Enviance Blog

Do more with less: one-stop environmental platform benefits

Typically, companies deploy a different solution for each of their environmental management needs. Need to measure greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)? Get software for GHG management. Need to report waste? Buy another solution that can measure and report waste. It makes sense, right?

Not so much.

As environmental guidelines become more complex, implementation of various solutions – either developed in-house or purchased externally – to meet regulatory needs is proving cumbersome for companies. Acquiring or building these technology solutions for management of a single environmental type is costly. Companies are significantly overpaying for too many systems that cannot integrate with their infrastructure, or even communicate with each other to convey the organization’s overall environmental performance.

To address these challenges, we just released a new white paper entitled “More Bang, Less Bucks: Why One-Stop Environmental Systems Make Better Sense,” which explores the business benefits and value of using one environmental enterprise resource planning (EERP) platform. This paper demonstrates how a one-stop, comprehensive environmental ERP system can meet all of an organization’s environmental management needs, by:

• Providing a single, centralized platform for organizations to manage ALL of their environmental programs;
• Offering economies of scale, enabling more thorough analysis of environmental data across an organization;
• Creating the foundation required to manage one, or even 20 or more environmental initiatives as the need arises.

In this whitepaper, you’ll uncover many other benefits made possible by the use of a single environmental system, pertaining to both IT and business settings across an organization. In an era where environmental solutions are required for regulatory purposes, it’s crucial for companies to find the most all-inclusive system that will meet their needs, while saving time and money to reduce the bottom line.

Read white paper here.

19th Annual EHS Management Forum just days away, will Enviance see you there?

This week, October 19-20, the Enviance team will be exhibiting at the largest annual gathering for EHS decision makers: The EHS Management Forum. This year’s NAEM forum will revolve around EHS excellence, covering topics such as defining and delivering sustainability, supply chain strategies, and 21st Century Leadership.

Nigel Nugent, vice president of worldwide sales, will be in attendance for Enviance. Nigel recently took part in the Enviance webinar, “Mandatory x Voluntary: Creating an Environmental Compliance Culture of Value”, along with Andrea Gardner, senior technologist for CH2M HILL, and Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz. The topics discussed at the webinar, specially how companies are taking an integrated approach to environmental compliance and sustainability efforts will all be prevalent themes at this year’s EHS Management Forum.    

If you will be attending the show and haven’t yet seen the Mandatory x Voluntary webinar, check it out and then stop by the Enviance Booth (#26) to say hello to Nigel and hear more about the exciting work Enviance is doing to help its customers reach their environmental compliance goals.

Mandatory & Voluntary: Why can’t we be friends?

Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of hosting a Webinar in conjunction with CH2M HILL and the GreenBiz Group. The webinar “Mandatory vs. Voluntary: Creating an Environmental Compliance Culture of Value,” featured Nigel Nugent, vice president of worldwide sales at Enviance, and Andrea Gardner, senior technologist of sustainability at CH2M Hill. Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz Group, moderated the discussion.

The webinar brought these experts together to discuss how companies can develop blended environmental compliance strategies that integrate both mandatory and voluntary activities. This approach to mandatory environmental compliance and voluntary sustainability reports may seem contrary to many companies, who tend to separate the two efforts among different departments, but there are many benefits that result from combining these activities.

First, let’s clarify the differences between mandatory and voluntary compliance. CH2M Hill’s Gardner emphasized that the biggest difference between these is that one that is reactive in nature while the other is proactive. For example, voluntary results are analyzed, and regulatory results are reported. Companies that are going above and beyond regulatory compliance requirements, and have implemented some form of voluntary compliance, are considered to be aspirational—they’re looking toward the future and proactively asking themselves, “What kind of company do we want to become? How can we minimize our environmental impact?” Conversely, regulatory compliance is focused on the here and now. They think in terms of “Where does my company stand from a compliance standpoint, at this very moment?” This line of thinking is much more risk-averse and reactive.

There are many advantages to a blended voluntary and mandatory compliance department, but only if it is implemented appropriately. Many companies set up separate departments for voluntary and mandatory–and prefer the separation. However, there are negative consequences if the disparate groups are not managed and monitored properly. For example, they may pursue projects that require the same company resources and conduct duplicate data collection—wasting both time and money. Isolated data sets collected and stored in each respective department’s database, can reduce effectiveness of planning and decision-making and cause internal confusion as companies struggle to determine which data set is the true accurate representation.

