Locus to Present Cloud Computing for EHS Management at EUEC 2009 in Phonenix, AZ

Join Locus at the EUEC 2009 Annual Conference & Expo in Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix, AZ., 1-4 February 2009 |Booth #827 —Locus will present a paper on Cloud Computing solutions for the EHS industry and display our newest cloud computing products (eEHS and eTask) as well as our flagship product EIM.  Please visit us at Booth 827 and see the systems that are changing how environmental professionals manage, analyze, and report environmental data and information.

Is a large portion of your environmental data sitting in spreadsheets and home-built databases?

Robust enterprise databases are standard tools in other industries, but, for whatever reason, the environmental business has failed to fully embrace them. What happens to the sampling and analytical data generated from the investigations, cleanups, air emissions monitoring, or operation and maintenance of a company’s sites? For many, it is entered into spreadsheets, a commercial client/server database, or a home-grown database—with spreadsheets often being the most popular of these alternatives.

Let’s suppose a company has 10-million analytical records stored in spreadsheets and databases dispersed across multiple offices. Our research shows that the average cost to organize, manage, and report this data through independent systems over a 3-year period would be more than $2 million. Stop by Locus’ Booth #827 and let us demonstrate how using our Locus EIM on-demand data management system can drop your number by 85%—or more than a staggering $1.7 million.

 

Locus Presents | Cloud Computing Solutions for Global Environmental Sustainability Reporting, by Marian Carr and Robert Albo | Session G5: EMIS and EHS | Tuesday, 3 February 2009 1:40 pm

Locus’ Environmental Software Provides US Virgin Island Refinery with Key Savings

Hovensa Moves to Cloud Computing with Locus’ EIM Software

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 12 January 2009 — Locus Technologies, the industry leader in web-based environmental compliance and information management software, today announced that the Hovensa Refinery in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands has selected Locus Technologies Environmental Information Management (EIM) system to streamline managing environmental sampling and remedial operations data at the refinery.

Hovensa is a joint venture between subsidiaries of Hess Corporation and Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). This refinery is one of the ten largest in the world and one of the most modern in the United States with a crude oil processing capacity of 500,000 barrels per day (BPD). Hovensa operates its facilities on 2,000 acres on the south shore of St. Croix and receives and processes crude oil from around the world.

After reviewing available options to manage their environmental data, Hovensa opted for EIM to meet their demanding requirements, which include a single data repository accessible by all their vendors, regardless of location. EIM’s cloud computing platform was the ideal system to provide the access desired and the robust data management features to address both sampling and operations data.

“Locus is excited that Hovensa selected EIM and is using the system to its fullest,” said Locus President Neno Duplancic. “It’s very gratifying when a customer fully embraces the system and its potential to not only manage their data but to drive cost savings through data collection and report automation. Using EIM’s flexible interface, Hovensa can streamline sample planning and data validation using mainland contractors and labs and produce automated reports of operations status all from the same system.”

Locus’ Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) SaaS Module Offers Expanded Greenhouse Gas Tracking

Locus’ Enhanced eEHS Moves Corporate Sustainability Reporting Higher into the Cloud

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., December 22, 2008 — Locus Technologies, the industry leader in web-based environmental compliance and information management software, announced today the roll out of its updated eEHS on-demand environmental health and safety software, specifically designed to serve the multi-national marketplace.

The updated eEHS module enables enterprises to collect compliance information from any location at any time via a native Web 2.0 platform, using a simple, intuitive interface. eEHS enables customers to easily review and evaluate data, spot issues or trends, and create reports and roll ups on corporate EHS status. With eEHS, companies centrally manage and report in real time all governance, risk and compliance (GRC) data, including greenhouse gas (GHG), Sarbanes-Oxley, energy consumption and water and waste usage information.

