scientists to display and analyze all forms of location-referenced data, it has not been used effectively to link subsurface, surface and atmospheric data in a single system on the Web. Since every aspect of climate change and sustainability affects or is affected by geography and geology, be it at a global, regional, or local level, interplay among geography, geology, hydrology, and atmosphere is very important for a holistic view of enterprise environmental impact. Web-based GIS linked to large data sets in Locus EIM is the single most powerful integrating tool for inventorying, analyzing, and ultimately managing and reporting this extremely complex problem. The key to understanding our dynamic climate and related energy and environmental issues is creating a framework to take many different pieces of past and future data from a variety of sources and meshing them into a single system. That is exactly what Locus has done.

Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus, commented, “Our company’s strength is directly related to our innovative and experienced environmental professionals. I am pleased that Dr. Todd Pierce has re-joined our firm to lead our Asheville operations. Todd’s previous work as a research scientist with UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC), where he developed Web mapping tools for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Forest Service, and state and local agencies, is relevant to work he will lead at Locus.”

“We have a growing technology cluster here in Asheville. The presence of a highly sophisticated workforce was a critical factor in establishing a Locus base of operations in this community. I am excited to be back to Locus and to continue my work to bring the power of GIS and Web-based visualization to Locus’ cloud applications. We are at a point in the evolution of the technology and its broad application where the next logical step is development of a GIS-based framework for earth systems modeling that includes subsurface, surface and atmospheric information in a single system. Such a system that Locus pioneered crosses academic, scientific, and industrial domains to serve as a platform for a comprehensive water, energy, climate, and sustainability management system,” said Dr. Todd Pierce.

“Our world faces unprecedented challenges, and GIS technology is poised to provide enterprises the necessary tool to collect, manage, and analyze the myriad of analytical, biological, and regulatory data in a very transparent and visual way. GIS technology has proved to be invaluable in driving intelligent decision making. Todd will continue building on extensive work that has already been done to integrate Locus’ many applications, from hydrogeology to climate science, and apply GIS technology to address complex subjects such as water quality management, GHG inventories, data model development, waste management, carbon accounting, and climate change visualization. Every organization that is looking to be credible with respect to all their environmental reporting needs will need a tool like this,” added Duplan.

Locus offers another industry-first application for environmental data collection

SAN FRANCISCO, California, March 28, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based energy, environmental, and emissions information management software, announced today a new iPhone application for field data collection. eWell for the iPhone consists of two linked components: the iPhone application itself, and Locus’ Environmental Information ManagementTM (EIM) web-based application. Data are collected using the iPhone and the data provisioning setup is performed in EIM. Once data are collected, they are wirelessly transmitted to EIM for review and reporting.

Using EIM, eWell users can map the routes for checking a series of wells that need to be sampled, and/or those that they need water levels and other field parameters measured. They can download these routes to the iPhone, along with selected historical environmental data on their wells, for use in the field for real-time validation and QA/QC of collected data. Once downloaded to eWell, the routes and well locations can be seen and accessed directly from the iPhone’s Google Maps interface.

Once in the field, customers can use their iPhones, iPod Touches, or iPads to record water levels, pH, turbidity, and other environmental readings, as well as to compare current and past readings. Where Wi-Fi or 3G coverage is available, data collected in the field uploads instantly to EIM. Where access is unavailable, users save the collected data automatically, which can then be uploaded when coverage becomes available. eWell for the iPhone completely streamlines the data upload and download processes, eliminating any steps that require equipment synchronization.

“The release of this new iPhone/iPod/iPad version of eWell adds yet another powerful tool to Locus’ arsenal of web-based technologies for lowering the cost of environmental data collection and management. For information that cannot be collected through interfaces to other applications, such as from analytical laboratories LIMS systems, data historians or wireless sensors, eWell offers a powerful alternative that eliminates duplicate input, reduces transcription time, performs data checks and validation at point of collection, and maintains a complete audit trail, including the georefererence on who did what, when, and where,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO Locus Technologies.

Once in EIM’s data review tables, users can review uploaded data for accuracy and completeness. After completing all data validation checks, field readings are moved to liveEIM for reporting and other project uses. EIM is part of Locus’ ePortal SaaS platform.

“The smart phone-based eWell represents another milestone for applying mobile Web 2.0 technologies to the business world. Locus will continue expanding this popular platform to include field data collection for energy, carbon, resource consumption, and other sustainability information. As is the case for all other applications that Locus has pioneered over last decade, eWell is designed to lower a company’s environmental expenditures while improving data quality,” added Duplan.

