Environmental, health and safety consulting and training provider Green Gain Consulting aims to launch its DigiLex SA Energy Suite pilot project by the end of this month.

It will be integrated with the business intelligence (BI) platform DigiData BI and clients to maintain energy savings in accordance with legislation such as the carbon tax. The suite will also assist clients in inserting calculations and monitoring energy use to establish their energy savings over time.

The suite also guides clients in line with the ISO 50001 best practice standard for energy management and prepares them for being
legally compliant with pending environmental legislation in South Africa.

On the adoption of the legislation, the DigiLex SA Energy Suite will maintain the legislation and will be updated monthly by means of an update email sent once a month to all subscribers of the suite. The legal register is not site specific like Green Gain’s environmental, health and safety registers, but rather includes all relevant South African and other global legislation that is required to implement a full energy management system.

“The full power of the DigiLex management system comes into play when our other modules are also used and linked to sections of the legal register, such as Risk Manager, Documents Manager, Audit and Checklist Manager,” says Green Gain MD Nicolai Massyn.

He notes that the company has clients in the mining and heavy industrial sector that are interested in using the DigiLex SA Energy
Suite as an energy management offering. He notes that clients appreciate being able to log onto one system where they can manage their environmental, health, safety and quality systems.

“The fact that we have developed . . . DigiData BI, which is fully integrated with DigiLex to collect, order, calculate and report on the multitude of relevant datasets that form the cornerstone of energy efficiency management, makes the offer difficult to refuse as a value proposition,” he explains.

Green Gain notes that clients will benefit from the pilot project, as the company is aware that most organisations are going to need a plat-
form that manages their energy efficiency and carbon footprint. Therefore, compiling a solid database is imperative to identify areas of improvement and show how improvements are achieved.

Massyn points out that the sooner the collection of good datasets starts, the better the quality of decisions will be going forward, and the richer and more informative the reporting will become. “One has to be futureproof to manage a really sustainable business,” he adds.

Massyn says the project is by no means complete and will soon enter the ‘go live’ phase, where Green Gain will work closely with clients to ensure that their respective requirements are addressed and that the DigiLex SA Energy Suite + DigiData BI is a viable solution.

Green Gain Consulting tries to mitigate any challenges faced by role-players involved in the development of the project. The company works with subject matter experts, software developers and certification bodies to ensure that its offering is validated in the real world.

The company firmly believes in listening to client requirements and their experience in working with company products and services. This method was further refined in developing the pilot project and Green Gain will apply this knowledge in other areas of its business and software.

Massyn notes that the DigiLex SA Energy Suite distinguishes itself from competitors, as it offers a unique value proposition – the company controls the entire product, from building its own software and providing the content for the associated legal register to ensuring that data collection for the integrated DigiData BI system is as efficient as possible.

“We can seamlessly execute our vision to have a system for managing compliance, risk, governance and sustainability for multiple disciplines on one platform, with one log-in . . . thereby, we can control our pricing, which provides a very compelling offering,” he explains.

This is Green Gain Consulting’s first venture into energy efficiency management systems, but the discipline of energy management is merely one of many converging trends where International Management Standards are adopted by South African industries and Green Gain has planned and built its DigiLex management system to accommodate these standards.

“We design and build modules that have . . . to deliver on rational workflows, as required by any of the disciplines that can be grouped under the collective of compliance, risk, governance and sustainability management. So, although the discipline is new, the software supporting it was designed to cater for different disciplines,” concludes Massyn.