The importance of tracking, monitoring and reporting on your company’s environmental impact is well known — but the practical steps needed to deliver on reporting requirements remains a challenge.
All organisations are under pressure to demonstrate they are meeting their environmental obligations and making progress towards achieving sustainability goals that protect the planet.
Without evidence to this effect, companies can face penalties from regulators, lose social licence to operate and experience increased pressure from investors, employees and members of the public who expect and demand action.
It’s why reporting on your ESG is not only necessary to manage environmental risks and maintain compliance, but it also helps to improve transparency and accountability for your company’s actions.
We have been helping companies address this challenge with our flagship environmental monitoring software, INX Preserve, which provides companies with game-changing clarity on their environmental performance — but we recognise environmental advisors need additional support in the field to achieve these goals.
INX Preserve’s intuitive software allows you to track, monitor and report on environmental performance and compliance, but as the robustness of your tracking and monitoring is influenced by the quality of data being captured, we’ve launched the INX Preserve mobile application to make data capture even easier.
This tool puts the power of INX Preserve in the hands of people in the field, so they have real-time access to data and can also update monitoring as they go.
We spoke to INX Software Product Manager Bradley Cobb about the launch of the app in October 2023 and what it means for clients.
New mobile app simplifies data capture offline and in remote areas
Environmental advisors play a critical role in collecting and analysing data on sites to assist companies to identify, manage and mitigate environmental risks.
But data collection isn’t always straightforward, particularly given remote mining operations can lack infrastructure, power sources and mobile connectivity, explains Cobb.
“When an environmental advisor goes out and does their sampling, for example on a mine site, they will travel to various parts around the site and off site to do different types of monitoring,” says Cobb.
“So, they might draw water out of a bore, take a sample from a discharge pipe or from a creek, or even just a puddle on the side of a road if they’ve had heavy rainfall, and during that journey they will go in and out of Wi-Fi range and may have no coverage at all.”
In these instances, data collected on site often needs to be manually uploaded to central systems, which can be inefficient.
The new INX Preserve mobile app is changing that, providing a “critical piece of functionality” particularly for companies with operations in Australia.
“The mobile app is an exciting new capability that is making INX Preserve even more functional from a mining or remote site operations perspective as it means our clients can now synchronise data to INX Preserve directly from their phone,” says Cobb.
“It’s extremely simple to set up — users just need to download and open the application and authenticate their log in like they would with the desktop version of the INX Preserve software and the application does the rest.
“As clients go offline, they just continue to use the application to record their sampling data and when they go back online or enter a Wi-Fi enabled area, that data automatically synchronises up to the server ready to be analysed.”
The app complements and integrates with the website application of INX Preserve, which provides capabilities for in-depth data analysis and management of monitoring programs as well as access to dashboards and reporting functions.
Available to download free from the Apple or Google Play stores, the app is optimised for mobile use, making it easier and quicker to input data.
Pre-set environmental data saves time and elevates insights
With INX Preserve, all clients receive out-of-the-box data that is pre-configured within the platform to save time and improve the quality of data insights.
Pre-configured data includes details such as units of measure, industry standards, parameters, acid-base accounting and more.
Unlike other software solutions, this data is available at no extra cost for all clients using INX Preserve, says Cobb.
“We realised that a lot of the standard data and parameters that our clients needed to implement was the same, so rather than requiring clients to spend time setting this up, we simplified the onboarding journey by configuring this data into the system,” he says.
“The industry standards and regulatory data is freely available online from verified sources, but we bring it all together in a central location to save our clients time.”
Clients have access to the full data library including data from different regions such as North America, and information is regularly updated to ensure parameters are up to date.
“While not all clients will need to use the full suite of data, it is made available to them, so they have the option of comparing and benchmarking their performance against other metrics and regions if they need to or want to,” explains Cobb.
“It also helps to create a sense of community as when one client requests an update, such as new data on soil standards, everyone gains access to it.”
Why now is the time to step up your environmental reporting
If you haven’t already got robust environmental monitoring and reporting systems in place, now is the time to act.
In the past 12 months, both the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS) and the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) have stepped up their efforts to ensure mining companies are compliant with environmental regulations.
This increased attention means companies that lack proper processes, have limited data and record keeping, or inconsistent reporting have been put on notice to improve their practices.
There is also increasing investor pressure, particularly in the resources sector, for companies to make progress towards environmental targets.
INX Preserve is designed in conjunction with environmental experts to give your operations transformative data and clarity to protect your company’s reputation and the planet.
Find out how the software and mobile app can help your business today.
