Locus Technologies claimed the contract to manage the LANL’s lab data in their cloud was worth up to $2 million.
A management application from Locus Technologies will provide an integrated view of energy and water consumption across the food giant’s operations.
Solution to Drive Food Manufacturer’s Integrated Environmental Management
SAN FRANCISCO, California, December 12, 2011 — One of the nation’s largest food companies has joined with a Silicon Valley innovator to advance its position as a leader in sustainable energy and environmental resource management. Locus Technologies today announced that Del Monte Foods has selected Locus Technologies’ award-winning ePortal™ platform to provide a comprehensive, integrated system for monitoring and managing its energy use, water, and other sustainability efforts throughout the corporation’s facilities.
Together, the two companies are combining the latest in sustainable agricultural, food processing, and product delivery efforts with next-generation online technologies for Environmental Enterprise Resource Planning (EERP). In particular, ePortal will provide Del Monte with enterprise tools to optimize consumption of environmental resources to lower greenhouse gas emissions and encourage more sustainable growth.
For several years, Del Monte has pursued an aggressive agenda for environmental sustainability, including reductions to its waste stream, greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption.
Today’s announcement adds the critical component of energy management to this integrated resource approach by using Locus’ web-based environmental management and analytical tools for a simpler, more effective sustainability campaign. Through a single Cloud-based secure system, the Locus platform will collect, monitor, and analyze multiple streams of energy and environmental data flowing from Del Monte’s operational locations, with consumer production ranging from Kingsburg, California to Mendota, Illinois, as well as a wide array of Pet Food manufactured throughout the United States.
Locus’ ePortal works with Del Monte’s resource planning system to aggregate critical financial and operational data into a single platform for effective environmental resource monitoring and management.
“Companies are looking beyond single solution to address their energy, resource management, water, and compliance needs,” said Neno Duplan, president and CEO of Locus Technologies. “They seek solutions that help to align their energy, environmental emissions, and resource management strategies to become more efficient and to manage their energy and water consumption. ePortal provides that simple, integrated system, similar to ERP, that manages all environmental, energy, water, and other sustainability needs under a single portal infrastructure and Single Sign On (SSO) on the web,” Duplan said.
“By working with Locus, we will improve our ability to analyze and forecast our reliance on critical environmental resources, which will help Del Monte meet its sustainability goals,” said Robin Connell, Sustainability Programs Manager for Del Monte Foods. “Management of our complex set of activities requires robust software architectures that are best delivered via the Cloud. We found all of these in Locus’ platform.”
ABOUT DEL MONTE FOODS
Del Monte Foods is one of the country’s largest producers, distributors and marketers of premium quality, branded pet products and food products for the U.S. retail market, generating approximately $3.7 billion in net sales in fiscal 2011. With a powerful portfolio of brands, Del Monte products are found in eight out of ten U.S. households. Pet food and pet snacks brands include Meow Mix®, Kibbles ‘n Bits®, Milk-Bone®, 9Lives®, Pup-Peroni®, Gravy Train®, Nature’s Recipe®, Canine Carry Outs®, Milo’s Kitchen® and other brand names. Food product brands include Del Monte®, Contadina®, S&W®, College Inn® and other brand names. The Company also produces and distributes private label pet products and food products.
For more information on Del Monte Foods, visit the Company’s website at www.delmontefoods.com.
Del Monte. Nourishing Families. Enriching Lives. Every Day®
EBJ is the leading source of business intelligence in the environmental industry. EBJ provides a strategic overview and an independent perspective on market trends and business strategy in a monthly publication.
The burden of data management for the nuclear power industry is second only to that of managing nuclear material itself.
CEO Neno Duplan’s Entrepreneur Profile
SPCC software moves to the Cloud
SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 27, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based water, energy, and environmental software, announced today that it has expanded ePortal, its flagship product, to manage compliance, data and information for the EPA Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) rule. This introduces the industry’s first enterprise level SPCC software deployed in the Cloud.
The SPCC rule is part of the EPA’s Oil Pollution Prevention regulations, which also includes the Facility Response Plan (FRP) rule. On July 17, 2002, the EPA amended the SPCC regulations (67 FR 47042), which became effective on August 16, 2002. The rule requires specific facilities to prepare, amend, and implement SPCC plans along with a series of inspection and training requirements.
