SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 17, 2006  — Locus Technologies (Locus), the world leader in on-demand environmental information management software applications, is pleased to announce the addition of Merck & Co., Inc., to its growing list of customers for the eWaste application. 2006 marks the celebration of Locus’s release of eWaste, a pioneering software application for tracking and managing hazardous waste. It was one of the first applications in the marketplace targeted at the complex and often confusing regulatory requirements for hazardous waste tracking and its deep vertical content focused on simplifying a complex process.

Even after 15 years, the eWaste product line remains a solid performer for Locus, attracting such customers as Dow Chemical, BASF, Conoco Phillips, and Hovensea. The recent acquisition of eWaste by pharmaceutical giant Merck demonstrates that when you develop a solid product built on deep domain expertise to meet a distinct customer need, the product will sell itself.

Locus’s eWaste has held such a loyal and distinguished following, because it is a comprehensive, but easy-to-use, software program for the classification, packaging, labeling, storage, manifesting, transporting, disposal, tracking, and reporting of hazardous waste. It automatically assigns EPA and DOT regulatory information to waste chemical products. The program helps determine the chemical compatibility of waste chemicals, safely assigning them to containers with compatible items.

eWaste also manages waste profiles, allowing for full EPA reporting capabilities and reduced errors in shipping descriptions. eWaste synchronizes with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), as well as portable bar code readers for quick, accurate collection of field data and container tracking. eWaste prepares management, cost tracking, and regulatory reports, including the Biennial Regulatory Report and the SARA 313. It was designed for ease of use and customization to include customer specific forms and reporting requirements.

According to Locus’s President Neno Duplancic, “eWaste is one of Locus’s oldest products, but its loyal following and continuing sales serve to remind everyone in the environmental data management software business that domain expertise and content far outweigh any other factors when it comes to customer satisfaction. Our recent addition of Merck to our list of customers reaffirms that eWaste is as fresh in content as the day it was originally envisioned. Given our continued success with eWaste, we intend to update the platform to allow the same great content but provide the service over the Internet as we do with all our other environmental data management software products.”

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 7 October 2005 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental information management software, announced today that it has added TreeMaps data visualization technology to its flagship product, EIM™ and other LocusFocusSM applications. eTree, as Locus calls the application, provides an instant, intuitive view of complex data sets that is perfectly suited for accessing and managing immense amounts of environmental and financial data. eTree provides an “aerial view” of the data using squares of varying sizes and colors to visually represent data variables. eTree allows users to instantaneously see patterns, anomalies and trends developing in the large data sets. It is flexible enough to work with almost any type of data and easy enough to give users of all experience levels quick access to vital information. Never before has environmental data been so easy or so intuitive!

This innovative new tool gives companies with environmentally impacted sites a bird’s-eye view of millions of data points—all at once. eTree also comes equipped with a powerful new screening feature. It allows users to sift through the millions of analytical or financial records on the map using several different criteria. For example, an enterprise portfolio of environmentally impacted sites is displayed and can be sorted by state, region, division, manager, regulator or any other important differentiator. Various graphical filters allow more precise filtering, which is especially useful for large enterprise customers with thousands of sites.

With eTree, users are able to drill into data and quickly get information, such as reviewing regulatory action limit exceedances across regions or states, identifying which laboratories are performing work and how often certain types of methods are requested, reviewing database statistics and tracking data loading, tracking consultant and laboratory performance, and much more. Once the tree is generated, users can drill into additional
data stored in LocusFocus, such as project financial performance and get more details on items of interest.

Treemaps were conceptualized in the early 1990s by University of Maryland computer science professor, Ben Shneiderman, and have been recently popularized by the Wall Street applications in the financial services industry. Locus is the first company to bring this advanced visualization technology to environmental markets, where it is a perfect fit for the huge amounts of data that are inherently difficult to visualize and analyze.