In response to an increased focus on greenhouse gas reporting, environmental sustainability and GRC reporting, Locus revamped its eEHS application, enhancing environmental and sustainability indicator tracking and reporting. Key new features include the addition of a robust ad hoc query capability that produces boardroom quality reports with a single mouse click—all delivered through Cloud computing or SaaS. eEHS’s new multi-language capability significantly enhances the user experience and reduces training. Because eEHS is offered via the Internet, there is no software to install and no hardware to purchase, streamlining global roll outs and reducing costs.

One of Locus’ long term customers, Alstom, an international leader in equipment and services for power generation and rail transport solutions, recently deployed the enhanced Locus eEHS worldwide. Operating in more than 70 countries and employing some 76,000 people, Alstom is enjoying the improved work flow and ease of data collection offered by eEHS. Sustainable development is central to the Alstom strategy and Locus software is helping Alstom meet its strategic goals.

“Locus eEHS is elegant in its simplicity,” said Locus President and CEO Neno Duplancic. “Collecting and reporting KPI information from hundreds of global locations is a challenge faced by every company operating internationally. Locus’ eEHS solves this problem by offering a very targeted software application via the Web, making data collection painless.”

“Our web-based eEHS provides businesses instant access to global information at a fraction of the cost of any installed on premises system,” continued Duplancic. “With the new regulations dealing with global warming issues just around the corner, companies must manage EHS issues carefully to avoid the risk of non-compliance. Now Locus’ customers have an on-demand software tool that consolidates all reporting activities into a single platform and that carries no implementation risk.”

Locus Introduces eTask for Real-Time Messaging and Notification, Simplifying Compliance Management

Retooled and revamped, notification and messaging layer, rounds out Locus’ environmental solutions suite

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., October 6, 2008 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental compliance and information management software, announced the release today of eTask, a comprehensive task management module, rounding out Locus’ award-winning on-demand environmental compliance software portal suite.

Armed with eTask, executives in companies responsible for Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), now have a powerful tool to support Environmental, Health and Safety (EH&S) regulatory compliance. eTask provides automated notifications of task initiation, management and completion, spanning all of Locus’ portal suite applications. Locus’ eTask streamlines and automates daily environmental compliance activities through key features such as asset level tracking and compliance activity reminders.

With the proliferation of new regulations such as greenhouse gas requirements, managers must track EH&S carefully and on time. eTask simplifies the job by graphically monitoring key performance indicators (KPI) through dashboard reporting. eTask employs a graphical interface based on Web 2.0 technology that immediately notifies appropriate personnel of critical actions, ensuring the company stays in compliance, potentially saving both dollars and reputation.

eTask tracks a permit’s status relative to regulatory requirements and generates associated task assignments. It provides automated graphical ticklers and e-mail notification, logs when tasks have been completed and sends alerts when tasks are pending or overdue. These requirements can be linked to corporate assets or entities, or to any other vertical application such as EIM or even third party applications. Compliance status management reports can be rolled up to any level within the organization and are fully auditable and verifiable by eTask.

While many businesses analyze corporate performance by looking in a rear view mirror—crunching historical data to link results with causes and resolving problems after the fact, Locus software enables its users to proactively manage environmental compliance. Because Locus’ software suite helps analyze EH&S performance and operations in real time, organizations can more effectively capitalize on opportunities and reduce cost.

eTask features a robust database and reporting engine along with a high degree of user customization. Users can create assets, place assets in groups, assign single or grouped assets to tasks, and assign tasks to multiple staff with configurable notifications based on customer specific workflow.

As with other Locus solutions, eTask is offered as Software as a Service (SaaS), so customers do not need to install any software, or buy and maintain specialized servers to run the application. When purchased with ePortal and eSite modules, eTask includes the compliance dashboard for user-profile based views of actionable compliance tasks and status. eTask can be used for single sites or over an entire portfolio of sites.

“Locus eTask is the ‘action engine’ of our ePortal,” said Locus President and CEO Neno Duplancic. “eTask software aggregates information from distributed assets or permit submittal requirements and keeps responsible parties informed of necessary actions. It gives businesses insight into which compliance events will have the greatest operational impact so they can focus their resources to seize opportunities and mitigate risks” added Duplancic.

