Sustainability & Risk / Waste / Waste - Background Data
Defining Units for the Waste Application
The Waste application requires you to define the units in which you will be tracking waste, as well as the units in which you will be reporting on waste.
Defining Units
Depending on the types of waste that you are managing, you will want to measure it and track it in the appropriate units. For example, you may want to track wastewater in gallons, whereas you may want to track biomedical waste in cubic meters.
You can enter data using any units that you choose; often, it is convenient to record the waste using the same unit used by the equipment or machinery that outputs the waste. For example, if your pumping system outputs in gallons, you may want to enter your output using gallons.
If you find that your reports display "0.0000" when you know that the true value is a non-zero quantity, you may need to modify your units to enable reports to reflect smaller quantities. For example, if your organization regularly tracks waste in very small quantities, you might prefer to set the reporting units to kilograms or pounds instead of tons.
The Common Units for the Waste Application
Although you can enter quantities in the unit that best matches your site's operations, the calculations work only with cubic meters and metric tons. Cubic meters and metric tons are the common units for the Waste application. Therefore, if you enter your data in terms of another unit, when defining the unit, you must enter the conversion factor by which to multiply it in order for the system to convert it to cubic meters (if the measurement type is Volume-Gas or Volume-Liquid), or metric tons (if the measurement type is Mass.)
Note: New project databases that you create at your site will automatically contain Unit records defining typically used units, as these records are part of the Archibus schema database. Thus, you need to create Unit records only for units that are not already listed in the Units table.
Note: Because Units are stored as records in the database and not as an enumeration list, they are not translated as part of the core. To provide Unit values described in other languages, the Business Process Owner can enter values for translated Units as needed. The translated Units you enter are included in the Units list when users are making entries.
Procedure
To define your units, run the Waste - Background Data/Define Units task. First, choose the Unit Type (liquid, gas, or mass) from the Unit Types panel. Next, define the properties of your units.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Units | Enter the unit, such as cubic inches or gallons. |
| Conversion Factor |
The Waste application's calculations work with cubic meters and metric tons. If your unit is not cubic meters or cubic tons, enter the value by which to multiply the quantity in this unit in order to convert it to:
Cubic meters and metric tons will have 1.00 for this field, as they do not require conversion. |
| Description |
Enter a description for this unit. |
|
Default? |
As you work with the Waste application, you will encounter tasks in which you need to choose a unit for the data you are entering. If you would like this unit to be the default unit for these tasks (that is, it will appear first in the drop-down list and be automatically selected), set this option to Yes. If you select No, the program will not list this unit first, but you can still select it from the Units list. Set this option to Yes for only one of the defined units for this unit type; that is to say, only one unit can be the default unit for a unit type. |
Additionally, so that your reports can summarize data of varying units in one overall calculation, you need to specify a reporting unit, as described below.
Define Reporting Units
For summary reports that provide total amounts of waste, the system presents data (for gas or liquid or mass) in one unit. Because there are many possible units for different use cases, you must specify for gas, liquid, and mass which unit you want the reports to use by setting the Use in Reports? option. Thus, for each Report Unit Type (mass, liquid, gas), set Show in Reports? to Yes for one of your Reporting Unit records.
Note: As with Unit records above, a default set of Reporting Unit records ships with the Archibus schema database and will be available in new project databases created for your site. Therefore, if your desired Reporting Unit record already exists, you will just need to set Show in Reports? to Yes for the appropriate record.
Procedure
Run the Waste - Background Data/Define Report Units task.
For each Report Type Unit (liquid, gas, mass), if the database already contains the reporting unit that you require, set its Show in Reports? value to Yes. Otherwise, define a new reporting unit by first choosing the Reporting Unit Type (liquid, gas, or mass), and then defining the properties of your reporting unit:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Report Units |
This is an additional type of unit in the bill_types table. Enter the unit, such as cubic inches. If you need a translated value for this Report Units, enter a translated value here. For example, enter "Galones" for the Reporting Unit to have "Galones" appear in summary reports showing Volume-Liquid. |
| Conversion Factor |
The Waste calculations work with cubic meters and metric tons. If your unit is not cubic meters or cubic tons, enter the value by which to multiply the quantity in this unit in order to convert it to:
Cubic meters and metric tones will have 1.00 for this field, as they do not require conversion. |
| Description | Enter a description for your reporting unit. |
|
Show in Reports? |
If you want all measurements of this Report Unit Type (either gas, liquid, or mass), to use this unit in report summaries, set this value to Yes. For each Report Unit Type (gas, liquid, or mass), only one of the output units can have this value set to Yes. |
Example of Setting Units and Report Units
Suppose an equipment item outputs waste as cubic inches, so you want to record your waste using cubic inches. Additionally, your chosen reporting method for all liquid volumes is cubic feet. You would set up your units as follows:
- With the Define Units task, enter cubic inches as the new unit and enter the conversion factor for converting cubic inches to liquid cubic meters. Cubic meters is the unit to which the application converts all measurements with the unit type Volume- Gas or Volume-Liquid.
- With the Define Report Units task, a cubic feet record already exists with the appropriate conversion information. Set this record's Use in Reports? option to Yes.
The system will convert the cubic inches to cubic meters, and sum up all the other volumes as cubic meters. When it presents reports, it will present all liquid volume measurements in terms of cubic feet .
Note: The system does not convert values on the way into the database, but uses a combination of input unit conversion factor and desired output conversion factor.