The Locus SPCC software application addresses the requirements for oil spill prevention, preparedness, and response procedures to prevent oil discharge to navigable waters and adjoining shorelines. The SPCC module will help owners or operators of regulated facilities to develop and manage the SPCC process, and to track and report spills if and when they occur, along with their root causes. The software is designed to help facilities comply with the SPCC regulations and other regulatory requirements, and is flexible enough to meet the needs of many regulated industries with a focus on oil and gas. The software leverages Locus ePortal’s tracking and reminder tools to ensure operators meet requirements and complete follow-on tasks in accordance with the requirements of 40 CFR 112.6(a)(3).
“With the new EPA reporting deadline for SPCC of November 10, 2011, approaching rapidly, Locus wanted to offer its current and future customers software to help them meet the deadline and manage the complex reporting requirements the regulation entails. The industry needed a web-based solution for SPCC compliance, and we have delivered one that will ensure that companies can comply with ample time to meet the deadline,” said Dr. Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.
Locus designed the SPCC module specifically to meet the oil and gas industry’s needs for managing SPCC compliance. Since Locus’ other software products, such as EIM, have been used for more than 10 years at many oil and gas exploration sites and nuclear facilities nationwide, the system upgrade allows rapid deployment; an unmatched level of integration and functionality; and data security, data validation, and scalability.
Key features of the new module include SPCC task tracking; spill root cause analysis; automated follow-on task creation and tracking; and spill reporting using standard or facility-specific formats. Locus’ SPCC module also includes a complete facility inspection checklist to record findings, and ensures that companies can address inspection findings in a timely manner. And because Locus’ SPCC module is based in the Cloud, operators can enter inspection results live during the inspection, streamlining the process for customers with many inspection locations. Once inspection results are entered, customers can review data rollups easily to identify equipment maintenance trends. Plus, all SPCC activities are safely stored in ePortal and archived for long-term compliance documentation. Users can also print or e-mail reports to meet various corporate document retention requirements and georeference spills on Locus’ web-based GIS interface.
Independent Exploration and Production Company to manage and report environmental, compliance, and sustainability information in Locus Cloud
SAN FRANCISCO, California, May 23, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based water, energy and environmental software, announced today that it has been awarded a contract to manage corporate environmental compliance and sustainability at a publically traded, independent E&P company focused exclusively on oil and natural gas development in California.
Locus ePortal will be configured to ensure that the E&P company can track and manage environmental compliance at all company locations, including offshore platforms, in a single unified system. Locus ePortal compliance applications replace a variety of site-specific tracking tools that are non-uniform, difficult to keep up to date, and do not provide business continuity in the event of staff attrition. It will also support the increased number of inspections that occur in various jurisdictions where the company explores for natural gas and oil, and will provide key compliance metrics at the site and regional levels.
“The California E&P company is concerned about the environment as the company operates in areas with extensive environmental regulations, including offshore platforms in and around the Santa Barbara Channel as well as exploration and production rigs in prime agricultural areas, such as the Sacramento Basin. Locus ePortal is a perfect fit for the company to ensure that the company stays on top of all reporting requirements and organizes all of its compliance information in a single database with a single online sign-on,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.
“For the natural gas industry to stay in compliance with ever-stricter laws to protect drinking water supplies and air emissions, drilling companies need better ways to organize hydrofracking waste data in order to demonstrate to the public and regulators that hydrofracking activities are not endangering natural resources. They also need to prove that any dangerous waste from the wells is handled in compliance with state and federal laws. We are very pleased that the software tools that Locus has developed for this new industry are well received in the marketplace,” added Duplan.
Locus SaaS software to manage environmental compliance for sustainable self-contained energy solutions by Energenic
SAN FRANCISCO, California, May 2, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based environmental and energy software, announced today that it has been awarded a contract from Energenic, LLC to manage its environmental, compliance, and sustainability information in Locus’ Cloud.
Energenic selected Locus’ SaaS-hosted software to implement a new environmental compliance management system to meet its business and regulatory requirements, specifically for managing and reporting environmental, compliance, and sustainability information.
Energenic specializes in the comprehensive design, development, construction and operation of large-scale energy projects. Whether the project involves electricity generation from cogeneration, solar, landfill gas, or biogas to fuels, environmental compliance and stewardship are imbedded in each Energenic design. Energenic evaluated multiple companies’ software offerings before selecting Locus to meet its business and regulatory reporting and recordkeeping requirements.
“We are very pleased that Energenic selected our Cloud platform. We are very proud that our software will complement Energenic’s disciplined expertise to engineer fiscally, technologically, environmentally, and sustainably responsible power solutions for generations to come. ePortal will allow Energenic to take a better aggregate view of its environmental challenges, take full ownership of its environmental data, and make better planning decisions for environmental stewardship,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.