According to Locus’s President and CEO, Dr. Neno Duplancic, “Our clients are drowning in information about their sites, which is difficult to extract when needed. eTree provides them with an intuitive data mining and environmental risk analysis tool. Information is power—but only if you can absorb and put that information to use. That’s where Locus’s unique eTree comes in. We’ve applied this exciting data-visualization technology to wide
arrays of environmental data. Companies can visually mine data and quickly answer questions to support their corporate strategic objectives and manage environmental risk and liability. The technology will help Locus’s customers turn environmental data into meaningful information, with the ultimate objective of lowering site closure and post-closure monitoring costs.”

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 9 August 2005 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in environmental information management, today announced that it has expanded its award winning, web-based Environmental Information Management™ (EIM™) system, a part of their LocusFocusSM web portal, to integrate dynamic charting for .NET.

EIM has always supported charts for analytical results and groundwater readings. With dynamic charting, EIM users gain a rich set of features for charting, analyzing, and visualizing their environmental data. EIM’s dynamic charting provides end-user chart customization through intuitive menus, dialogs, and toolbars harnessing the power of .NET. Users can easily change chart colors and styles, customize the axes and legends, and display the chart in 3D. Users can also switch between a gallery of chart types on the fly. Users can store a particular chart for future use, maximizing the usability and readability of EIM’s charts and greatly streamlining data reporting. Users can export the charts to a variety of formats, including bitmaps, metafiles, and text files.

EIM’s new dynamic charting is fully integrated with EIM, allowing users to view charts on their desktop in an Internet browser. EIM users can create graphs showing parameter results, field measurements, and groundwater levels. Users can also make graphs of various statistical quantities, such as mean, median, standard deviations, and 95% confidence intervals for their data. Users can access the charting tool from within the EIM main
database, as well as from EIM’s eSVG module, which displays site maps in Scaleable Vector Graphic format.

“EIM’s new charting functionality brings powerful new capabilities to EIM. The combination of these tools, together with EIM’s other download and data visualization options, will provide environmental professionals with all the querying and reporting power they need to perform their work in an efficient and cost-effective manner,” says Dr. Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus. “By integrating dynamic charting capability with EIM, Locus intends to stay at the forefront of web-based display of environmental information,” adds Dr. Duplancic.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 13 July 2005 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in environmental information management, today announced the e3 Enterprise Environmental eManagement portal. This exciting new application brings together Locus’s key web-based environmental data management products and introduces customers to LocusFocusSM EIM™ Enterprise, the industries’ first true web-based enterprise data mining application. EIM, Locus’s award-winning Environmental Information Management system available exclusively over the web to meet the environmental data management needs of companies worldwide, stores thousands of sites and millions of records for customers worldwide. Navigating the vast amounts of environmental data stored in EIM was typically performed by skilled environmental professionals familiar with the complex datasets. By introducing EIM Enterprise, Locus has turned this vast amount of data into a wealth of information easily accessible by everyone.

EIM Enterprise mines the data from Locus’s EIM database to allow managers, corporate executives, and project team members to easily track regulatory action level exceedances and analytical laboratory performance across a portfolio of sites, monitor contractor performance ,and quickly query data from an entire multi-site database in seconds.

“EIM Enterprise takes the power of Internet databases and data mining to a whole new level,” says Dr. Neno Duplancic, president and CEO of Locus Technologies. “This application makes managing 100 or 1,000 sites as easy as managing a single site. Data are quickly retrieved and available for decision-making. We designed this application for our large corporate customers who manage hundreds or thousands of sites, making sure it is easy to use and intuitive,” added Duplancic.

Never before could senior environmental managers track laboratory performance with literally two clicks of the mouse. Never before could they find out in 5 seconds how many of their sites had percholorate or MTBE. With EIM Enterprise, those questions can be answered in a matter of seconds.

In early July, all current EIM customers with multiple sites will have e3 available to them. This is an example of the type of free upgrades Locus customers have become accustomed to. EIM Enterprise is available at no additional cost to all of Locus’s current corporate customers with EIM Enterprise systems.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 8 February 2005  — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental information management, announced today that it has added new Quick Views data-mining features to its flagship product, EIM™. EIM is a robust and feature-rich tool that allows companies to upload and view environmental information pertaining to their sites and facilities–exclusively over the web.