Environmental Data Management

Data published by the Environmental Business Journal indicate that the U.S. environmental industry generated cumulative revenues of about $300 billion dollars in 2007. The industry grew over 5 percent, its second consecutive year of growth greater than 5 percent and, by many indicators, one of its best years ever.

Although such numbers would seem to be cause for celebration, some troubling trends persist within the industry. Notable among these is its failure to embrace the information management revolution that has had deep and far-reaching impacts on so many other business sectors.  In particular, this failure to adopt the latest technologies for storing, distributing and managing information increases the costs and delays the cleanup of contaminated sites.  In this white paper, we discuss the role that consulting companies play in misinforming their clients about the data management options available to them.

Most companies “own” their financial, human resource, customer relations, and other data. This information typically resides on computers located in the company’s facilities, or it may be housed off site in data centers managed by an outside party. Regardless of which alternative is adopted, both are similar in that:

  1. Information is stored in a consistent and organized manner in central databases
  2. Employees within the company have, to the extent that their privileges permit, continuous and unimpeded access to this data.
  3. Companies unquestionably own the data and are able to change support vendors at will.

The manner in which companies with environmental liabilities manage and store their environmental information and data stands in marked contrast to the model that they have adopted for all their other key data.  Historically, environmental consultants and narrowly focused applications built on spreadsheets and client/server databases have served the complex software requirements of this market.  Today’s landscape of available technology options has consolidated and new and better options exist.  While planned IT spending on environmental software is rising, organizations are still struggling to identify software and service providers that can support environmental information management in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed with other enterprise initiatives and enterprise software, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM).

Locus CEO presents environmental data challenges at Carnegie Mellon West

Environmental Industry Software: A Growing Data Management Challenge

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, SILICON VALLEY, Calif., 9 April 2008 — Bay Area based Locus Technologies is in large part responsible for the creation of an emerging technical sector— the storage and management of environmental industry data. Even conservative estimates project rapid growth in the environmental information arena, with an increasing need for software tools to store, manage and manipulate data. Such data includes the massive amount of complex information collected during environmental cleanup projects, air emissions, greenhouse gasses monitoring, and other activities, which in past practice was stored in various distributed locations from spreadsheets to PDAs to field notebooks. Locus stores environmental industry data in an online central database, making it accessible via the Web and available for analysis, visualization, and reporting, leveraging Web 2.0 technologies such as Service Oriented Architecture, mashups, and vertical searches.

 

ABOUT DR. DUPLAN
Carnegie Melon alumnus Dr. Neno Duplan is the founder and CEO of Locus Technologies where he has
pioneered the application of an Internet based on-demand computing model for data management in the
environmental industry.

Dr. Duplan is the author of more than 30 technical papers on the use of technologies in the environmental
industry. As a research associate at Carnegie Mellon in the early eighties, he developed the first prototype system
for environmental and geological data management and display using microcomputers. This early work led to the
development of numerous database management systems at some of the nation’s largest contaminated sites, and
ultimately to the formation of Locus Technologies in 1997.

Dr. Duplan earned a Master’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Carnegie Mellon, Master’s and
Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and a Bachelor’s degree in Civil
Engineering from the University of Split, Croatia. He attended Stanford University’s Advance Project Management
program, and has taught classes at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin.

Santa Clara Valley Water District selects Locus Technologies for recycled water study

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., August 25, 2007 — The Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) selected Locus Technologies to perform a study of potential groundwater impacts from expanded use of recycled water for irrigation in the Santa Clara and Llagas Groundwater Sub-basins, California.

For this project, Locus will be using several investigative techniques to assess the potential impact to groundwater from use of recycled water. In addition to fate and transport evaluation of recycled water chemicals of concern, such as NDMA, HAA5, and trace metals, Locus will perform soil core bench tests and conduct a full-scale pilot test to monitor chemical concentrations as recycled water percolates through the vadose zone. From these tests, Locus will assess the soil aquifer treatment capacity, evaluate the potential of recharged recycled water to degrade the groundwater quality, and develop water quality standards for the recycled water to be used in the Llagas and Santa Clara Groundwater Sub-basins. To help the stakeholders in their practice, Locus will identify best management practices for irrigating with recycled water and identify necessary ongoing monitoring requirements to protect groundwater resources.

