ESS is currently building a mobile framework using the latest Microsoft technology tools. Joseph Jordan, ESS’ director of Mobile Architecture, is working on that project for us. This framework will be used build workflow, data collection and distribution systems.
What is the benefit of mobile solutions for an enterprise? We now understand that a rapidly growing number of organizations find that using mobile devices makes data collection and monitoring faster and easier. This technology also makes workers more productive by giving them the ability to respond to all types of business challenges in real time.
Our new application gives organizations real-time access to critical data, streamlining compliance activities and improving data integrity. In other words, mobile technology makes it easier for organizations to collect data from the shop floor so it can be quickly loaded for analysis and communicated throughout the organization. That’s why we are excited about our plans to add mobile technology capability to our EHS and Crisis Management solutions for air, water, hazardous waste, fugitive emissions, chemical inventory management, auditing, incident management and industrial hygiene. You’ll see more about this in the near future.
ESS has been delivering handheld solutions for 10 years. Also, our WME and Jordan Systems software had it. And it is currently available for our Waste module. So this technology isn’t new to us.
What is different is that we are building a new and advanced architecture platform that will enable us to use the latest Microsoft technologies, along with common handheld devices across the entire spectrum of integrated modules within our integrated sustainability platform. This will result in:
Easier and more intuitive data entry
Enhanced data integrity and automation of compliance processes
Improved productivity. Simpler data collection effort
Improved field documentation of incident investigations
Faster identification and implementation of corrective actions by site personnel
Our new mobile software platform will speed process management and data collection, improve accuracy for all EHS functions and help ensure regulatory compliance, production uptime and injury free workplaces.
Here’s an anecdote that shows the benefits of a mobile device. Mind you, this isn’t even a crisis — just an ordinary issue.
A manager of a waste storage facility is currently offsite, but would like to check the status of the overnight preparations for a waste shipment scheduled to take place later that morning:
The Mobile Approach: The manager pulls out a phone, enabled with mobile technology, and within two icon clicks, information appears on the screen indicating that there may be a problem with the operation. The manager makes a quick call to inquire about the project status and clear up the issue with the overnight supervisor. Upon the manager’s arrival at the facility, waste drums are promptly labeled, loaded and ready for shipment.
Typical Desktop Approach: The same manager, without the benefit of mobile technology, drives to the facility, unaware that a problem exists. The manager logs onto a desktop computer, enters the appropriate application, which requires another login and password; uses a navigation tree to drill down to the report menu; uses a pull-down menu to choose the affected facility; and finally clicks the icon to run the report. That’s when the problem is identified.
Because many compliance activities occur away from the desktop, handheld functionality is a critical link in the compliance automation chain. In the previous example, having mobile technology enabled the manager to identify the problem and respond faster than without it. This is not an isolated example. Managers and executives are finding a wide variety of ways to leverage mobile technology to make their operations faster and more efficient. Thanks to innovators like Joseph Jordan and other members of our development and product management team, you’ll see many mobile technology solutions in the near future.
Mark Yates, Joe Appelbaum and Joseph Jordan are long standing members of our team and key innovators who have many significant contributions to make our company successful. Here are vlogs where they share their perspectives on the EHS industry, ESS and what the future holds for both.
Corporations have recently enlisted new participants to support their greenhouse gas management programs: Chief Information Officers (CIO). That point was reinforced in a recently-published article in CIO Magazine.
CIOs are now on the front lines of corporate climate change programs. That’s because manual spreadsheet accounting and disparate legacy systems are not able to support organizations’ need for accurate, verifiable carbon data for compliance under market based compliance schemes that are being considered in the U.S. and several other jurisdictions, as well as growing disclosure demands from investors, community stakeholders and activists. In order to meet those new standards, organizations will need to implement information management tools that support efficient and accurate reporting and analysis in order to address changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) management that are just around the corner. CIOs will play a central role in that process.
ESS has just published a white paper entitled, “A CIO’s Guide to Global Climate Change,” which provides a detailed discussion of this issue. It’s now available for download from our web site.
The process of building a program for evaluating, monitoring and measuring GHG emissions should begin with the development of a carbon management strategy. Managing climate risk in the context of corporate objectives starts with understanding the company’s operations. Executives need to identify which practitioners or business units need to use the data and for what purpose. Answers to these questions will provide critical direction for best practices for collection, processing and reporting of GHG information.
It’s a very complicated process, and will likely affect most businesses — including many that previously have not been required to provide GHG emissions reporting.
