Keeping the Environment Safe

Advanced Environmental Management, Inc. (AEM) provides a wide range of environmental services for landfill, solid waste, underground storage tank, and environmental property assessments.

The work requires field technicians to visit landfill sites regularly to collect water and/or gas samples from monitoring stations around the landfill. The samples are tested in the field for numerous variables, such as PH level, methane, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, and turbidity. Additional samples are also taken to a laboratory for further analysis.

Other variables are collected as well, such as time and date of the procurement, sampling station identification, site identification, sampling technician identification, weather conditions, and any other relevant notes concerning the sampling site or station conditions. After these results are received, reports are generated for the local regulators to determine the environmental condition of each landfill site.

Using paper and pen method is inefficient and error prone

With approximately 50 landfill facilities currently in AEMs operations, which include semi-annual groundwater monitoring and quarterly methane gas monitoring, field technicians were taking approximately 5,000 samples a year. That means that AEM administrative personnel were required to read and manually enter the field results recorded on 5,000 separate pieces of paper.

The old system of pen and paper was not only inefficient, but also prone to human error, resulting in the need to return and retest areas at times. These simple errors were costing AEM a considerable amount of time and money. The errors also made data assessment for potential environmental threats harder to recognize as quickly as possible. Without timely recognition of such hazards, AEM cannot develop solutions for their clients to mitigate the harm before the conditions worsen.

Streamlining a data collection process for AEMs monitoring services was no longer a luxury, but a necessity. The company looked to technology to improve their efficiency and maintain their level of quality services.

Requirements for the mobile application

AEM looked for a solution that would not only make its field operations virtually paperless, but would also minimize the lag time between field analysis and reporting. We wanted flexibility to add items in the order that we wanted and also be able to create templates that could be easily adapted to other sites, said Darrell Webb, Advanced Environmentals Principal Engineer. It also needed to be able to export the data into a format that we could easily pull into Access databases that we use for reporting.

A technician from Advanced Environmental Management uses the FAST system.

The first step in the transition was to purchase handheld computers suitable for its field technicians. AEM needed a rugged device that would stand up to the turbulent conditions of the landfill sites. After researching a variety of handheld options, AEM purchased the Trimble Recon 400. This ultra rugged handheld computer features a high-performance 400 MHz processor, the Microsoft Windows Mobile version 5.0 Operating System, and CompactFlash (CF) slots to add peripherals such as GPS cards. Additionally, the Recons IP67 rating meant that it was rugged enough to withstand harsh environmental conditions that AEM field technicians may be faced with during a routine field analysis.

After finding the right handheld device, the company budgeted approximately $15,000$30,000 for a custom-built database program to run on the handhelds. Before investing the time and money in a custom application, AEM came across an application that appeared to be the perfect match for its field operations GeoAges Field Adapted Survey Toolkit (FAST) software.