The power of data science and machine learning to meet regulatory requirements
At a glance
GHD Digital helped a large agriculture client digitally transform their regulatory reporting so they could meet urgent environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements and disclosures. Using data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, we transformed their data collection methodologies by making their data transparent and auditable, implementing real-time decision-making and delivered an estimated potential expected cost savings, efficiency gains and risk reduction achieved of USD2.4M per year.
The challenge
A large agriculture client deals with many chemicals and, as a result, must meet specific environment, health, and safety (EHS) guidelines set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect people and the environment from significant health risks.
The client was facing several challenges. The most critical challenge was that they were experiencing regulatory compliance gaps. They had new compliance needs due to plant expansions and evolving regulations, and they needed to improve their internal management process to carry out their mandated environmental compliance reporting. They also experienced challenges with reporting on their ESG initiatives and faced workforce constraints.
Failure to meet EHS guidelines would result in astronomical fines.
Our response
These challenges led to unreliable and outdated data collection methodologies, compromised data transparency and auditability, and delayed decision-making. The client faced a critical need for a digitalisation strategy to support their EHS program.
GHD Digital’s advanced analytics team was engaged to lead the digital transformation initiative as part of an Advisory-Engineering-Digital effort to assist the client in becoming regulatory compliant.
Utilising AI and machine learning as the cornerstone of our strategy, we developed a fully customised digital system that mapped the operational limits from the permit — emissions, temperature pressure, frequency, etc. — to the manufacturing plant. We started with our in-house AI engine to deconstruct the regulatory document, and identified the required information that would need to be mapped to the regulations, creating a bridge between the equipment and the regulations.
Using IoT (Internet of Things) devices, we connected the daily operative limits to the equipment, unlocking the data needed to meet regulatory requirements.
The impact
Digitisation of their regulatory reporting enabled them to meet their compliance reporting requirements. Their users now had real-time access to insights at their fingertips, accelerating their progress toward sustainable outcomes.
The creation of the environmental compliance data repository enabled predictive maintenance of their equipment to reduce downtime, improving their business continuity process and increasing their response time.
Our dashboard resulted in:
- Removed compliance gaps
- Improved regulatory requirement reporting
- Enabled preventative/predictive equipment maintenance
- Reduced reporting errors
- Faster response time/risk reduction
- Accelerated decision making process
- More than USD125,000/year in savings.
This is only a small part of the overall solution we delivered. We created different applications with the potential expected cost savings, efficiency gains and risk reduction achieved of approximately USD2.4M per year.
The newly created dashboard also means their operators have more time to focus on critical tasks since they would no longer have to manually carry out all the regulatory checks.
Knowing how to collect, store, manage, analyse, and visualise your operational, customer and environmental data provides valuable lessons from past events, and helps you plan for the future. We help transform data into valuable insights and predictions so that you can make faster, better business decisions.
Contact us today to achieve lasting business value by harnessing your most critical enterprise information.