Labor Cost Reduction Via Enterprise Groundwater Data Management

Delta Consultants has developed a comprehensive Technical Data Management process (Delta TDM) leading to a drop in labor required to support environmental sampling and remediation events. In one portfolio of 19 facilities, this translated to a 56% reduction in staff hours associated with portfolio administration tasks on a monthly basis at the end of a 1 year period, and an associated reduction in labor costs. Delta TDM is a comprehensive workflow process, composed of the following elements: Recurrent Activity Planning, Sample Planning, electronic transfer of nearly all information (bottle orders, work specification, chain of custody, field results, lab results, exception reports, etc.), formalized and consistent naming conventions and processes, EQuIS EDP (Electronic Data Processor) with a custom data format, automated data upload to a central EQuIS database, QA on all data, and an automated feedback process.  Automating much of the process improves the quality of the process and management of events resulting in the aforementioned reduction of staff hours and labor costs; additionally, it results in greater accessibility for data evaluation and manipulation.  Seven active portfolios ranging in size from 1 to 173 active facilities currently use Delta TDM, with demonstrated support for portfolios of over 450 facilities.  Cost savings associated with the process are triggering a roll-out of Delta TDM across all of Delta Consultants. The ‘Activity Tracker’ and ‘Sample Planning’ components play the largest roles in supporting large portfolios, while the reduction in errors associated with electronic data transfer provide the greatest labor reductions in smaller portfolios.