So GHG management is coming out of the bailiwick of environmental managers, facility managers and even the risk managers. CIOs will soon inherit responsibility for a challenge that has real bottom-line implications. That will eventually require organizations to develop a comprehensive plan for GHG management, supported by an integrated software platform.
Last year, I was asked to write a manuscript for a new book on corporate ethics. My topic was how environmental issues had become part of corporate ethics and sustainability, an ethical imperative. The book, entitled Executive Ethics: Ethical Dilemmas and Challenges for the C-Suite, was published on April 10th and is now available on Amazon.com and in bookstores.
As recently as 2000, environmental stewardship was not a major priority among business and political thought leaders. In many cases standards for environmental practice were not much different from government-mandated emissions laws. Business leaders believed the primary environmental responsibility of the enterprise was to maintain compliance with standards adopted by federal and state governments, and to ensure that factory emissions did not threaten the health of workers and nearby residents, as an extension of their commitment to local corporate citizenship.
But since the dawn of the 21st century, there has been a rapid evolution among key business leaders who are moving critical benchmarks from regulatory compliance to real leadership, as they adjust to their customers’ increased consciousness of environmental sustainability, growing concern about greenhouse gas emissions and resultant effects on global warming and climate change.
These concerns are now being reflected both on the production floor and in the boardroom. Corporations are proving that they can successfully balance concerns for the environment with the traditional priorities of operating profitable enterprises.
Industry analysts are predicting that the next few years will be critical for manufacturers, retailers, financial services firms and others as they establish sustainability goals for their long term business roadmaps. This movement is driven by a commitment to corporate ethics as much as it is by pragmatism.
Companies that embrace sustainability are taking a long-term view of their effects on society. They are departing from traditional views of private property rights and ownership. Such firms don’t respond simply for regulatory purposes (such as mitigating the effects of air or water emissions on the surrounding community), but because of a desire to avoid the potential costs if the global environment is seriously threatened.
I was delighted and honored to be asked to write about this topic. I hope it sparks even more discussion about the importance of environmental ethics within the larger discussion of corporate ethics.
The federal government is now debating the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and with that debate comes the need for policymakers to find a way to collect the emissions data necessary to support efforts to address climate change.
We all know that you can’t manage something that you can’t measure. Without data, we can’t make or assess policies.
Last December, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes a provision to direct the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to require mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from everywhere in the economy. So that points to the development of a national greenhouse gas registry.
The emissions registry will be a database that will collect, verify and track data from both facilities and companies. U.S. corporations have long had voluntary GHG emissions reporting because they want to be in a position of leadership on sustainability initiatives. But a mandatory registry will serve two further purposes: It will support regulatory compliance tracking and public disclosure, which can be an effective tool to promote cooperation.
To be effective, a mandatory registry should do several things:
Collect data at the facility level on a mandatory basis;
Make that data transparent, consistent and verified in accordance with international standards;
Collect emissions data even from facilities covered by a cap and trade program;
Provide a common infrastructure for reporting from emission sources not covered by cap and trade program regulations, and from facilities before a cap and trade system becomes operational;
Collect both indirect and direct emissions data and make that data available to the public.
Only from that specific data can the EPA compile a national database to find out whether we are achieving the U.S.’s climate control objectives.
This year’s ESS EXPO was a great event. We had the largest EXPO attendance ever. And our judges had a difficult time choosing among the sustainability initiatives nominated for ESS Excellence Awards.
After a great deal of thought, a panel of judges, including executives from BNP Media’s Pollution Engineering (PE) and Industrial Safety & Hygiene News (ISHN) magazines, EXPO’s official media sponsors, named The Dow Chemical Company winner of the “Best of the Best” 2008 ESS Excellence Award for its outstanding achievements in leveraging information management technology to achieve its enterprise sustainability and operational excellence goals. Dow earned the top honor by showing how they saved $2 million following implementation of an integrated EH&S platform covering about 200 production sites across North America. The system generated productivity enhancements, streamlined Dow’s environmental reporting and enabled company officials to replace hundreds of redundant legacy systems.
Dow was one of 31 public and private organizations that received ESS Excellence Awards this year. Honorees represent a wide range of organizations across industry sectors, including global leaders, mid-market companies, public utilities, military agencies, educational institutions and federal, state and local government agencies.
