When air quality projects are on tight schedules, every day matters. For years, however, one of the industry’s most important regulatory tools has become increasingly time-consuming as environmental requirements have evolved. For years, however, one of the industry’s most important regulatory tools has become increasingly time-consuming as environmental requirements have evolved, making it more difficult for project teams to provide timely feedback to clients
Rather than accepting those limitations, Surya Ramaswamy set out to change them.
Based in CEC’s Philadelphia office, Surya is a Senior Project Manager in our Air Quality practice with more than 20 years of experience in air permitting and air dispersion modeling. Throughout his career, he has worked closely with clients to solve complex environmental and regulatory challenges.
His innovative approach to air dispersion modeling earned him CEC’s Innovation Award, recognizing a solution that reduced model runtimes from approximately six weeks to just one week while creating new opportunities for faster analysis, improved collaboration, and better client service.
Rethinking a Longstanding Process
Air dispersion modeling is a critical part of the air permitting process for new industrial facilities, power plants, and other major projects. Before construction can begin, applicants must demonstrate that emissions meet regulatory requirements using EPA-approved modeling software. Surya has worked with these models for more than 20 years and has watched the process grow increasingly complex.
“Over the last two decades, the models have become much more complex,” he explained. “Instead of evaluating one worst-case scenario, we now have to consider 40 or 50 different operating scenarios.”
As those requirements expanded, so did the amount of computing power required. A comprehensive model run could take approximately six weeks to complete on a desktop computer. The lengthy turnaround created challenges for both project teams and clients. If a model revealed an issue late in the process, valuable time had already been lost before changes could even begin.
“That’s where I started to think,” Surya said, “‘There should be some way to do this modeling much faster.'”
Breaking One Big Task into Smaller Ones
Instead of treating each modeling effort as one enormous computing task, Surya approached the problem differently. His solution automatically divides a large model into many smaller, independent tasks that can run simultaneously using cloud computing. Once those individual calculations are complete, the results are automatically combined into a single regulatory-ready output. The concept sounds somewhat simple, but developing it required months of experimentation, testing, and refinement.
“It’s not a straight shot,” Surya said. “You need to test so many things.”
Building the system meant ensuring every component worked together seamlessly, from generating model inputs to distributing workloads and reassembling the results. The solution also had to ensure the modeling software produced consistent results while running in a completely different computing environment. In total, Surya estimates the effort took about five months of development and testing before it was ready for use.
Delivering Faster Results for Clients
Today, what once required approximately six weeks can now be completed in about one week. That dramatic reduction in processing time gives project teams far greater flexibility throughout the permitting process. Instead of waiting weeks for a single result, engineers can evaluate additional scenarios, respond to client requests more quickly, and identify potential issues much earlier in a project’s lifecycle.
“This is changing the game,” Surya said. “We can turn around projects much more quickly, and we can test so many things that clients want us to evaluate in a short amount of time.”
The benefits extend beyond speed. Faster turnaround allows teams to work more collaboratively with clients and regulators, providing clearer visualizations of modeling results and responding more efficiently to agency comments during the permitting process. According to Surya, regulators have already noticed the difference.
“They were really surprised by the way we did it. The visuals that we created and the way we were able to respond quickly to comments were really appreciated.”
“They were really surprised by the way we did it,” he said. “The visuals that we created and the way we were able to respond quickly to comments were really appreciated.”
Innovation That Creates Lasting Value
Although the system continues to evolve, it has already become a valuable part of CEC’s Air Quality practice. The team has been using the cloud-based workflow on projects for nearly a year, demonstrating how thoughtful innovation can improve both technical performance and the client experience. For Surya, the project wasn’t about replacing the industry’s trusted modeling tools. It was about finding a smarter way to use them. By reimagining a process that had remained largely unchanged for years, he transformed weeks of computing into days, giving project teams more time to solve problems, explore alternatives, and deliver results. That commitment to improving how work gets done is exactly what CEC’s Innovation Award was created to recognize.
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