Locus first released eWell in 2000 on the PalmTM, and was the environmental industry’s first wireless Internet application for recording and transmitting environmental data in the field.

The eWell iPhone app is available for download from the Apple, Inc. App Store immediately for $19.95. Over the course of 2011, Locus will introduce eWell on other smart phone platforms, including Android.

Locus SaaS software to manage data for nation’s largest laboratory

SAN FRANCISCO, California and LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, March 21, 2011  — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based environmental software, announced today that it has been awarded a contract from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to manage LANL’s environmental data in Locus’ Cloud. The contract is worth up to $2 million from 2011 through an additional four option 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. The 37-square-mile laboratory is one of the largest science and technology institutions in the world; it conducts multidisciplinary research for fields such as national security, outer space, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing. LANL is one of two laboratories in the United States at which the government conducts classified work toward the design of nuclear weapons.

The Locus EIM software will help LANL organize and manage its future environmental compliance and monitoring activities using SaaS. By centralizing the data collected during current remediation and surveillance efforts, Locus’ EIM software will enable the facility to more efficiently address legacy site contamination, both chemical and radioactive, across multiple locations. EIM will allow Los Alamos to take a better aggregate view of its environmental challenges and make better planning decisions for environmental stewardship.

Activities that EIM will organize include environmental data of all media types, comparison of historical contamination levels; planning and performing sampling, processing, and analysis of environmental media; providing institutional coordination, integration, and communication of all environmental monitoring activities, data, and documentation; implementing regulatory and action standards and policy with line organizations; and interacting with government agencies, stakeholders, the public, and Indian tribes on environmental resource management issues.

Locus designed its EIM software specifically to meet challenging water-quality management issues, covering both analytical chemistry and the management of radionuclides data in a complex hydro-geological setting. EIM will also provide a web-based GIS system for Los Alamos data that will be available to the general public, bringing ease of use and complete transparency to complex data sets.

“With more than 37 square miles of complex geology and hydrogeology, Los Alamos National Laboratory is home to 14 major canyon systems that affect the Rio Grande, and the complexity and size of Los Alamos operations make environmental compliance a top priority. We are very proud that LANL has determined that EIM has the robust functionality to meet the facility’s formidable data management requirements. After the National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford (SLAC), Los Alamos is the second U.S. Department of Energy site to be managed in EIM. We are very excited to work with LANL’s talented team of professionals on this important long term project,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

LANL has created byproduct waste since the 1940s. Its past practices for disposing of waste, while meeting the standards of the day, are not up to today’s standards. Investigations, cleanup, and remediation are now under way, and the Lab has dramatically reduced its waste generation from ongoing work.

“High-quality environmental data is one of the key drivers that will help us meet our cleanup goals,” said Alison Dorries, division leader for the Lab’s Waste and Environmental Services organization. “Moving forward, our data will help us be more sustainable and better stewards of the environment. Organizing these massive volumes of data, and making them available to the public, will help demonstrate our commitment to openness and environmental compliance.”

 

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

Closed ‘consultant-centric’ model giving way to open ‘cloud’ computing


by Neno Duplan, CEO of Locus Technologies

Environmental consultants are cleaning up…literally.

As they go about the lengthy, tedious, expensive and very often dirty job of decontaminating polluted industrial sites, environmental consultants bill their clients by the hour, capturing…and then completely controlling…the superabundance of project-related environmental data that underlies remediation strategies.

As a result of this process, a “consultant-centric model” has dominated the field of corporate environmental data management.  This is primarily because environmental data is not integral to the daily functioning of a company, and because the quantities and complexities of the data produced are enormous.  So company managers are generally quite comfortable with letting their consultants do all the querying, analysis, reporting…and then storing the data.

And since the consultants derive increased billing hours from controlling their clients’ data, the ultimate incentive for them is a renewed or extended contract, an outcome which, though certainly not guaranteed, is optimized by their control of the data.

But change is coming.  The environmental data management practices of corporations and their consultants are undergoing a profound transformation as new Web-based software provides a low-cost means of making available the critical information that organizational decision makers need not only to better understand and manage their overall environmental liabilities but also to improve their operations by analyzing the valuable data.  While environmental data is collected primarily for compliance reporting, when mined with the right tools it can also be used to point to weaknesses in data gathering and processing operations and provide valuable information on how to eliminate or reduce these.