The remaining 2008 ESS Excellence Award winners included Alcoa, Inc.; Andrews Air Force Base; Beale Air Force Base; Brookhaven National Laboratory; Campbell Soup Company, Napoleon, Ohio; Cardinal Glass Industries; City of Columbus, Ga.; Delta Air Lines, Inc.; Duke Energy; Gilbert Fire Department; HD Supply, Inc.; Illinois Auto Electrics Company; JR Simplot; Kocsis Consulting Group, Inc.; Koppers; Kroy Lyondell Chemical; Maryland State Highway Administration; Metro Nashville Government; New Jersey Natural Gas Company; PetroChina Company Limited; Purdue University; Raleigh Parks & Recreation Department; Kentucky Sanitation District No. 1; Seagate Technology; Sea Ray Boats; St. Petersburg Police Department; Sumner County Government; Tempe Fire Department; The Dow Chemical Company; USDA Forest Service; and Vought Aircraft Industries Building Products.
Additionally, nine organizations were recognized as Honorable Mention recipients: Arcelor Mittal Steel; Boeing Commercial Airplane Business Unit; Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD; Colgate-Palmolive; Good Environment Pty. Ltd.; INVISTA; Momentive Performance Materials, Sistersville, W. Va. Plant; New Brunswick Emergency Measures Organization; and URS Corporation.
Notice that the award winning organizations, as a group, represent a wide cross-section of industry sectors ranging from consumer goods to aircraft manufacturers, chemical companies to federal, state and local government agencies. This indicates the widespread adoption of and support for sustainability initiatives throughout both the private and the public sectors.
April 22 is known to most people as Earth Day. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, according to Wikipedia. Much has changed since then. The world’s population has risen from under 4 billion in 1970 to over 6.6 billion today (with projections of 9 billion inhabitants by 2050).
The importance of carbon dioxide emissions as an environmental issue of international concern has grown substantially since 1992, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted because of increasing concern over rising atmospheric concentrations of GHGs and their possible adverse effects on the global climate system. The UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol call for an enhancement of energy efficiency and an increase in the production and use of new and renewable energy, as well as measures to limit or reduce GHG emissions.
The production, generation, distribution and use of energy today releases substantial amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollutants. As population growth in the developing world continues to materialize, the pressure on local environments to supply the required energy sources will increase considerably, as will the amount of GHGs released. How the international community and governments respond to these issues will be of vital importance if society is to have a sustainable future.
Global climate change mitigation depends greatly on the increased use of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in all countries.
The efforts and measures required to successfully address climate change are extremely challenging in a number of ways. However, one specific step we can all take is to focus attention on energy usage.
Where Do I Start? What can we do as individuals?
Here’s one way you can help reduce GHG emissions. EPA has launched a new national campaign to help Americans join in the fight against climate change. The campaign, “Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR” helps people make important energy-efficient changes at home and at work that can add up to significant reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. The campaign builds on the success of the ENERGY STAR “Change a Light” campaign by providing a set of steps people can take to save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Change the World. Start with ENERGY STAR a national campaign encouraging all Americans to join with millions of others and take small, individual steps that make a big difference in the fight against global warming.
What can corporations do?
The buildings where we work, shop, play and learn spend $200 billion annually on electricity and natural gas and contribute nearly half of our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, 50 percent of U.S. electrical generation relies on coal, a fossil fuel; while 85 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions result from energy-consuming activities supported by fossil fuels.
With help from programs like EPA’s ENERGY STAR, you can help reduce energy waste and energy costs where you work as well as where you live!
The most energy-efficient businesses in America use about 30 percent less energy than their competitors. Finding smart ways to manage the energy you need to run your business can improve your profit margins, increase funds available for development of new products and services and enhance overall corporate value.
Management in this century requires global orchestration–managing from the outside in. Enterprises are starting to use Web 2.0 to do this — putting application data in a very common user interface, like a browser.
That was the message from Simon Jacobson from AMR, the keynote speaker at ESS EXPO.08. Jacobson was one of several speakers that provided insightful perspectives on key business and IT challenges to a record-setting audience of corporate and government executives and thought leaders who joined us this week in Phoenix for our annual business conference.
This was one of several thought-provoking sessions where industry leaders and thought leaders came together to discuss issues that will have a huge impact on the enterprise in the near future. I’m pleased that this and many other presentations have firmly established ESS EXPO as a forum where industry leaders can meet some of the people who are providing solutions for tomorrow’s issues today.
Emerging issues such as managing greenhouse gases through the supply chain, caps on carbon production and energy consumption are emerging on the list of corporate priorities, Jacobson said.