This award cements Locus’s reputation as a company on the forefront of the high-end environmental consulting business on complex groundwater problems.

“This is an important win for us at the time when companies and government are under pressure to achieve sustainability goals,” said Mr. Elie Haddad, Vice President of Locus’s Environmental Services Division. “On one hand, there is a push to reuse recycled water, and, on the other hand, this reuse should not degrade our precious groundwater resources. Our study will bring the balance between what seems to be competing goals. We are very pleased to be selected through a competitive bidding process by SCVWD for this important groundwater study. We look forward to continue partnering with industry and local governmental agencies to protect the precious Silicon Valley groundwater resources and provide long term stewardship for this most important resource.” added Haddad.

Project execution will come primarily from Locus’s office in Mountain View, California.

Locus to promote seminar on carbon trading and finance in San Francisco

Greening of America Through On-Demand Software

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., July 2, 2007 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based environmental data and information management services, will join Global Change Associates and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP to promote a seminar on carbon trading and finance. The seminar will be held on July 17, 2007, at Pillsbury’s San Francisco office at 50 Fremont Street.

Led by carbon markets experts Peter C. Fusaro and Jay Gould, partner and co-leader of Pillsbury’s Investment Funds & Investment Management Team, the seminar, “Carbon Trading is the Missing Link in Clean Tech Investment,” will explore what role carbon trading plays in clean technology investment and how to establish a successful carbon hedge fund.

“This is the second in a series of clean technology investment seminars we are hosting with Pillsbury, which launched one of the first multidisciplinary climate change practices in the nation. We are very excited that Locus Technologies, the leader in environmental information management, will promote the seminar, as the information management component of carbon trading is an important factor to consider in implementing sound carbon strategy,” said Fusaro. “Our last seminar attracted more than 150 people as California continues to be the center of carbon market activity for the foreseeable future.”

“We see carbon emissions management as the next logical expansion of our highly successful LocusFocus environmental portal. Many of our Fortune 100 customers using LocusFocus for environmental data and information management will find it easy to expand in our on-demand portal to include management of greenhouse gases (GHG). Many of Locus’s customers are actively looking for the tools and advice to move forward and formulate real carbon strategies in advance of upcoming regulations. Once regulations are promulgated, companies could lose substantial dollars by not planning ahead for this change. Locus’s customers that are already engaged in this highly topical discussion and are prepared to adopt carbon management strategy at this time can leverage the LocusFocus environmental portal for GHG data management with minimal additional investment and provide their shareholders with transparency on this issue. This seminar is perfect forum to get up to speed and educated on this important matter, particularly for the companies with operations in California that will be subject to California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, Assembly Bill No. 32 (AB32) relating to air pollution,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus Technologies.

The seminar will cover the basics of environmental trading, carbon trading and finance, some clean tech solutions, information management, how to implement a carbon reduction under the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and the basics of how to build a carbon fund.

GHG management will impose additional burden for environmental information management. Establishing a comprehensive GHG inventory is the foundation for future GHG management and compliance strategy. However, performing the GHG inventory can be a challenging process for many organizations, particularly for data acquisition, validation, and real time reporting. To make intelligent decisions about GHG management, clean energy, and other factors affecting the quality and sustainability of life, businesses and government entities must have better tools to manage and interpret this information in real time. Robust environmental information management systems are needed to store and analyze this data, and the LocusFocus environmental portal is a solution.

“Carbon trading is a new asset class for hedge fund finance and investment,” said Gould. “Indeed a recent report by the National Venture Capital Association showed that while U.S. venture capital investments, as a whole, were down by 33 percent in 2006, compared to five years ago, investments in American clean tech companies were up 243 percent in that time–more than two and a half times the growth rate of the next strongest industry over that period.”