EIM’s new Quick Views bring a whole new level, in terms of data mining and data extraction capability. Data mining can best be described as a powerful technology that utilizes various techniques to extract comprehensible, hidden, and useful information from large data sets. Using Quick Views, EIM users can quickly retrieve, sort, and search data and cut and paste the results of their queries directly into almost any program in seconds. Customers with large, multi-site databases now have the ability to quickly and easily query across all sites and mine data as never before possible. Most significantly, the opportunity to discover hidden trends and patterns and prioritize work based on these findings is now within reach of even casual users with little or no experience with databases.

Environmental data is a strategic resource in today’s complex business world. Hidden in most companies’ widely scattered, and largely inaccessible, environmental databases are reasons why companies have contaminated sites in the first place and answers as to what processes and practices they need to change to avoid having them in the future. These databases also contain the day-to-day information companies need to run environmental projects, design and implement remedies, provide regulatory reporting, and optimize operation and maintenance programs. To effectively manage these copious quantities of data across many different sites, companies must have the capability to effectively analyze the data so as to unearth those key correlations that allow them to improve their cleanup strategies, decrease their capital and operating costs, and prevent future creation of similar sites. A single, accessible centralized data management system, coupled with data mining applications, such as EIM’s Quick Views, can be a key strategic advantage for companies who desire to manage their portfolios of contaminated sites in a cost-effective manner.

According to Locus Technologies’ President and CEO, Dr. Neno Duplancic, “Companies have been frustrated for years with the state of environmental data management. Answering simple questions, such as ‘how many of my sites have MTBE, perchlorate, or TCE aboveaction limits,’ were exercises in frustration. With Quick Views, this is no longer the case. Companies can mine data and quickly answer questions to support their corporate strategic objectives and site exit strategies. The technology will help Locus’s customers turn environmental data into meaningful information. Furthermore, this new feature of EIM gives environmental managers the ability to ‘visualize’ and orchestrate the entire environmental data management process at all of their sites, rather than merely juggling resources to fill the broad range of deliverables that they and their consultants have to manage on a regular basis at each of their individual sites.“

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 26 January 2005, — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in environmental information management, today announced that it has earned Microsoft Certified Partner status for software developed as part of Locus’s award-winning LocusFocusSM suite of environmental business solutions. The LocusFocus suite is a web-based environmental data management system – EIM™, along with Locus’s other environmental portal software applications for document management, environmental remediation system automation, waste management, and the soon-to-be-released air data management module.

“Only companies that have demonstrated high levels of customer service, proved their experience, and attained advanced certification receive the designation of Microsoft Certified Partner,” said Allison Watson, vice president of the Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing Group at Microsoft. “Today, Microsoft recognizes Locus Technologies for its skills and expertise in providing customer satisfaction with Microsoft products and technology.”

Locus is pleased that its industry leading, web-based environmental database is based on Microsoft technology. “We find the Microsoft name to be immensely valuable when selling systems to Fortune 100 companies who value EIM’s Microsoft database engine behind the scenes,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus. “With more than 5,000 sites worldwide and millions of environmental records being managed in EIM, it’s clear that having a Microsoft database engine is a key differentiator in the marketplace and provides our clients with a high degree confidence in our systems.”

Microsoft appreciates companies like Locus that have skills and expertise in providing customer satisfaction with Microsoft products and technology. Microsoft Certified Partner status proves a high degree of competency and expertise with Microsoft technologies. Standards for acceptance into Microsoft Partner community are strict. To achieve Microsoft Certified Partner status, Locus satisfied Microsoft Competency requirements by proving its
ability and proficiency to develop high-quality products and software solutions based on Microsoft technologies.

“We are extremely pleased to have earned certified status in the Microsoft Partner Program. The certified status allows us to promote our relationship with Microsoft to our customers. The benefits provided through our certified membership will allow us to continue to enhance the offerings that we provide for customers,” added Dr. Duplancic.