He talked about how Web 2.0 is being used in the enterprise and architected in a framework called Manufacturing 2.0 that pulls data out of legacy applications into a more modern framework. In the configuration, organizations can maintain legacy data storage, and still have applications talk to one another.
What is the visibility of environmental performance across extended supply networks? How do organizations get a consistent view of performance across the enterprise? Fragmented and manual systems make it difficult for corporate managers to get answers. These systems have to be consolidated into a single instance that will give you a way to automate work flow and build assumptions.
Environmental software, Jacobson said, should be web-based, and all EHS data should be consolidated in a common database that takes collective intelligence, ties it together, and shows it back to the user. Adoption of Web services is on the rise in the enterprise. Applications such as wikis, blogs and podcasts are also on the rise to help companies get around the latency of data in a crisis situation.
How do companies integrate EHS with typical GRC systems? They must be integrated with the rest of the business applications, such as he ERP, the supply chain and product focused applications into a controls management system that enables development of processes and procedures for risk remediation — and all of those show as intelligence on a management dashboard.
Jacobson predicts that REACH will impact all manufacturing processes, and thus financial compliance, IT compliance, and environmental compliance will have to be integrated.
Of course, the technology that Jacobson described is available today. ESS is deploying integrated EHS platforms for major organizations around the world including global leaders like PetroChina.
The CDC thinks the threat of a human influenza pandemic has greatly increased over the past several years, because of the emergence of H5N1 avian flu strains. They just don’t know when. This morning at ESS EXPO.08, we held a session on “Planning for a Pandemic.” No one likes to think or plan for these kinds of emergencies, but the federal government has required that industry must use the information on both the CDC site and the Homeland Security site on how to go about this. We are trying to help our clients prepare for this. John Gargett, our product manager, led this session.
You would be surprised at how much preparation is involved. Food and agriculture, emergency services, national monuments and icons, chemical and hazardous materials, energy, emergency services, and transportation are only some the industries that could be involved.
The World Health Organization has a schedule of Alert States that goes in six stages, from no incidence, to many sick people. And our government has one, too — and they don’t coincide! There are response phases, however, during which you can respond and prepare. Gargett advises that you set a Google Alert for a pandemic alert period, and if you receive an alert for a pandemic in Thailand, you still want to start preparing. (There was a SARS alert in Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago, and people started leaving, which just causes more potential for transmission.)
When chief financial officers (CFO) declare that environmentally sound business practices are a priority, it’s apparently that a major change has been taken place at the corporate suite. Finance people aren’t “green-washers.” They’re now part of the growing chorus of corporate leaders who recognize that responsible green-friendly policies aren’t a drag on business. They represent a potential business advantage that reaches all the way to the bottom line.
Last month, CFO Magazine held a conference on green business practices for financial executives where leading executives told the audience that sustainability initiatives have become a source of operational improvement, business innovation and new revenue streams.
“Sustainability has moved from risk mitigation to a business and revenue opportunity,” said Mark Newton of Dell Computer.
Executives from companies like Dell Computer, Caterpillar and Pitney Bowes reinforced what those of us in the EHS space have said for a while: Companies that embrace green business practices realize business benefits quickly when the corporate finance function contributes both to decision making and integration of the information flowing from sustainability initiatives into broader reporting and regulatory compliance initiatives.
That makes green business an integral part of broader corporate Governance, Risk and Compliance.
David Burritt, CFO of Caterpillar, said his company’s focus on sustainability efforts, which include redesigning product lines to become more energy efficient; expansion of its remanufacturing business; and broad adoption of new technology in both its internal processes and in its products, have delivered measurable improvements in business operations for the company and its customers. He called on his peers in the finance function to understand sustainability as a business opportunity, not as an inconvenience or a drag on the bottom line. But doing so requires the finance function to develop consistent measurements for sustainability across its operations and to “find the value in sustainable business and then drive action across the business.”
Pitney Bowes’ sustainability efforts have improved its product and service offerings to customers, the profitability of core business operations and its leadership position in its industry, according to CFO Monahan.
Sustainability must be part of a company’s overall GRC initiatives to reduce operational risk. Finance executives and investors have signaled that they understand the value implications of rigorous environmental performance management to that equation.
But since the dawn of the 21st century, there has been a rapid evolution among key business leaders who are moving critical benchmarks from regulatory compliance to real leadership, as they adjust to their customers’ increased consciousness of environmental sustainability, growing concern about greenhouse gas emissions and resultant effects on global warming and climate change.