MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 1 January 2002 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a global leader in environmental information management, announced today that they have released a new version of eWell, a PDA- and Internet-based application for recording water level data in the field. As part of its joint application development and marketing partnership with Symbol Technologies, Locus has committed to making all of its hand-held applications compatible with Symbol mobile computing devices. This new version of eWell, which runs on Symbol units, represents the first step toward this eventual goal.

eWell consists of two components: a standalone application which resides on the Symbol devices and a web-based module for uploading, downloading, and reviewing data. It can be used either as an independent application or in conjunction with LocusFocus(SM), Locus’s environmental web portal. Users of eWell download route and historical water level information from the web onto their Symbol units. In the field, the Symbol units are used to record water level and other field readings as well as to compare current with past values. Users can also take advantage of the bar-coding capabilities of the Symbol devices to record well location and measuring equipment information.

Back in the office, data collected in the field is uploaded onto the web through cradle synchronization or wireless synchronization using Symbol units equipped with wireless technology, such as the Palm™-powered SPT 1800 series. Data is then reviewed for accuracy and completeness. After all checks have been completed, readings are moved to Locus’s Environmental Information Management™ (EIM™) web-based database. This database can serve as the sole repository for this information, or firms can elect to download the data to their own corporate databases. eWell is currently being used on several large groundwater monitoring sites both in California and Nevada.

“The release of this new version of eWell delivers yet another powerful tool to Locus’s arsenal of web-based technologies designed to lower the cost of data collection and management at environmentally impacted sites,” said Neno Duplancic, President and CEO Locus Technologies.

ABOUT SYMBOL TECHNOLOGIES
Symbol Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in mobile data transaction systems, providing innovative customer solutions based on wireless local area networking for data and voice, application-specific mobile computing and bar code data capture. Information about Symbol is available at www.symbol.com, or by telephone at (631) 738-2400 or (800) 722-6234.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, 31 May 2002 — Locus Technologies (Locus), a leader in groundwater consulting and engineering services, announced today that it has been selected by certain settling Cooperating Respondents to provide professional consulting and engineering services at the Baldwin Park Operable Unit (BPOU), a part of the San Gabriel Valley Superfund site. The San Gabriel Valley Superfund site consists of plumes of groundwater contamination in an area more than a mile wide and 7 miles long. The groundwater in this area is utilized for multiple purposes, including public water supply. Traditionally, local water companies simply shut down water supply wells to avoid service of impacted groundwater. Groundwater contamination extends from the water table to more than 1,000 feet below ground surface. The primary contaminants in groundwater are chlorinated volatile organic compounds (VOCs), perchlorate, N nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), and 1,4-dioxane. Contaminant concentrations measured in groundwater in the BPOU area range up to several tens of parts per million.

In March 1994, EPA issued a Record of Decision (ROD) and selected a cleanup plan for VOCs in the BPOU and, in 1999, subsequently issued an explanation of significant differences to the ROD requiring additional treatment systems as a result of the discovery of perchlorate, NDMA, and 1,4-dioxane in groundwater. EPA then issued a Unilateral Administrative Order on 30 June 2000, directing 19 potential responsible parties (PRPs) to complete the remedial design and make arrangements for the construction and operation of the BPOU groundwater extraction wells, treatment systems, and related cleanup facilities. The selected remedy, now in the design and construction stage, calls for large groundwater pump-and-treat systems capable of extracting and treating approximately 21,000 gallons per minute. Current plans approved by EPA call for the remedy to be built as four sub-projects, ranging in capacity from 2,500 gallons per minute to 7,800 gallons per minute. Each subproject will have two or more groundwater extraction wells and a series of treatment processes expected to include air-stripping, ion exchange, and UV oxidation. Clean, treated water will be distributed by local water purveyors for use in the public water supply system.

Locus’s contract is with several of the Cooperating Respondents that include companies such as Oil & Solvent Process Company, Reichhold, Inc., Azusa Land Reclamation Co., Inc., Fairchild Holding Company, Hartwell Corporation, Huffy Corporation, and Wynn Oil Company. “We are very pleased to be selected as consultants to one of the largest groundwater cleanup projects in the United States. This further demonstrates Locus’s ability to provide technical and strategic representation to its clients on complex, multidisciplinary groundwater sites. We will be working closely with the Cooperating Respondents to implement the groundwater remedy and restore the public drinking water supply” said Mr. Gregory Murphy, Vice President of Locus Technologies in charge of the
program.

ENR Magazine

Several days ago I was working late on a proposal. Stuck with writing a section on how a prospective client could benefit from using Web-based technologies, I decided to take a break to grab a hamburger across the street. Although it had been a long time since I had eaten at a McDonald’s, the company had been on my mind ever since I had read Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Several sections of the book, but mostly the discussion of the McDonald’s empire, had made me think about my own industry—environmental management—and its identity and perception problems. These problems were at the root of my struggles that day to write a winning proposal.

If you were to ask people, “What business is McDonald’s in?” most would answer with little hesitation that it’s in the fast-food business. But though its franchises are, the parent corporation is not. Rather, as Kiyosaki convincingly argues and as McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc himself once stated, the Kroc himself once stated, the company’s primary business is real estate. Similarly, if you were to ask executives of environmental firms what business they are in, most would answer “consulting” or “engineering.” I would argue instead that firms that perform site investigations, and then write up reports of their work and make recommendations, are primarily in the information gathering, storage, and distribution business. Unfortunately, most are not well-equipped for that work.