A new “company-centric” environmental data management model now offers a remote data repository situated in the Internet “Cloud” and equally accessible in real time to all, including both the client and its consultants.

 

Polluters Pay… and Pay Again

Business and industry pay well for the services of experienced, knowledgeable specialists who can help with the job of abating the damage done to a massively polluted environment.  According to the EPA and some state agencies, there are more than two million contaminated sites in the U.S. alone. Among the major sources of widespread water pollution are the effluents and contaminants emitted by industry into the water bodies—lakes, rivers, reservoirs, aquifers—that are the source of all our drinking, cooking and bathing water.

In an effort to stem the tide of environmental deterioration — or at least compel the business world to be more diligent in implementing prevention and conservation efforts — thousands of U.S. state and federal regulations (in addition to numerous voluntary standards) require that organizations be in full legal compliance with mandates concerning environmental protection.

Public opinion is also heavily influencing environmental developments.  In a March 2009 Gallup Environment survey, “pollution of drinking water” was listed as Americans’ No. 1 environmental concern, with 59 percent of those polled saying they worry “a great deal” about the issue. Fifty-two percent said they worried equally about “pollution of rivers, lakes and waters,” and “contamination of soil and water by toxic waste.”  In comparison, 45 percent are worried about “air pollution,” while the “greenhouse effect” (or “global warming”) is of great concern to 34 percent of the survey’s respondents.

Polluting companies with environmental recovery obligations and a portfolio of contaminated sites are on official notice to get busy cleaning up the mess.  However, since tracking environmental data, site cleanup and regulatory compliance are non-core activities for most corporations, doing the work themselves offers very little direct economic advantage, which makes the endeavor ideal for outsourcing to dedicated specialist third parties.

 

Consulting—Lucrative but Uncertain

Enter the environmental consultant, expert advisor to an incredibly lucrative market.

The Environmental Business Journal reports that the total U.S. environmental industry generated revenues of more than $300 billion in 2009.  This dynamic market has given rise to a $30 billion consulting and remediation practice.  ENR Magazine’s Top 200 Environmental Firms ranking, published each July, provides an annual look at this market.

Nearly 9,000 companies, ranging in size from one-person businesses to global corporations, provide environmental consulting services.  Major companies include CH2M HILL, Parsons, AECOM, and URS as well as environmental engineering and consulting divisions of large engineering and construction firms such as Fluor and Bechtel.  Contracts can run into the millions of dollars and extend for years.

But it’s a volatile business. A list of the leading company names from ten years ago would be very different from today’s list of top performers.  If one thing is certain in the environmental industry, it is that clients switch consultants frequently. Sometimes they initiate the action. Other times, it is forced upon them when consultants change ownership via mergers and acquisitions, or simply go out of business.

Anyone who has been in the environmental consulting business for any length of time is most likely familiar with the names of those companies that have been relegated to history.  Here are a few: Morrison-Knudsen, Smith Technology Corporation, Canonie Environmental Services, Woodward Clyde, Radian, Dames and Moore, OHM, AWD, Rust, Harding Lawson, and IT Corporation.  At their peak, most of these companies made the ENR Top 100 list.

The changeability inherent with consulting companies presents clients concerned about their environmental liabilities with a problem.  What if a now defunct company was tasked 10 years ago to build and maintain analytical data management software for a client with a portfolio of contaminated sites?  In the upheavals caused by the business transactions involving these companies, the whereabouts and security of a client’s water or air quality data is apt to be one of the least concerns of the involved parties. Environmental Financial Consulting Group (EFCG) reported in October 2009 the staggering statistic that in the previous 12 years, 23 (58 percent) of the top 40 environmental consulting firms have gone bankrupt or disappeared, 17 (42 percent) have survived,  33 (84 percent) have undergone a major ownership change, and only 7 (18 percent) remain the same.

The volatility in the environmental consulting sector is not just limited to the businesses providing these services.  On average, U.S. corporations lose half their customers in five years, half their employees in four, and half their investors in less than one.” (Frederick Reichheld, “The Loyalty Effect”).  Given these statistics, does any company have any other choice but to take full ownership of its own water, air and other environmental data?

Such instability is another reason why the “consultant-centric” environmental data management model is so appealing to consultants and, despite the availability of alternatives, has endured so long—it works for them.