The Microsoft Partner Program was launched in December 2003 and represents Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to the success of partners worldwide. The Microsoft Partner Program offers a single, integrated partnering framework that recognizes partner expertise, rewards the total impact that partners have in the technology marketplace, and delivers more value to help partners’ businesses be successful.

By Norman S. Wei, Courtesy of Environmental Management and Training, LLC.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 1 January 2020 — A recent article in the Harvard Business Review entitled “IT Doesn’t Matter” generated a lot of discussions and an enormous amount of controversy. IT stands for Information Technology. The premise of the article is that information technology is becoming less relevant as a strategic management tool because it has become more accessible and affordable to all. The author argues that since every corporation is deep into IT, no one company can gain any significant strategic advantage by embracing it. In other words, IT has become a commodity. It has now become a necessary but insufficient condition for excellence.

A natural outcome of the Information Technology age is the ease of collecting massive amount of data. As a result, we often find ourselves drowning in data while starving for information! This column discusses some practical ways of managing your environmental data and how best to get the most information out of such data.

Collecting data is relatively easy to do but it does come with costs. Mistakes in data collection can lead to disastrous results. A classic example of data collection run amok is Total Quality Management (TQM) – an excellent management concept of “doing it right the first time”. In the 1990s, TQM was all the rage. Large and small corporations were embracing it. Unfortunately, many TQM administrators began to demand their employees to fill out forms to document and justify every decision as part of the TQM process. It got to the point where employees were spending so much time in filling out forms and preparing internal reports that the system collapsed on its own paper weight. People were collecting data for the sake of collecting data and not analyzing the data to improve management practices. They were drowning in data but starving for information. Once senior management discovered such waste of resources, TQM program was shut down.

Getting Information out of Data

About ten years ago, the consulting firm I worked for got a multi-million dollar contract to work on a large Superfund site in California . The previous consulting firm had installed about 100 monitor wells on site and were collecting massive amount of groundwater quality data. There were reams of computer printout data showing waste solvent concentrations at varying depths at each well over an extended time period. Yet no one had ever bothered to sit down and analyze the data as they were being collected to determine their efficacy. The data kept rolling in from the field. The Superfund site was drowning in data but starving for information. Our firm was then hired to make sense of the data – to interpret the groundwater contamination data to see in which direction the TCE was migrating in the aquifer. Our job was to provide our clients with useful information so that they could go and negotiate a settlement with EPA on how best to remediate the site. It became clear later the previous firm kept on collecting data. It was much more profitable (translation: more billable hours) to have a large team of technicians out in the field generating data than to have a small team of scientists analyzing them.

There is certainly no shortage of data in the environmental field. Every environmental permit requires the permit holder to collect one form of data or another. If you have a wastewater discharge permit, chances are that you are required by law to collect daily flow data, weekly effluent concentrations and calculate monthly averages of various chemical constituents in your waste stream. If you generate hazardous wastes, you are required by law to record how much of what wastes you ship out to a Treatment Storage and Disposal Facility (TSDF). If you have a major air permit, the government requires you to collect data on how many tons of HAPs (hazardous air pollutants) you send up the stack. Every July 1 of each year, many facilities are required by federal law to tell EPA how much chemicals they used, processes or manufactured in the preceding year and how much of the chemicals were “released” to the environment. This is the so-called Toxic Release Inventory Report (or better known as Form R).

The questions facing us are: How can we make the best use of the data we are required by law to collect? How can we benefit from such data? What useful information can we get out of these data?

Let’s start with the often misused (by the environmental zealots) and misunderstood (by the media) TRI database. A great majority of the data contained in the TRI database is based on legally permitted emissions and/or recycling activities. Yet they are all generically termed as “release to the environment”. That’s why every year the public reads about XYZ company being the “largest” polluter in the county because it “releases” so many tons of toxic chemicals to the community. Leaving this injustice behind, you should review the raw data that you use to compile your TRI report and determine how effectively you have been recycling your wastes offsite and how well you have controlled your air emissions. Use your own TRI data as a basis for your internal audit or review of your operations. If you are planning on acquiring a company, the EPA’s TRI data website address is www.epa.gov. is a good place to start your due diligence.