That is not likely to change anytime soon, given that there are few internal or external drivers to compel such a change in my industry or others. American consumers often wonder, if they call their telephone company and are handed from one call center to another, why they have to repeat their contact information and describe their problem all over again. It’s because each call center is a different profit center, perhaps even a different company. Each profit center charges the parent company for each call.

Something similar happens in the environmental business, where having satisfied clients is important but so is racking up billable hours. Technologies that would lower the costs of data acquisition, storage and retrieval, such as hand held electronic devices, remote control and automation systems, more accessible database management systems and electronic data validation, are not adopted much by consulting firms. Many lack the resources to invest in research and development or to lose billable hours while implementing new technologies.

Perhaps most telling is the level within firms at which decisions about environmental data management are made. Because firms do not perceive themselves to be in the information technology business, top-level management rarely gets involved. Instead, IT decisions are more often placed in the hands of environment al project managers. They often reject a new technology because the implementation costs are perceived to be too high to be borne by their project alone. Or they may permit a test run, but the review is placed in the hands of the very individuals whose workloads would be threatened by the new tool.

UNINFORMED. Clients of environmental firms cannot be depended upon either to demand the use of better tools and more efficient work practices. On many occasions in recent years I’ve met with clients that have many contaminated sites and I’ve asked to hear more about the general condition of their sites, the monitoring and reporting commitments that exist at each, and the status of the records (both paper and electronic) that document site conditions. Invariably, the people I speak with are quite knowledgeable about current and past site conditions and remediation measures that have been undertaken, but are not well-informed about anything pertaining to record keeping or information management. There seems to be little correlation between a client’s level of understanding of these matters and its business type, size, or most surprisingly, the sophistication of its IT infrastructure.

What accounts for such ignorance? Most records pertaining to a client’s sites and all of its sampling and analytical data are kept by its environmental consultants. When given the opportunity to dig into these matters, I find that the client’s data is stored in older systems or spreadsheets that are not accessible by either the client’s employees or its other consultants. As a result, the client, which has already paid for the data once, is charged again whenever it makes a routine call to request information. Worse, when one consultant has a data set that another needs, the “owner” of the data charges the client to download it while the other consultant charges to upload it.

Clients don’t need to accept this chaos. Technologies exist to deal with it, particularly those based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language). I encourage clients to move their records from individual (and often incompatible) data bases of their various consultants to a central Web based repository where they can be accessed by all parties involved, thus eliminating data transfer costs, issues of data inaccessibility, and endless need for synchronization that plague so many projects. For a large corporation that currently spends $100 million per year on environmental monitoring, the savings could add up to 30% or more.

Neno Duplan is the president and CEO of Locus Technologies in Mountain View, California.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, AND STUTTGART, GERMANY, 31 January 2002 — Locus Technologies (Locus) and ALSTOM Power Environmental Consult, GmbH (ALSTOM Consult) announced today that the two companies will enter into a Strategic Alliance Agreement (SAA). Locus provides comprehensive consulting, engineering, Internet-based remote control, automation, and information management services for the environmental market. ALSTOM Consult is a leading provider of services in the areas of compliance audits; permitting; storage tank management; environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) management; and all aspects of the investigation, assessment, and cleanup of contaminated sites.

The SAA primarily covers the area of advanced information technology in the environmental industry and will provide increased value to Locus’s and ALSTOM Consult’s industrial clients by formalizing and expanding the companies’ collaborative efforts on numerous environmental projects in Europe. Under the agreement, ALSTOM Consult will become a distributor and an operator of Locus’s award-winning, web-based suite of applications, LocusFocus(SM). This suite includes modules for: (1) automating, operating, and controlling process and treatment systems for water, groundwater, wastewater, air, and soil; (2) managing environmental data; (3) conducting site audits; (4) storing and retrieving documents; and (5) collaborating on-line. In addition to innovations in technology, Locus and ALSTOM Consult will also benefit from teaming on professional and technical environmental projects in Europe and North America.

“We are very pleased to formalize our existing and long-standing relationship with ALSTOM Consult. This agreement will help Locus better serve our European-based clients and will facilitate deployment of our web-based technologies in Europe. With ALSTOM Consult’s distributed network of offices throughout Europe, we can now extend our services to an important market for our company,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus.

“ALSTOM Consult is very happy to start using and bringing Locus’s web technologies to the European market. We are also excited to expand our current relationship to provide value added technologies to existing and new markets in Europe and North America,” said Dr. Peter Rissing, Managing Director of ALSTOM’s environmental consulting business.

The European market for environmental goods and services is currently $149 billion and is expanding at the rate of approximately $4 billion dollars per year (California Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency, 2001). With Locus’s strong presence in North America and ALSTOM Consult’s high profile in Europe, the SAA is expected to bring significant benefits to both companies and their respective clients.
ABOUT ALSTOM
ALSTOM Power Environmental Consult is a recognized expert in environmental management services with an emphasis on contaminated land management, due diligence service in mergers and acquisitions, implementation of EH&S management systems, and ISO 14001, as well as occupational EH&S services. ALSTOM Power Environmental Consult is part of ALSTOM Power, which offers a range of boilers, energy recovery, and environmental equipment. ALSTOM has annual sales in excess of 22 billion euros and employs approximately 120,000 people in over 70 countries. The Company is listed on the Paris,London and New York stock exchanges. More information on ALSTOM can be found at www.alsto.com.