Pacific Environment delivers all-in-one monitoring toolFriday, 11 December 2015
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There hasn't been an all-in-one air, water and noise modelling and monitoring system, until now that is, says Sydney-based Pacific Environment. And the company's online tool promises to help businesses become more proactive instead of reactive in managing problems. By Jan Michael Arreza.
EnviroSuitePacific Environment's online tool -
EnviroSuite - is undergoing an expansion and its second version, a cloud-based system delivered as a software-as-a-service offering was released mid this year.
According to Pacific Environment general manager Matt Scholl, the environmental monitoring tool is able to predict impacts while measuring them in real-time, and it is a relatively new type of software as others have provided different elements of the system but none have been able to deliver the full breadth of modelling and monitoring modules.
“We thought that having something that can model impacts to forecast and plan ahead was very complementary if you can measure the impacts in real-time and act rapidly,” Scholl said.
“We are helping to automate the process of managing risk and presenting new information to companies that could help them with their planning and scheduling in relation to operational efficiency.
“Usually they would just react to a problem when it occurs or they might have to spend time physically monitoring the conditions, whereas this system does that on their behalf and alerts them when there is a problem giving them a bit of lead time to act.”
Pacific Environment's consultants came up with the concept of real-time air quality models a few years ago, when they were running air dispersion modelling. They have since progressed by developing combining this with a new model that forecasts the weather.
“It produced the opportunity to predict impacts in advance and we saw that as potentially beneficial for a operation,” Scholl said.
“We developed the air quality module first then we followed that with the noise management module.
“We see the value in connecting monitoring equipment that could give feedback in real time so we are also releasing a water module in January next year.”
A typical annual subscription to EnviroSuite could cost anywhere between $60,000 and $80,000, depending on the number of modules included, with the return on investment being done on a site-to-site basis.
“The question about savings is not straightforward as it depends on what operations can do with better foresight than they otherwise would do when reacting to a situation as it unfold,” Scholl said.
“We do know that clients save money via operational efficiencies from better planning and scheduling, as well as savings on the internal cost of managing environmental risk.
“The risk management driver is not just about avoiding fines and protecting against potentially significant impacts, it also includes reducing day-to-day costs of managing risks and the potentially large costs incurred when assessing what went wrong after an unexpected event.”
The tool is being used some 25 companies, including a number of big mining and resources players (think: BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Glencore) and earlier this month, Pacific Environment took on its first American partner for EnviroSuite, Sigma Space Corporation - a technology provider that claims NASA and the Department of Defence as their largest clients.
“They were looking rather than reacting to a problem after it happened and dealing with that,” Scholl said in reference to the company's mining clients who were looking for solutions to manage the risk of impact to their neighbours.
“They wanted to try to predict these things in advance and put in place actions so that they didn’t have an issue when responding to the issue, or better yet prevent it from happening.
“That happened about four years ago and after that we‘ve used those examples to demonstrate to other clients that there is value in this and there is actually cost saving potential by producing information that previously wasn’t used in an operation.”
Pacific Environment will focus on international expansion as well as testing both a direct and an indirect sales strategy in regards to engaging with partners who may be interested to sell EnviroSuite alongside their own services.
“So that process is ongoing and really what we’re expecting is that it should help expand our sales,” Scholl said.
“In terms of the development of the system we will continue to look at supplying those modules to new sectors one by one.”
