Automated residential well letter reporting saves 400 hours annually

Our client, a large multinational aerospace and defense company, required automated solutions to increase data reporting efficiencies when sampling domestic wells.

Historically, our client’s site generated waste from their operations, which included chlorinated solvents and metals. These compounds were found in the groundwater and required monitoring and remediation efforts to analyse the chemical threshold of the contamination. And as part of their operations, our client is required to provide each residential well owner in the affected area a transmittal letter detailing the compounds and levels present in the well and supporting laboratory report information.

At the time, our client manually produced a minimum of 200 transmittals per year to indicate the results of domestic well measurements, each requiring manual data entry, which is incredibly time-consuming. The transmittals are also used to provide data and measurement information to help determine the most cost-effective and efficient way to determine concentrations and check whether any samples exceeded the chemical threshold.

In order to create new efficiencies and reduce the amount of human error when reporting the transmittals, our client needed an automated digital solution. Without a new digitised approach, they would see their costs increase over time and with an increase in data reporting errors. Additionally, due to an upcoming sampling event driven by regulatory requirements, our client needed this solution within one month.

Because of our long-standing relationship with the client, hosting a significant amount of their remediation data, GHD Digital was the natural candidate to support their automation needs. Our Digital Intelligence team worked to automate the client’s reporting process using the Automated Report Creator (ARC) software, enabling us to report details of the various chemical measurements and the implications of those measurements quickly and accurately in each of the letters.

Letter reporting is a common and routine process for all contamination assessment and remediation (CAR) work and traditionally takes the client’s consultant approximately two hours to complete. As a result, organisations in this space would greatly benefit from an automation tool that increases their efficiency across their domestic well sampling data collection letter process. Specifically, a solution that analyses the amount of chemicals in the local water system and measures if they exceed the safe limits for each chemical found.

After we set the project up in ARC, we developed a process that selected the appropriate report template based on the analytical results of the well and automatically populated the corresponding laboratory backup. This process took roughly a minute from start to finish, resulting in significant time savings.

Throughout the entire process, we ensured a simple and efficient method to translate the data. Automating this portion of the process added value to the client as it took out additional and redundant manual decision-making, which was vital for adding efficiency to the clients operation.

Before embedding ARC in our client's transmittal letter reporting process, all data collection and analysis were completed manually, often taking two hours to produce a single letter. By introducing new automation capabilities, we streamlined their data workflows, saving them approximately 400 hours of effort annually.

Our solution is easy to use, whether through the solution website or programmatically through an API connection, which allows for a powerful integration between existing software to generate letters on demand. The final product allowed our client to leverage captured data while automatically triggering the creation of letters. Our solution uploaded each letter directly to a SharePoint site, which is immediately ready to be issued by the client to domestic well owners. Our solution made it straightforward for our client to generate the letters and deliver them to the domestic well owners. And, as we implemented our solution with longevity in mind, our client will be able to use it as required, with minimal maintenance.