Access environmental intelligence for real-time decisions, anytime, anywhere: Envirosuite

Environmental compliance is a major responsibility for many organizations since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970. Many businesses claim that environmental rules are complex and difficult to understand. And indeed environmental compliance is never straightforward. You’ve got to deal with changing regulations, complex calculations, tight deadlines, and a lot of work. Corporate strategy and actions aimed at improved environmental performance and perception and the increasing use of environmental management software platforms are driven by both legislation and public opinion, with the public’s greater access to information playing a major role.

Driven to revolutionize the environmental space by empowering decision makers, Envirosuite provides real-time and predictive forecast information for operational planning and decision support, resulting in operational efficiency improvements, enhanced environmental performance and better risk management for its customers, which include global organizations in mining, industrial, wastewater treatment and environmental regulatory agencies.

Envirosuite- The Beginning

In 2004, founders Robin Ormerod and Kristin Zeise began a sustained R&D program to give their consultancy, Pacific Air & Environment (PAE), a pathway toward something different from the fee-for-time grind that is familiar to all consultants. An idea brought to the table by Dr. Peter D’Abreton was adopted, and so with the help of Mitch Farquhar, the road towards Envirosuite began with the first code being cut for a real-time air pollution model.

The company spun out of the leading Australian consulting and technology business, Pacific Environment, after several years of product development and commercialization. The Envirosuite vision was to encapsulate the intellectual property and extensive environmental expertise of the company’s environmental engineers and atmospheric scientists in a smarter Software-as-a-Service platform. It goes beyond standard compliance reporting to provide customer organizations with greater environmental and operational intelligence.

Most often Envirosuite is applied to manage potential issues that arise from the coexistence of community and industrial operations, where real-time and forecast information provide a timely or advanced warning that enables problems to be prevented rather responding to an unfolding incident. Delivered as a cloud based solution, it can quickly be deployed and easily supported for customers anywhere in the world, without the disruption and maintenance concerns of expensive on-premise IT installations.

Let’s Start the Ball Rolling with Matt Scholl, VP, and GM, Americas region

Describe your initial product.

Our first product was a real-time air quality dispersion modeling application that enabled industrial clients to assess the area surrounding their site that was currently being influenced by emissions from the operation. We added a high-resolution 3D forecast weather model to the system to support operational planning ahead of time, as well as enabling the customers to keep an eye on the real-time situation.

The solution was further enhanced by integrating data streams from continuous monitoring devices, which provide the operations with measured real-time data that compliments predictive modeling data and can be used to validate it. We combined modeling and monitoring capabilities, delivering real-time and forecast information, resulting in a sophisticated environmental management platform with the checks and balances required to give customers confidence in the system outputs.

Can you briefly discuss your first project? How did it transpire?

Our first project was a real-time modeling and fence-line (site boundary) monitoring solution for a heavy industrial customer. The project was successfully delivered and our initial customer remains a subscriber to the Envirosuite system even to this day. System implementation times were much longer in our early days than they are today; however, this is no longer a concern due to dedicated software development work to resolve the issue.

Our first project provided a visionary approach to meeting new environmental regulatory requirements with automated modeling software. Based on experience with our next wave of customers, we learned of a range of operational and risk management benefits that can be delivered from information that Envirosuite provides.

Did you face any Barriers during the early years?

In the initial years’ we spent a considerable amount of effort to educate the market about the value that real-time and predictive capabilities can offer organizations. In hindsight, we could have introduced a few select customers to the product at an earlier stage as a trial to garner their feedback on our proposed development roadmap and it’s fit for their needs.

What led to the growth and expansion of the company?

The initial concept for Envirosuite was born from the efforts of Company Founder, Robin Ormerod, Principal Researcher, Peter D’Abreton and our original developer, who is now Implementations and Support Lead, Mitch Farquhar. Our product roadmap has been influenced by the needs of our customers, as well as our own innovative ideas for evolving problems or regulatory compliance requirements facing our key market sectors. It is further fostered by a talented cross functional team that brings together scientific research and development skills, market and customer requirements and commercial acumen.

The diligent Man

Matt Scholl, Vice President and General Manager, Americas: Matt has been directly involved with the growth of Envirosuite since day one. At the outset, he engaged with the market to define valuable commercial applications and product market fit for the Envirosuite software and delivered first product sales. Since then Matt has guided Envirosuite through its commercialization phase and is now responsible for leading the expansion of the business into the Americas. Matt is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and draws on approximately 20years’ of consulting and solution selling experience in Australia, the UK, and the US, where he has produced valuable outcomes for leading organizations across industries including mining, oil and gas, chemicals, heavy industry, regulatory agencies and infrastructure.

“Our vision to create a world leading proactive environmental management software has been steadfast and we’ve attracted exceptional talent to our software development and scientific teams throughout the journey.”