The following is an article from Environmental Business Journal (EBJ). EBJ Interviewed ESA’s Mike Leech and Keith Steele about artificial intelligence and the breakthrough technologies that are transforming the way we do environmental work.
Click here to read a PDF version of the below interview.
Environmental Business Journal, Volume 38 Numbers 11/12: Q4 2025
ESA Develops Multiple Platforms for Data Collection and Data Management
ESA provides integrated environmental planning, permitting, design, natural resource management, and technology services to a balanced portfolio of public and private sector clients—from utilities and transportation agencies to renewable energy developers and city governments. As a tech-enabled consultancy, ESA is leveraging emerging technologies— including AI-assisted analytics, GPT services, data visualization, and digital field tools—to enhance environmental decision-making, streamline permitting, and deliver more effective and efficient data-driven solutions.
ESA has launched Beacon, a new software platform designed to modernize how environmental compliance is managed throughout a project’s lifecycle. The tool centralizes data, streamlines workflows, and provides real-time insights, enabling clients and project teams to make proactive, informed decisions. The platform replaces outdated tools like spreadsheets by offering a secure, scalable solution capable of simplifying environmental compliance management. Beacon includes advanced features such as a Compliance Tracker, Monitoring Dashboard, Geospatial Library, and Automated Reporting, allowing users to track mitigation measures, deadlines, and documentation in one centralized, auditable system.
Mike Leech, Technology Services Practice Leader. Mr. Leech has more than 20 years of experience in technical project management, database development, and training for tribal governments, universities, and private consulting firms. He leads ESA’s integration of geospatial and technology solutions to support environmental planning and design. Mike’s expertise in emerging technologies helps clients nationwide gain real-time analytics, data visualization, and information management tools that enhance decision making and project outcomes.
Keith Steele, Firmwide Technology Director. Mr. Steele brings more than 30 years of experience in a wide variety of technology implementations, specializing in architecture, software engineering, database administration, networking, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructures. As CTO and co founder of Sitka Technology Group (acquired by ESA in 2022) Keith leads ESA’s strategic technology vision and roadmap, R&D, and innovation efforts, aligning ESA’s technology strategy and implementation efforts with emerging market opportunities and industry trends. He also oversees the Managed Services group and ESA’s federally mandated Information Security program.
EBJ: How has the integration of AI changed the way ESA approaches data collection in the field?
ESA: We’ve recently adopted AI-powered tools such as Fulcrum’s Audio FastFill feature, which allows field staff to dictate observations verbally and have those recordings automatically transcribed and translated into completed digital field forms. This innovation significantly reduces manual data entry effort, increases accuracy, and enables our teams to focus more on environmental observations and analysis rather than administrative tasks. In parallel, we are building an enterprise cloud data intelligence infrastructure based on the Databricks platform, which will serve as a unified streaming platform for all field-collected data. This powerful and scalable data lake environment enables more advanced data analytics, machine learning, and Generative AI applications to be developed, deployed, and managed under a single governance structure and infrastructure stack.
EBJ: What measurable improvements have you experienced in project delivery time, cost efficiency, or accuracy of data collected and reported as a result of AI integration? Could you share some examples?
ESA: While we have not yet quantified measurable improvements in terms of cost savings yet, anecdotal feedback from our data collection specialists supports the conclusion that integration of AI tools is helping to streamline ESA’s data collection and reporting workflows. Features like AI-powered voice-to-text data entry have significantly reduced the time required for field staff to complete and submit forms, improving overall project delivery efficiency. These tools also enhance consistency and reduce transcription errors, allowing teams to focus on analysis and interpretation rather than manual data entry. However, we maintain a strong “human-in-the-loop” methodology; each AI-assisted dataset undergoes quality control (QC) review by our environmental specialists to ensure accuracy and integrity before reporting or analysis workloads begin.
EBJ: How do you evaluate which new tools and technologies to integrate? Is there a formal innovation funnel or pilot program approach?
ESA: Our innovation program is grounded in the ISO 56000 family of innovation management standards. We use a comprehensive online innovation platform to organize and streamline activities such as scouting and evaluating trends, tracking emerging technologies, facilitating ideation within our firm, and managing our innovation project portfolio. We have also established a governance structure to oversee the program and provide strategic direction. This structure includes executive leadership and senior representatives from our various technical practices areas. For implementation, we employ a range of techniques to validate ideas before broad rollout, depending on the technologies involved and associated risks. When a technology or its implications are not well understood, we typically conduct small R&D efforts and/or develop a proof of concept or minimum viable product to inform decision making and reduce risk in future project phases. Conversely, when the path forward is clear and risk is minimal, we fast-track the initiative as a standard software development project within our Technology Services Practice.
EBJ: How did you train staff across disciplines to engage with AI-powered tools, and what resistance or learning curves have you encountered?