The EPA also compiles a large database on the hazardous waste activities nationwide based on the hazardous wastes generation reports that all large quantity generators send in every even-numbered year. These biennial reports – downloadable from the EPA’s website – can tell you a lot of information.
The latest available database is for year 1999 and can be downloaded from www.epa.gov. It can tell you who have been shipping what type of hazardous wastes to which TSDF. Once you have downloaded the data into your computer, you can import it into a relational database program such as Microsoft Access and analyze the data. One of the main reasons why you want to know who ship what wastes to a site that you are considering is to avoid shipping wastes to a site that receives most of its wastes from small companies. If the site turns into a Superfund site and those small companies go out of business, your company will be forced to bear their shares of the cleanup cost under the “joint and several liability” clause of CERCLA. The joint and several liability means each PRP (Potentially Responsible Party) associated with the Superfund site can be held individually responsible for the entire cleanup cost of the site. So that’s why you need to choose a site that has many financially viable PRPs in order to minimize your potential liability.

Use the air emission data you collect under your air permit to tell you how much VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) and HAPs (Hazardous Air Pollutants) are being emitted. Here are some practical ways you can make use of them. Use the information to see how much reformulation of your solvents you need in order to come below the threshold of NESHAP (National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants). If you emit more than 10 tons per year of a single HAP or 25 tons per year of any combination of HAPs, you come under NESHAP which requires your facility to meet MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) – another set of stringent emission standards under the Clean Air Act. After reviewing their environmental data, some companies have reformulated their paints to reduce their HAPs and are able to opt out of the stringent requirements under the Title V and NESHAP programs.

Look at the wastewater data you have collected under your wastewater discharge permit. Develop a time chart and look for trends or irregularities. Put your data on a spreadsheet and develop a historical correlation between waste loadings and production level. Very often a significant deviation in the spatial (time related) data trend or a sudden change in the production/waste correlation ratio will point to some malfunction somewhere upstream in the production process. It may indicate a significant leakage within your collection system or some wastage of raw material. Since you are legally required to collect such data (such as daily flow, daily concentrations, etc), you might as well make the most out of it. It could end up helping you improve your source reduction or waste minimization programs and save you some money.

 

Data Management

A few words here about data management. Collecting data is a relatively simple task. Trying to figure out what to do with the data is a different matter. The key to getting useful information out of your data is good data management. And the key to good data management is to make sure you have ownership of your own data. You can’t analyze what you don’t have available to you. Do not hand over your data to an outside firm to “manage” them for you. Here is a nightmare scenario that is all too common: You pay an outside firm to collect environmental data for you. The firm puts your data on its proprietary data system and holds on to it. Every time you need access to your data, you have to pay the firm again to retrieve it. Even worse, when you decide to switch firm, you have to pay the existing firm to download your data and the new firm to upload it.

According to Marian Carr, project manager at Locus Technologies – a California based firm that designs environmental data management systems for its clients to operate themselves ( www.locustec.com ) – “there is a very strong desire from both public and private firms to consolidate environmental data under the owner’s control”. Many of her clients have “horror stories” of having to pay consultants to get back their own data or not being able to get the data at all.

If you feel a need to customize your computer database, make sure someone within your organization knows how to run it after it has been customized. If an outside consulting firm is collecting environmental field data for you, insist that the data be stored in a format that is compatible with your own system. And insist on getting the data transferred to your system. This is the only way to keep from being held hostage by your consultants. The last thing you want is to be totally dependent on some outside contractor to tell you what data and information you have on a day-to-day basis. It can get very expensive – dollar-wise and knowledge-wise.

 

About the author
Norman S. Wei is the founder and principal of Environmental Management and Training, LLC., a consulting and training firm based in Union, Washington. He offers regulatory seminars and consulting services throughout the country. He can be reached by email at norman@proactenv.com. His company website is www.proactenv.com.

