For companies subject to environmental, health, and safety regulations, compliance reporting is no small task, and solutions to help manage those tasks are limited. The low-end option—using Excel spreadsheets to track compliance tasks—is cumbersome and presents control problems. The high-end solution—third-party environmental management information system (EMIS) software—can come with unnecessary complexity and high annual-licensing costs.
When a midwestern refinery needed help with compliance tracking, Barr provided a solution that hit the sweet spot: a customized task management system using Microsoft Power Automate (Flow), Power BI, and SharePoint. The all-encompassing, cost-effective program tracks numerous types of federal, state, and local compliance data (e.g., Coast Guard, OSHA, EPA, DOT pipeline) for several terminals in two states. Because the refinery was already using Microsoft Power Suite, the integration solution had the benefit of being both economical and familiar to users.
Key features to make work easier include dashboards, exportable reports, and email notifications and reminders for completing tasks. The easy-to-use system provides:
To build the system, Barr first reviewed the refinery's existing process and documentation for task management and then developed an inventory of tasks tracked with Excel workbooks. The next steps were data conversion, building and testing the system, and providing support during implementation. For the refinery, moving from spreadsheets to dashboards was a huge step forward in making compliance tracking simpler, more efficient, and more accurate. The timeline for taking that big step? A mere eight weeks.