ESA: One of our first experiments with AI was a pilot rollout of Copilot for Microsoft 365 to about 100 employees as part of our “Early Adopter” program. While this was not a model we would want to scale across the entire organization, it provided an opportunity to form small, focused cohorts. Each cohort explored a subset of Copilot’s capabilities, prepared presentations for the larger group, and led discussions about where the tool performed well and where it struggled or showed limitations that warranted attention. We designed this initial rollout to serve as a hands-on analysis by real ESA users performing real ESA tasks—rather than relying on generic training materials that might not reflect our actual work. As mentioned earlier, this is not the approach we plan to scale as we expand access, but it offered valuable early insights into AI’s core capabilities and spurred thinking about how these tools could be applied across ESA. Based on these learnings, we are now developing AI learning pathways tailored to different roles within the organization and will formalize a firmwide AI skill development program as we enter 2026. As an environmental firm, we also recognize concerns about the environmental impact of AI—particularly the fossil fuel energy used to power data centers and the freshwater required for cooling—is an adoption concern. Although this remains an early-stage effort, we are working to integrate AI-related energy use into our existing emissions reporting framework and will explore ways to reduce or mitigate these impacts wherever possible.
EBJ: Do you have an internal digital innovation group? What are they responsible for and how do they oversee transitions? How are insights from the field fed back into the tech development cycle?
ESA: The central role of our innovation program is to engage ESA employees in a structured innovation management process. While process and structure are important, we also provide participants with innovation-specific training and ongoing coaching designed to strengthen our collective ability to innovate. These sessions focus on developing skills such as unorthodox questioning, challenging the status quo, risk-taking, personal accountability, resilience, and collaboration, among others. As these capabilities mature, we direct cohorts of trained employees toward addressing specific challenges that ESA faces—whether or not those challenges involve digital technologies. Our digital innovation group, though small, continues to grow in both size and strategic importance. This team is responsible for shaping ideas, supporting business case development, defining requirements, conducting R&D, building and deploying applications, procuring off-the-shelf solutions, and maintaining those systems in collaboration with our IT department and Technology Services Practice. In accordance with our cybersecurity policy, every supported application must have a designated business owner and subject matter expert whose role is to liaise with the technical team. These individuals help make business decisions, guide the application’s vision and direction, and gather user feedback to inform backlog prioritization and integration into future development or support sprints.
EBJ: Beacon seems to be a major leap for ESA. What gaps in environmental compliance workflows were you hoping to address with it, and how is it fundamentally different from other compliance management systems?
ESA: Beacon was developed to close critical gaps in how environmental compliance is managed—particularly the reliance on spreadsheets, scattered documentation, and disconnected workflows that make it difficult to track commitments, monitor field activities, and ensure timely reporting. Traditional compliance management systems often treat environmental requirements as static checklists. Beacon, by contrast, was designed from the ground up to reflect the dynamic, project-based nature of environmental work. It provides a structured, centralized Commitment Library that integrates with spatial data, links related requirements, and connects each compliance action to specific project locations and timelines. What makes Beacon fundamentally different is its combination of open-source flexibility, GIS integration, and real-time monitoring dashboards. It allows teams to document, plan, track, and report compliance across the full lifecycle of a project—automating workflows, syncing field data from mobile tools like Fulcrum, and generating reports that keep project managers and regulators aligned. The result is a transparent, auditable system of record that improves efficiency, reduces risk, and gives clients a single platform to manage all environmental commitments from planning through construction and operations.
EBJ: Aside from Beacon and AI, what other breakthrough technologies have you adopted that are having a significant impact on ESA’s ability to deliver environmental services?
ESA: Beyond Beacon and AI, one of ESA’s most transformative technological innovations is our Groundwater Accounting Platform—a data-driven system developed in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, Olsson, and the California Water Data Consortium. The Platform ingests data from diverse sources (e.g., satellites, flow meters, sensor networks) to provide near-real-time water budgets, usage tracking at the parcel level, and integrated modeling of hydrologic scenarios. It also supports water trading modules, allocation planning, and “what-if” scenario exploration via the Groundwater Evaluation Toolbox (GET), enabling agencies and growers to make more adaptive, data-informed groundwater decisions. Because it is open source, the Platform invites customization and collaborative enhancements across jurisdictions. Deploying this Platform has materially expanded ESA’s ability to deliver environmental services with deeper insight. In particular, it allows us to transition from periodic reporting into continuous monitoring and dynamic management. Local groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) can now use our platform as their backbone for compliance, adaptive management, and stakeholder engagement—with tools to monitor, model, and trade allocations in a transparent framework. Looking ahead, as we integrate this Platform with our AI and analytics infrastructure, we expect to layer predictive tools and decision-support modules directly on top of the accounting backbone to drive even faster, smarter service delivery.