It also works for corporate environmental managers (if not the company bottom line).  Since corporate environmental departments really don’t help a company make a product or a profit, these departments are often perceived by top management as cost centers…and even potential liabilities.  As a result, they have historically been severely underfunded and understaffed.  Department understaffing results in co-dependent relationships between in-house managers and their hired consultants, who end up functioning as the environmental department manager’s “de facto staff,” performing the job assignments normally carried out by regular employees.

 

Diversity the Key

The designation “environmental consultant” is a general term for a heterogeneous group of professionals with significantly diverse skill sets and experience.  Earth’s natural environment is such a vast, ultra-complex ecosystem that remediation teams must of necessity possess an extensive array of knowledge, talents and multidisciplinary capabilities.

This is apparent in the delivery of services like contaminated site remediation, in which consultants investigate and clean up toxic substance releases like petroleum spills or dumped hazardous materials.  Consultants perform preliminary site endangerment assessments and forensic evaluations, conduct soil and subsurface groundwater investigations, and prepare and carry out cleanup and long-term monitoring (so-called “long term stewardship”).  Typical consultant tasks include capturing and logging in samples, uploading data from labs and field, performing analyses, and producing maps and compliance reports, and supervising long-term archiving of data and information.

The multi-disciplinary field of environmental consulting attracts a wide range of practitioners such as engineers, geologists, geophysicists, hydrologists, environmental studies PhDs, biologists, atmospheric scientists, climatologists, meteorologists and many more with a variety of technical, governmental, commercial, industrial and academic backgrounds.

And because of the significant information technology (IT) demands associated with contaminated site cleanup activities, the business of environmental consulting also involves highly trained IT managers, software developers, computer technicians, network and systems administrators, and more.

 

Corporate Environmental IT

Some outside consulting firms that provide environmental data storage infrastructure utilize commercial, client-server database management systems. Others have in-house designed databases, generally built on top of the Microsoft Access relational database management system.  Surprisingly, though, the most common tool used to store and report data is the ubiquitous Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

But that humble application is rapidly giving ground to an emerging “green” software market with hundreds of tools for jobs like managing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and industrial pollution, air and water consumption, paper waste, energy conservation and regulatory compliance requirements.

The multi-billion dollar environmental software market encompasses numerous sub-segments with applications for air and climate, energy and renewables, health and safety, monitoring and testing, soil and groundwater, waste and recycling, water and wastewater, and environmental management.  This last segment includes software for categories like investigations and assessments, auditing, compliance, ecology, EHS, environmental finance, management systems, modeling, permitting, planning, reporting, risk, science, sustainability and green building.

The traditional “consultant-centric” approach to environmental site cleanup is changing under pressure from clients and within the industry itself to adapt consulting practices to the new “company centric” information processing realities of the Internet age, e.g., Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and “Cloud” Computing. In summary we are witnessing the early stage of the transformation from a highly distributed, unconnected, multiple platform  silo systems to the centralized, single platform web-based Enterprise Environmental Resource Planning (EERP) systems .

 

SaaS via Cloud Computing

In the SaaS delivery model, the software vendor provides access to its software and functions remotely as a Web-based service. SaaS allows organizations to access business functionality at a cost typically less than paying for licensed applications, since SaaS pricing is based on a monthly rental fee.  Instead of users buying software and paying for periodic upgrades, their use of a SaaS application is subscription based and all upgrades are provided during the term of the subscription. When the subscription period expires, all a client needs to do is to renew.

This on-demand service provides measurable economies of scale and cost advantages because the more customers a SaaS vendor has, the less each customer pays for a subscription.  This process continuously drives down costs while improving software quality as a SaaS application benefits from the “wisdom of the crowd,” i.e., its many users.  When a large “network effect” is present, as is the case with SaaS-based software, the value of a product or service increases as more people use it. This effect, which originally described the rapid spread of telephones, and that has manifested itself more recently in the rapid adoption of social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIN, states that the value of a communications network to its users rises exponentially with the number of people connected to it.

SaaS applications are maintained in the service provider’s datacenter, and every time users launch their browsers and log on, they get the latest version of the software as well as access to the most current data, which is also stored in the service provider’s datacenter.  Because the software is hosted remotely, users don’t need to invest in additional hardware or software. SaaS removes the need for organizations to handle installation, set-up and often daily upkeep and maintenance.

SaaS environmental applications are remotely hosted by service providers like Locus Technologies and made available to customers via the Internet—the “Cloud.”

