DuPont using hosted software to automate environmental compliance

It can’t be easy keeping track of 5,000 environmental and health permit requirements in a single facility. That’s exactly what DuPont has to do at some of the 38 sites it operates in the United States.

To make it easier, DuPont is using a software-as-a-service platform from Enviance to automate compliance at three sites in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Delaware, and plans to implement the system at all 38 facilities within three years.

There can be thousands of permit requirements at big sites governed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Concentrations of chemicals like sulfuric acid, chlorine, and hydrochloric acid must be kept below certain levels, and DuPont has to monitor emission points such as vents and the pressure levels in tanks.

Enviance System 6.0 keeps track of every permit requirement, comparing them in real time to computer systems that monitor chemical-using facilities.

“Any time you deviate at all from any of them, you have to create a report to the EPA and let them know,” says Aldo Morell, director of safety, health and environment programs at DuPont. Enviance “has software that tracks specific permit requirements in real time. So the plants are automated and the emission points are monitored continuously. We tap in the computer automation and feed out whatever’s pertinent.”

DuPont facilities that don’t use this automated system keep track of violations using paper, or Excel spreadsheets, so it takes longer to uncover violations. Identifying violations immediately obviously minimizes the amount of time a violation occurs, making the EPA less likely to issue fines.

“Typically, what happens is you have a deviation, you report it to the agency, they say ‘investigate what happens and report back to us.’ They typically say ‘thank you very much, don’t let it happen again.’ We’re trying to be more diligent about not letting it happen again,” Morell says.

So far, DuPont has implemented Enviance at the DuPont Chambers Works site in Salem County, N.J., a large facility specializing in organic chemicals; a Philadelphia lab that makes paint; and a titanium manufacturing site in Edgemoor, Del.

Hypothetically, if a plant’s air emissions exceed allowed levels of sulfur dioxide, DuPont will receive an immediate alert today at facilities that use Enviance, Morell says. Employees responsible for correcting the problem are automatically notified by e-mail. Previously, they might not have found out until a few days later, and in the meantime more violations could have occurred.

“It used to be manually done on spreadsheets. This is much much improved,” he says.

DuPont’s internal rules are often more stringent than government regulations, says Tacy Napolillo, the safety, health and environment project leader at DuPont. A typical plant site gets about a dozen warnings a day, and most of those are for violations of DuPont’s rules, rather than the government’s, she says.

DuPont officials would not disclose how much they pay for Enviance’s services. Enviance charges subscriptions based on the number of users, type of use and intensity. Customers pay anywhere from a few thousand dollars per month to $60,000, the vendor says.