 

ABOUT GLOBAL CHANGE ASSOCIATES INC.
Global Change Associates Inc. is a leading edge consultancy on energy and environmental financial markets based in New York lead by Peter C. Fusaro. Peter is the best selling author of “What Went Wrong at Enron” and a leading proponent of market-based solutions for environmental remediation. He created the annual Wall Street Green Trading Summit in New York each spring, and is recognized as an international leader in clean technology and emissions trading. He co-founded the Energy Hedge Fund Center in 2004.

Web 2.0 to the Rescue For Dirty Data Management in the Environmental Industry

Environmental Business Journal, Instruments and Information Systems

Locus introduces environmental Electronic Data Deliverable (EDD) standards

A growing need exists for a standardized format for transmitting environmental electronic data. There are more than 15 different standards in use in the U.S. alone, most of which are antiquated. Locus leverages the latest XML technology to drive standard consolidation and ease of use.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 30 2007 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental data management software, announced today the release of a set of its first standard Electronic Data Deliverable (EDD) formats for the reporting of environmental laboratory analytical data. With the recent signings of several large Fortune 100 clients, and the upcoming tenfold increase in the number of sites with data in the company’s flagship product, EIM™, a growing need exists for a standardized format for transmitting electronic data. Several EDD formats already exist in the environmental industry—some promulgated by government agencies—and others by vendors of commercial software products. However, some of these format “standards” suffer from the requirement that data be submitted in multiple files, while other formats, have antiquated requirements related to field lengths or valid values that originated at a time when hard disk space was at a premium.

Locus’s Extensible Markup Language (XML) formatted single-file standard EDD allows for much more flexibility in file structure, because the data self-identifies each field using labels to bracket its contents. The content is similar and compliant with the (Staged Electronic Data Deliverable (SEDD) format. SEDD is an inter-agency effort spearheaded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to create a generic XML-based format for electronic delivery of analytical data for environmental industry.

To simplify the work of legacy systems, Locus is also releasing an EDD standard format, which consists of 53 explicitly defined fields maintained in a single file. Clients may request that additional custom fields be included to meet specific agency, the major state submission, or project requirements. The selection of the fields that are included in the Locus EIM EDD format was based on input from Locus’s user community and experts in analytical data management, as well as a review of the most popular currently used EDDs. The contents of the format permit data to be validated to EPA Level II, if a customer so desires. Locus envisions this format to be transitional for the companies and laboratories that are not yet ready to adopt XML-based technology, but are tired of dealing with multiple and antiquated file formats, which only serve to increase IT costs.

Since the release of EIM in 1999, Locus has allowed companies to design their own EDD formats, and Locus will continue to support this flexibility in its systems. However, Locus believes that the promulgation of a standardized format will allow laboratories to reduce the costs of creating EDDs, minimize errors in the reporting of data, and more quickly support new EIM clients.

“As the leader in environmental data management software, Locus strives to provide guidance, direction, and endorsement to the best ideas in an effort to standardize data management processes. Currently, there are more than 15 different standards for analytical data submittals, and this needs to change,” said Locus’s president and CEO, Neno Duplancic. “We believe that the standards we are releasing today, one transitional and one XML-based, will take steps toward achieving that goal and will help drive uniformity in the marketplace. With more than 35,000 sites reporting through LocusFocus EIM, Locus customers represent the largest users of environmental lab data, so this effort should help drive consolidation of the standards. Locus is committed to meeting all federal and state EDDs and leading the industry in reducing proliferation of incompatible formats by strongly endorsing XML-based SEDD standards,” added Duplancic.

Locus’s XML-based EDD accepts files in Stage 2a SEDD format, which contains the basic analytical results (including the sample ID, analyte, result, and qualifier) plus method quality control data. The EIM import module includes data verification and consistency checks outlined in the Document Type Definition (DTD) for Stage 2a, as well as forms for viewing the data in the imported SEDD file. Both formats can be downloaded for free from the Locus’s website at www.locustec.com.