“Cloud Computing,” a name inspired by the cloud symbol that’s often used to represent the Internet in flow charts and diagrams, is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services on the Internet.  Cloud Computing describes all data processing activity that occurs “outside the firewall” of security measures that protect an organization’s networked computer systems.  The Cloud provides the computing capacity required to run SaaS and other types of applications.  Since SaaS is a subservice of Cloud Computing, all SaaS applications are in the Cloud, which provides the computing power to run those applications.

In environmental information management, Cloud Computing puts companies back in charge of their own data while at the same time offering individuals with the appropriate logon privileges unfettered access not only to relevant data, but also to tools needed to analyze these data.  If one can find information on something he or she is looking for on the Web in seconds and for free, why should one have to pay a consultant to dig into their own data to give them information they already own?

By storing their clients’ data on their own servers or otherwise monopolizing that data, consultants erect a substantial barrier to any improvement in a situation that has amounted to client management’s willing relinquishment of control over a critical asset and resource the company actually owns.  When senior management generally lacks familiarity with (and even interest in) their own environmental data, a company often has a poorly connected relationship with that data.  This can result in having to pay consultants to mine the company’s own environmental data to find information that the company already possesses and should be able to readily access.  Cloud Computing circumvents this artificial barrier.

Companies that pay a price for polluting also pay an additional price for turning over control of their environmental data.  This comes in many forms, including:

  • Increased expenditures
  • Greater data inconsistency and variability
  • More frequent QA/QC issues
  • No access to performance metrics
  • Fewer opportunities to reduce sampling
  • Poorer security and backup, and duplicative efforts across consultants.
  • Less opportunity to improve their operational processes that could ultimately be optimized to prevent a need for environmental data collection and reporting in the first place.

Consultants provide valuable advice and service in their particular areas of expertise, and the best consultants utilize the best tools available to meet their obligations to their clients.  Savvy environmental consultants and their clients clearly recognize the mutual benefits to be derived from adapting to the new realities of “company centric” environmental data management in the “Cloud.”

Locus Technologies (www.locustec.com), Mountain View, Calif., is the industry leader in Cloud Computing environmental solutions serving mid-market and Fortune 500 corporations in numerous industrial segments, including technology, manufacturing and energy production (e.g., Alstom, Chevron, ExxonMobil).

Cloud Computing Solution for Tritium Transparency at Nuclear Power Plants

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 15, 2010 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental compliance and information management software, and Overhoff Technology Corporation, the world’s leader in the design and manufacture of Tritium monitors and radiation monitoring systems, have partnered to offer a complete Tritium monitoring solution for the nuclear industry using Overhoff’s Tritium instrumentation and Locus’ award winning Cloud Computing software.

As the new Administration advocates expansion of America’s nuclear power industry, pushing for billions of dollars in federal incentives and announcing plans to build the first nuclear plant in decades, new issues have arisen regarding leaking and possibly dangerous levels of Tritium, a radioactive byproduct of the nuclear process. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which oversees the inspection and licensing of nuclear facilities, says roughly 30 of the nation’s 104 reactor units have experienced Tritium leaks. According to the NRC, none of the leaks have impacted public health or safety but, the unmonitored and unexpected releases have raised concerns within the industry and among watchdog groups nationwide.

Similar concerns regarding leaks at several plants in the mid 2000’s prompted the members of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) to put forth a Ground Water Protection Initiative (NEI-07-07) in 2007. This Initiative identifies actions that utilities can take to improve their management and response to instances where the inadvertent release of radioactive substances may result in low but detectible levels of plant-related materials in subsurface soils and water, even when these are well below the NRC limits pertaining to the protection of public health and safety. One of the key actions that adoptees of the Initiative are expected to undertake is the establishment of an on-site groundwater monitoring program involving on site monitoring or regular sampling and analyses to ensure the timely detection of inadvertent radiological releases. The Tritium groundwater challenge was addressed in 2009 when Locus introduced the nuclear module for its flagship product EIM that is already deployed at several nuclear power plants.

According to the NRC, additional requirements pertaining to the monitoring of air releases of Tritium and Carbon-14 are likely to be promulgated in the future. To meet these requirements, new monitoring instruments and data management tools will have to be installed since many facilities are still using over 30-year old stack monitors and few, if any currently have H-3 or C-14 stack monitors in place.