Watch the Webinar Now

These issues illustrate why many companies choose to house these extremely unique approaches to sustainability within the same department. According to Nugent, mandatory compliance teams are strengthened by the inclusion of voluntary sustainability. The likenesses between voluntary sustainability and regulatory compliance offer access to a host of benefits that can help decrease a company’s bottom line. The sharing of critical data, saved resources (by staffing only one team), a single repository for data management (allowing for more efficient data use), and streamlined operational processes all create tremendous value for the organization. Also, it provides a competitive advantage; since voluntary standards can eventually become mandatory, monitoring these early on helps organizations better prepare themselves.

It’s clear that there are many benefits to combining voluntary and mandatory compliance efforts if it’s done in a monitored and controlled fashion. However, it’s up to each individual organization to decide if this kind of strategy is what best suits their goals and needs.

Stay tuned for more webinars with Enviance customers and partners as we move into the waning months of 2011. We have much more in store for you!

Watch the Webinar here.

Do you know your Environmental Compliance Vulnerabilities?

If you are visiting our blog, you are probably well aware of the existing and ever changing environmental regulations companies from all sizes and verticals need to comply with nowadays. You are probably also aware that many companies are still failing to understand the importance in determining their environmental impact to their corporate value and cost to operations. Left uncalculated and ignored, these risks place a company in jeopardy of extreme financial loss and devaluation.

To help you better understand your environmental compliance vulnerabilities and the level of risk associated with your environmental regulatory non-compliance we have put together an online assessment tool.  Please take a few minutes to answer our survey and determine if the systems you have in place meet your needs, or identify where you may have an opportunity to reduce your environmental compliance exposure.

Check our Environmental Compliance Risk Assessment Tool here!

What natural gas and petroleum facilities need to know about subpart W regulations

Back in 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting, putting approximately 13,000 industrial facilities (representing 85% of GHG emissions in the U.S.) on the hook to monitor and report their annual emissions.  

Initially, these regulations did not include petroleum and natural gas requirements, until the EPA issued the subpart W rule in November 2010. Subpart W requires petroleum and natural gas facilities that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year to report annual methane (CH4) and CO2 emissions.

Of the 13,000 reporting facilities, 2,800 will need to report on the subpart W rule, a complex set of regulations that would require a significant amount of effort to be put forth by the petroleum and natural gas industries. Fortunately, the initial reporting deadline for subpart W may be extended to September 30, 2012 if recently proposed revisions are adopted. This would give facilities the opportunity to get their monitoring and reporting strategies in place in the meantime. 

To outline best practices on how the eight key petroleum and natural gas industries affected by this directive can keep compliant with subpart W, Greg Gasperecz, Enviance’s vice president of Environmental, Health and Safety, recently dissected the new rules in an educational webinar.

In this presentation, Greg shares his insights on subpart W, giving a full background and overview of mandate, and addressing the changes/updates that have occurred since promulgation. He also discusses compliance strategies and tips for reporting, including real-world examples to help shape strategies within organizations.  

Watch the Webinar here.

 

Sincerely,

The Enviance team

 

What’s your employee’s time worth? A case study in efficiency

Enviance is proud of its customers’ accomplishments and we love to share their success stories. Throughout the year, we host webinars highlighting great results and best practices in the field. Most recently, Patriot Coal, a leading producer and marketer of coal in the eastern United States, and CH2MHill, a leading global provider of engineering, construction, and operations services, took center stage to discuss how Patriot uses the Enviance system to meet compliance obligations from the EPA and Department of Justice, plus other bottom line benefits, in Patriot Coal Saves Time and Money, Automates Water Management.

In the webinar, Patriot shares some impressive results, including a massive reduction in the time it took to input inspection data, which amounts to roughly 40,000 data points per month. Prior to Enviance, Patriot’s environmental data collection and inspections were done by hand, and took eight environmental managers six full days a month to input. After installing Enviance, the process was automated by the cloud-based system, reducing the time to just 4 to 6 hours of review a month. In the year after deploying Enviance, Patriot inspected 33% more outlets, and cut effluent limit violations from 120 to 3.

To hear the full story and view the webinar, please click here.