We have spoken over the last few months about the importance of air quality in our cities, and how local authorities are taking an increasing interest in this space. With over £5 billion spent annually by local authorities on Environmental Services, its a big potential market for established and new companies to invest in.

And there are a lot of companies who are interested in providing air quality services. So whenever we go to conferences or to events, the question inevitably arises – why EMSOL?

We can think of all sorts of great reasons to work with EMSOL – a great company with a great product being the most obvious. But translating that into value for the customer is another thing entirely. So the reasons why EMSOL are different is 3-fold:

• Decision-making support, not a decision maker. Our service is about empowering those who need to make the decisions to ensure air quality compliance to have the data at their fingertips to make those decisions. And to empower them to do it in their own way. Site managers and fleet operators know their fleet and workforce the best and what works in encouraging them to maintain compliance. What we do is give them the intelligence – both over time and in real time – to make those decisions.
• Direct relationship with emissions targets and standards. At its core it’s simple. If vehicles or operations exceed legal emissions levels, we let you know about it. But that is easy. What fleet operators also need is evidence of compliance with technical standards and legal limits, and where they have been exceeded what action has been taken to ensure compliance. Our platform provides that evidence base, available on demand.
• A trust builder. This is probably the most important aspect of our platform. This is not about building trust between ourselves and industry – our senior leadership team and their experience can already do this. This is about ensuring local authorities are confident that fleet operators are taking demonstrable action to tackle air pollution. That fleet operators are confident that local authorities are being fair and reasonable in their assessments of their operations. And that local communities can be confident that both parties are taking action to tackle air pollution.

That trust takes a long time to build, and is easily lost. But it is essential to ensure that the air quality issue is tackled. If EMSOL can do its bit to do that, what we are doing really will add value.