PHOENIX, Arizona, 17 December 2004  — Locus Technologies has been awarded a competitive bid contract to support the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) with security vulnerability assessments for drinking water and waste water systems throughout the state.

Until recently, contamination of water with biological, chemical, or radiologic agents generally resulted from natural, industrial, or unintentional man-made accidents. Unfortunately, recent terrorist activity in the U.S. has forced public health agencies and water utilities to consider the possibility of intentional contamination of U.S. water supplies as part of an organized effort to disrupt and damage important elements of our national infrastructure.

The contract, which is part of a federally sponsored program to enhance security systems for water and wastewater plants, demonstrates Locus’s ability to utilize its traditional expertise in water, wastewater, and groundwater, coupled with our leading role in environmental information management technology, to support critical services relating to post-9/11 security programs.

“Locus is pleased to provide ADEQ with security assessment services. Although detection methods for recognizing intentional contamination of a water supply are improving, the best method to fight this threat is prevention. Locus is well-positioned to use its deep domain expertise, coupled with advanced environmental information technology expertise, to provide vulnerability assessment on a plant-by-plant basis. Early recognition of potential vulnerability, accurate diagnosis for improvements, and conscientious approach to infrastructure improvements and surveillance will be critical to maintaining water security and safety and to protecting the nation’s public health in the future,” says Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus Technologies.

Our team of recognized wastewater and security system experts has unique capabilities and experience in the developing market niche of post-9/11 security services. We are proud to do our part in the protection of America’s vital assets,” added Duplancic.

BusinessWeek: Environmental Solutions, Progressive Ideas and Leading Technologies 

15 November 2004 — Environmental compliance ranks high on the list of corporate responsibilities, and most large companies have a department or division to manage such work. Companies generally find the task of assessing and quantifying their environmental liabilities extremely challenging—even those with significant technical and financial resources at their disposal.

Arecent BTI Consulting report titled E-strategies for Environmental Management estimates that for every dollar companies spend for environmental management, they spend another $1.75 for managing related information. Sooner or later, businesses must attack and eliminate this inefficiency in managing their environmental operations, particularly now that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires them to report these costs on their balance sheet. The resulting increased scrutiny of these obligations, and the possibility of lawsuits arising from incorrect or misleading information, also makes it imperative that officers and directors provide investors and regulators with as accurate an accounting as possible of their corporations’ environmental liabilities.

The investigation, cleanup, and long-term monitoring of contaminated waste sites, as well as air emissions monitoring and regulatory compliance monitoring, produce enormous amounts of data on the nature and extent of chemical presence at a site. One key to an effective environmental program is the deployment of an Environmental Information Management System (EIMS) that can provide managers and engineers with ready access to the information they need for their planning, decision-making, and reporting.

 

To read the full report go to www.environmental-resource.com.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 28 October 2004 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in environmental information management, today announced that it successfully held its first Environmental Information Management™ (EIM™) user conference and training at ChevronTexaco’s Corporate Headquarters in San Ramon, California, on October 14 and 15, 2004. EIM is the flagship application in Locus’s award-winning, LocusFocus web-based portal, which is used to manage environmental data at thousands of sites worldwide.

The event was attended by more than 25 firms, including government groups, corporations, environmental consulting firms, analytical laboratories and professional data validators. Participants came from around the country to learn advanced EIM skills, meet EIM users and programmers, and attend presentations showing how EIM is used in a variety of applications.

The sold-out event gave the attendees an opportunity to expand their skills and work with EIM’s powerful scalable-vector graphics (SVG) module to create soil borings, cross sections, and a range of custom maps, all from within EIM. Locus also introduced new web-based reporting tool features, previewed report automation tool, and demonstrated an expanded version of eWell, Locus’s PDA application for streamlining field data collection.

“We have been overwhelmed by the response to our first user conference. Attendance, interest level, the range of participants, and quality of presentations exceeded all our expectations. What was especially gratifying was to see the ‘wheels turning’ when new approaches were discussed and new features were highlighted. We are confident that users left the conference with new and efficient ways to use EIM for meeting site and enterprise environmental data management needs,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus Technologies.