For those nuclear facilities wanting to fulfill their responsibility under existing (e.g., 10CFR-51 and 10CFR-52) as well as likely forthcoming regulations, the Locus/TA Overhoff solution provides a complete system for Tritium monitoring. TA-Overhoff has been designing and manufacturing nuclear air and stack monitors since 1946. The company recently announced the new, state-of-the-art CAM-TC and CAM-TCI series monitors. The model CAM-TC is a full-service, state-of the-art, stack monitor that reads, analyzes and records Beta-Gamma Particulates, Iodine, Noble Gases, C-14, Tritium and optionally, Alpha Particulates. The data captured by the CAM-TC monitors is immediately passed to Locus’ EIM where it is managed and integrated with groundwater and other monitoring data. Within EIM, graphs can be plotted, reports generated, maps can be produced and statistical analyses performed.

“Nearly all of the activities associated with water and air protection at nuclear power plants, including the assessment of site characteristics, the ongoing monitoring of site conditions, and decommissioning of old plants or permitting of new plants, involve the collection and/or analysis of data. The tools and systems used to manage and store this information must satisfy strict NRC security and QA/QC requirements such as NQA-1 or ISO 9001:2008 to ensure that only the appropriate people can access the data, and that the quality of the data adheres to the highest NRC standards. It is also critical that these applications allow engineers and scientists to do their work in a cost-effective way, allowing them to focus less of their time on finding the data they need and formatting various outputs, and more on the evaluation and analysis of these data. In addition data must be transparent and verifiable to all stakeholders. All of these requirements are instantly met using Locus/Overhoff monitoring and data management solution. We are very pleased that Overhoff Technology has decided to join forces with Locus. The company’s outstanding reputation for having monitors that excel in performance will enhance Locus’ offering in the important nuclear monitoring market,” said Dr. Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

“We are very pleased to join with Locus to bring an integrated and elegant solution to address the nuclear industry’s Tritium monitoring needs. Our experience in producing hundreds of different types of monitors for different users, coupled with Locus’ market leader position in Cloud Computing-based environmental data management, will benefit our joint clients,” said Dr. Robert I. Goldstein, President and CEO of Overhoff.

 

ABOUT OVERHOFF
Founded in 1972, Overhoff Technology Corporation specializes in the design and manufacture of Tritium monitors. With the world’s largest selection of Tritium monitors, Overhoff can offer monitors ranging from simple hand held units to complex integrated digital radiation monitoring systems.

For more information, visit www.overhoff.com or email sales@overhoff.com.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., January 11, 2010 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental compliance and information management software, today announced that Orion Environmental Inc. has selected Locus’ Environmental Information Management (EIM) system to streamline environmental data management at its clients’ environmental remediation sites.

EIM streamlines the data entry, analysis, and reporting of water, air, and soil data uploaded from laboratories or input from the field, so that Orion Environmental can get reports and answers quickly. This data is stored in a central, secure location and can be easily shared with regulators, clients, or in-house management. EIM also provides standard analytical chemistry tools and report generation in an easy-to-use system for Orion Environmental.

Locus has also released a new utility that offers customized reporting using templates based on customer formatting and document requirements. Users can define filtering, data sequencing and formatting, and footnotes for a report and save all criteria for later use. This new utility allows EIM users to generate report quality data tables with only a few clicks without any required third party software. Reports can be run on any computer that has a web browser allowing for report generation at any time and any place. This utility has great potential to reduce reporting costs and labor.

According to Jeff Gwinn, Vice President at Orion Environmental, “Locus EIM has improved our productivity through automatic data quality checks, real-time data queries and graphics, and automated data tables for regulatory reports. EIM’s ability to manage our data, including direct laboratory upload of sampling results, saves us and our client’s time and money. EIM’s ability to manage multiple sites within a single database is perfect for our larger clients.”

“We are very pleased that Orion Environmental has joined the rapidly growing list of Locus’ customers to streamline environmental information management services. This example is very significant proof of what an astute environmental consulting company is able to achieve through a partnership with Locus. Through the use of Locus EIM, Orion is able to provide superior data management services to their customers using cloud computing and bring cost efficiencies throughout the business process, resulting in a win-win for both Orion and their many customers.” said Dr. Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

In addition to EIM, Locus provides advanced enterprise environmental information management software systems to the environmental industry. Locus’ ePortal product gives small and large enterprises a world class option for management of all environmental and sustainability data, from compliance tracking to greenhouse gas accounting tools, in a simple and easy to use dashboard based system.
ABOUT ORION ENVIRONMENTAL INC.
From its Long Beach, California, headquarters, Orion provides industry and government clients with environmental services ranging from site investigation to remediation and closure. Orion’s engineers and hydrogeologists specialize in designing, installing, operating, and enhancing remediation systems to clean up contaminated soil and groundwater.

