The purpose of the Air & Waste Management Association is to enhance environmental knowledge and provide quality information on which to base environmental decisions. The Nevada chapter of A&WMA covered Title V compliance tracking and reporting in its May meeting. Brad Waldron, Corporate Manager, Environmental Affairs, Caesars Entertainment discussed the details of their custom electronic system for the purpose of managing air quality compliance programs.

As a company with multiple properties covered by their permit in Las Vegas alone, the key management concerns were:

• Each property ultimately responsible for their own compliance; 
• Under a consolidated permit, one property failing to meet compliance requirements could drag down the ship; 
• Reports issued for multiple locations under one permit, so managed by corporate department which results in a data intensive collection process; 
• Needed to manage compliance framework and data handling consistently and efficiently across the enterprise; and 
• As need arises enterprise-wide, how can one ensure consistency?

One of the questions that we frequently face in our discussions with utility companies is how can a utility get the maximum value from data it gets from its meters, from their DSM programs, from the T&D grid, etc? The so-called Big Data Companies [you know who you are] come up with complex answers supported by slick Powerpoint slides and correspondingly eye-popping budgets. Our approach always has been that the answer is much simpler if you first take time to understand what you want to achieve, take steps to collect targeted data and perform the analytics to derive the insights your managers can then put to use right away.

It was a pleasant surprise to come across an article today by the big tax audit and advisory firm KPMG in which their energy experts said that by following a simple 3-step process, any utility can easily get value out of their data. Their recommendation was:

 1. Identify available data: This process focuses on assessing current systems; understanding data capabilities; and identifying new data that's available but either isn't being captured or is captured but not used.

 2. Assess potential value: This step includes comparing potential data against planned usage and searching for additional opportunities outside the planned solution set and current requirements.

3. Develop the transformation: The final step will map the identified opportunities to its enterprise model; identify relevant stakeholders and what the new data elements will mean to them; and design transformational objectives.

Being modest, i am doing my best not to say, 'We told you so.'