“Energenic is committed to the next generation of energy technologies and services. Using Locus’ software will improve our project delivery, our financial well-being and our environmental stewardship. Locus’ ePortal software will help us meet our compliance and legal responsibilities, as well as position us to grow with the evolving regulatory landscape. Managing our data and information in the Cloud, and streamlining our reporting processes, will help us support our mission to provide sustainable energy sources to our clients while becoming better stewards of the environment,” added Frank DiCola, Energenic’s president and CEO.
ABOUT ENERGENIC
Energenic is a joint business venture between long-term business partners Marina Energy LLC, a subsidiary of South Jersey Industries (NYSE: SJI), and DCO Energy LLC. Energenic specializes in the comprehensive design, development, construction, and operation of large-scale energy projects and has offices in Nevada and New Jersey.
For more information, visit www.energenic-us.com, www.sjindustries.com, and www.dcoenergy.com.
One of the chief complaints of Japanese citizens—and indeed the world community—as the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has unfolded has been the lack of information that TEPCO, the electric utility that owns and operates the plant, (and the Japanese government) have shared. From thousands of miles away, the nuclear community is piecing together forensic analysis [see NYTimes article from April 3, “Japan’s Nuclear Crisis Is Seen Clearly From Afar”] in an attempt to understand the severity of the crisis. As the world braces for the worst-case scenario, the models that these scientists are running are based only on data approximations. It does not need to be that way.
Fukushima is not just Japan’s problem—we’re all going to be dealing with the fallout from this situation for years. The data collection process and the sheer quantity make managing the data a challenge. Having on-site data storage is risky. If the plant blows up and you lose any critical data; using Cloud technology will allow not only aggregation for the sake of TEPCO, but also for the world community. We all need to be able to see and learn from the data to help Japan solve the problem. It’s bigger than they are—especially when it comes to ocean/fish contamination. TEPCO should learn from the BP oil spill and make data immediately transparent. On the anniversary of BP Gulf Oil Spill public still does not have access to the extent and magnitude of contamination caused by that disaster.
Centralized and reusable data now and in the future will help us all make decisions and take action on the cleanup—and improve safety and fail safes at the rest of the planet’s nuclear power plants. The partial meltdown of three reactors and at least two spent fuel pools, along with multiple hydrogen explosions at the site now rate a 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale—a level previously pinned only to the meltdown and explosion at the single reactor at Chernobyl. After the immediate crisis at the Fukushima is bought under control, attention will shift to characterizing the impact of the disaster on human health and the environment and on long-term monitoring and stewardship. At this point, an opportunity exists for TEPCO, to get out in front of the crisis and become as transparent as possible about the evolving conditions at the plant and surrounding areas. To do so, it should move all information gathered on the nature and extent of the releases at the facility to the “Cloud”. Soviet and Russian authorities never did this on Chernobyl, and the general public still does not know the exact extent of that disaster to the human health and environment. The amount of data that is likely to be collected by TEPCO and others in the coming years will be a tsunami in its own right and may be as challenging to deal with as the real one unless the proper information management system is put in place. Samples of air, soil, groundwater, and seawater, as well as various biota, including crops and fish, will be collected from all potentially impacted areas. These will be measured for various radionuclides, all of which have various half-lives. The resulting information will need to be evaluated for both short and long-term impacts on humans and the environment. This can best be accomplished if all relevant data is stored in a centralized information management system that is accessible to all stakeholders. The web makes all this not only possible but quite doable. Many US nuclear utilities and US DOE nuclear weapons sites are already managing their operational data in the Cloud and are well aware of the importance of information management technologies that Cloud offers.
Deploying a centralized environmental management system to the Cloud, and placing all data in it, would allow all interested parties to know where samples of various media have been taken, what parties collected them, how the samples were analyzed, what the levels of radionuclides were in these samples, and what the legal limits and long-term effects of each isotope are. The general public is unlikely to have the sophistication to deal with most of this data. Rather, valid conclusions as to the impacts of the contamination are only likely to be drawn by those experienced in statistics, modeling, risk assessment, and/or health physics.
For More information please see: Japan quake data should be stored in the cloud
Locus Technologies
299 Fairchild Drive
Mountain View, CA 94043
P: +1 (650) 960-1640
F: +1 (415) 360-5889
Locus Technologies provides cloud-based environmental software and mobile solutions for EHS, sustainability management, GHG reporting, water quality management, risk management, and analytical, geologic, and ecologic environmental data management.