For more information, visit www.orionenv.com or contact Mr. Jeff Gwinn at (562) 988-2755.

Water management problems capture more attention from environmental technology player Locus.

New EIM tool, LTMO, helps customers reduce groundwater well monitoring

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., November 23, 2009 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental software, announced today the release of its Long Term Monitoring Optimization (LTMO) software that helps customers cut the cost of groundwater remediation projects. LTMO is built-in to EIM, Locus’ web-based application for managing sampling, analytical and geological data associated with environmental projects.

Long term monitoring of contaminated groundwater is one of the biggest costs of many environmental projects, often requiring that hundreds or more wells be sampled at regular intervals, with each sample event costing hundreds of dollars. Over time, changes in site conditions may mean the number of sampled wells or the frequency of sampling can be reduced. A number of analytical tools and approaches exist to identify redundant wells and pinpoint opportunities for sampling and monitoring reductions. MAROS (Monitoring And Remediation Optimization System) software application, developed by the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment, is one of the most popular of these tools. With the LTMO tool, Locus has incorporated many of the techniques and methodologies of MAROS, including trend analyses and the Delaunay triangulation method.

The Locus EIM LTMO tool offers several distinct advantages over MAROS and other existing stand-alone or spreadsheet-based applications that perform similar analyses. First of all, there is no need to export data in a special format to another application. All analyses are performed under the umbrella of EIM. Secondly, robust integrated Web 2.0 graphical tools and reports provide a wealth of options for examining the results of the analyses, including extensive backup data that can be supplied to regulatory agencies as needed. Finally, the results of any analysis can be saved and easily pulled up for review or modification.

“We expect the incorporation of the LTMO tool into EIM to be extremely beneficial to our large enterprise customers that have thousands of groundwater sites. Instead of the analyses being performed on the desktops of their many consultants, long-term groundwater management data resides in a single, central, web-accessible database. LTMO is a very powerful tool that significantly reduces the cost of long term stewardship of groundwater contaminated sites,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

“The recent $11 billion bill passed to fix California’s water infrastructure includes a provision for mandatory monitoring of the state’s groundwater, which is often used during times of drought and is most vulnerable to contamination. From the onset of the new bill, Locus’ LTMO tool will be there to help industry and government to optimize groundwater monitoring programs,” added Duplan.

Contact Locus today for a demonstration of this exciting new feature and see how Locus EIM can help you reduce your long-term sampling and analytical costs.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., August 24 2009 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental software, was recently chosen as NASA/Ames Research Center 2009 Small Business Subcontractor of the Year.

Locus, as a subcontractor to NASA prime contractors, provided industrial automation diagnostic and repair services to NASA’s automated Groundwater Treatment Systems. With its expertise in onsite and web-based industrial automation and controls, Locus successfully met aggressive budget and schedule constraints.

“Locus Technologies’ hard work, and excellent performance in support of the continued operation and maintenance of the Center Groundwater Extraction and Treatment System (GWTS) were completed within budget and the projected schedules,” wrote S. Peter Worden, NASA/Ames Center Director. “Your company’s ability to provide diagnosis and/or a report of various automated components in a timely manner, such that there has been minimal to no “down time” is important as it is considered a value added performance,” continued Worden.

“Locus is very proud to receive this honor from NASA/Ames Research Center for our expertise in groundwater treatment system automation services,” said Neno Duplan, Locus President and CEO. “Locus has a long history in treatment system automation and was one of the first companies to use the Internet to streamline monitoring and management of groundwater treatment systems.”

“Our work at NASA/Ames Research Center demonstrates our continued belief that strong environmental domain expertise, coupled with innovative online software services, is a powerful business model few if any other firms can match in the environmental space,” continued Duplan.

Locus has provided industrial automation services for the environmental remediation and water industries since it was founded in 1997. Locus’ Automation Services Group specializes in using automated and wireless sensors for remote monitoring, data collection, and control of water treatment systems. Locus’ automated systems are available onsite or online via Locus web-based ePortal, where customers can view, manage and report via the Internet, and mashup their environmental data and activities through ePortal.

