Compliance Services and Information Management

Compliance Services

We offer the following compliance services in some locations. Please contact us for details.

Environmental, health, and safety compliance auditing
Process Hazard Analysis
Process Safety Management (PSM) and Risk Management Plan (RMP) compliance programs
Emergency Response planning and training
Oil Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasures Plans
Oil and chemical storage tank permitting
Process and storage air emissions estimating and reporting
Solid and hazardous waste reduction, reuse, recycling and disposal planning and auditing

Information Management

Here is our pledge: any software we put in place or any modifications we make will follow well-known standards so that any future employee or consultant can understand and modify the software with training that is also relevant to your organization's core database and graphical software.

FACT+FANCY teammates have worked in both industry and government. We understand the need for flexibility and control over information management software. Our experience is with maintenance and environmental, health, and safety (EHS) scheduling, record keeping, and reporting. Using database software to automate these tasks helps assure compliance and reduce costs. We prefer to build-out existing database and graphical software to cover these areas, rather than using stand-alone maintenance- or EHS-specific software, which tend to get orphaned due to lack of support and updating. Database software for core activities, such as accounting and supply-chain management, has the basic functionalities needed for maintenance and EHS scheduling, record keeping, and reporting. Needed graphical representation can be provided by the any of the major geographic information system (GIS) or computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM) software, which your staff may already be using.

We team with authorized consultants for core-business and design/manufacturing software to provide these build-outs to cover maintenance and EHS. If you do not like your existing software or do not have any, we can help you select vendors or build you a new information management system in collaboration with our information technology partners. We prefer to phase implementation, starting with a small but high-priority task, to work out bugs on something small that will hold client staff attention, then moving down your priority list in phases.

To reduce costs and provide you with control and flexibility, we prefer to separate the tasks below. This generally corresponds to a 3-tiered architecture -- data server, application server, and client, with the middle tier further sub-dividable if needed.

Data Storage. Often this involves working with legacy systems. As much as possible, we use data-storage formats that allow ready transfer between data-storage software and hardware. In general, this means using simple data types and avoiding non-essential database software built-in tools, which often vary between vendors.
Data Manipulation. We will help you design a library of queries (and corresponding standardized database table formats) to input data, make changes, do calculations, and generate needed reports. Jointly, we will define organization rules that our teammates or your employees can follow to build complex queries and reports from simple ones. This facilitates adoption of software to new equipment or plants. As much as possible, we do all needed data manipulation using Structured Query Language (SQL) and a server-side scripting language compatible with all major database software and computer operating systems. Unless you request otherwise, we will follow our view of typical patterns for queries and their organization to shorten the learning curve for new users.
User Interfaces. Anyone with a web browser and access to your servers should be able to view, listen to, or print reports as well as input or change data according to the authorizations you specify. Anyone who can design a web-database application should be able to modify your user interfaces as suits you. There is no need to go back to a unique vendor anytime you want to change an input or report screen. We can help you implement this. We prefer to create user interfaces that run on web browsers (web-database applications). This allows easier modification of the user interface because there are usually several people in any organization that understand or can readily learn how to modify our simple web-database applications, and if not, many consultants can do so. Web-database applications can be upgraded by loading the new software on application servers, rather than updating the software on everyone's personal computer. We prefer to send only images and xhtml-formatted text to the web-browsers, so that documents look the same on the screen and when printed -- and so that the user can view or listen to these files as suits them.

As much as possible, we want you to be able to modify data storage, data manipulation, and user interfaces independently from each other, as suits your needs and cost reduction efforts. We want you and your staff to be able to set policies for information management, including constraining excessive customization by staff, rather than being constrained by past software choices.