“Interest in our water management software is strong, but not just for automating treatment plant operation or regulatory reporting. We see our clients moving toward an era of sustainable remediation that leverages environmental business intelligence,” said Duplan.

“Water treatment or air emission monitoring can be viewed as a key data source for lowering overall cost of operations, instead of simply as input for regulatory reporting. We help our clients use information gathered for environmental compliance to create an operationally competitive advantage,” Duplan stated.

Upcoming changes to regulatory reporting requirements drive new solutions

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 27 April 2009 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental compliance and information management software, today announced a development relationship with Ecotek, a leader in helping industry navigate the complexities of Federal and State air and greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation compliance reporting.

The environmental industry is at a critical point in determining how businesses, government agencies, and community organizations respond to unprecedented legislative mandates to reduce greenhouse gas to curb global warming. The California Air Resources Board recently adopted the proposed Scoping Plan for implementing AB32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act. And, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed the first comprehensive national system for reporting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by major sources in the United States, the Federal Mandatory GHG reporting Rule.

Business will be required to provide the best possible environmental information and Locus and Ecotek are teaming to make that possible. Progressive companies should be acting now to prepare. Locus is a leader in cloud computing solutions for the environmental industry. Historically, Locus has emphasized environmental data management for complex analytical data with their Environmental Information Management (EIM) system, used by Fortune 100 companies to manage environmental data and risk. Locus’ ePortal is the industry’s first on-demand environmental software that automates environmental information management workflows, compliance, and reporting at enterprise level through Locus’ Software as a Service (SaaS) environmental software offerings. Locus’ ePortal already offers eEHS, a streamlined enterprise corporate sustainability and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) tracking application that includes Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions tracking and key Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) environmental and labor indicators. GRI is independent institution (started in 1997 by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) and became independent in 2002) whose mission is to develop and disseminate globally applicable Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. The GRI is an official collaborating centre of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The GRI performance indicators are grouped under three sections covering the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability.

CSR, corporate sustainability and corporate governance collectively are shaping the identity of organizations and are therefore increasingly integrated into the business strategy of successful corporations. Consequently, the field of responsible business strategy and practice is becoming one of the most dynamic and challenging subjects corporations are facing today and possibly one of the most important ones for shaping the future of the world.

Ecotek is a key player in development and support of air emission and air regulatory reporting software and provides expert air compliance consulting services to a strong base of private sector companies and public agencies. Ecotek’s areas of expertise include EPA Title V and California Air Quality Management District (AQMD) Annual Emissions Reports (AER) and upcoming Greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations. Ecotek is a Climate Action Leader with the California Climate Action Registry and a founding member of The Climate Registry.

“Locus’ eEHS application, in use since 2004, was already tracking the Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions and GRI sustainability indicators as well as calculating carbon footprint for customers. It was natural to take the next step and round out the offering by covering the current (AB32) and proposed (Federal) air quality indicators and GHG reporting requirements expected later this year,” said Locus President and CEO, Neno Duplancic. “Locus selected Ecotek based on their superior qualifications and deep domain expertise in both old and new air regulatory reporting requirements and their excellent reputation with the California South Coast AQMD, as evidenced by their twelve year relationship providing support for that agency.”

“Ecotek is excited to work with Locus on enhancing their popular on-demand software suite,” said Ecotek President, Natasha Meskal. “We have long believed that the advantages of SaaS software applied to air emissions reporting was a perfect match and would offer a wide range of users subject to State and Federal regulations an easier and better way to comply with the current and future requirements, which are only getting more complex.”

“Business owners have so much on their plates to comply with requirements and keep up with regulatory changes, having an easy online tool to streamline that process for all their various reporting needs will be a huge benefit.” concluded Meskal.

 

ABOUT ECOTEK
Ecotek is a leading environmental engineering company providing environmental compliance consulting services and information technology solutions to a strong base of private sector companies and public agencies. Ecotek specializes in the design and implementation of strategies that provide practical compliance and emission reduction solutions that are not only cost effective, but also improve process efficiency and allow businesses to optimize their growth potential. Ecotek manages data to minimize the regulatory impact, by the development and implementation of a customized, proactive compliance programs, applying technological innovations. Ecotek is a Climate Action Leader with the California Climate Action Registry and a founding member of The Climate Registry.

For more information, visit www.locustec.com or contact Ms. Marian Carr at (650) 960-1640.