About NEPA Tools
NEPA Tools comes from the same group that brings you Shipley Group environmental compliance training.
Shipley Group's consultants have over 40 years of experience as specialists and educators in NEPA compliance. Our clients include federal agencies, state agencies, and private organizations.
Our extensive experience with NEPA compliance led us to develop two primary NEPA objectives:
Objective 1: To assist agency employees and their managers to plan, write, and publish NEPA documents as efficiently as possible. This objective is consistent with the goals in CEQ’s Regulations, as issued in 1978. The CEQ’s Implementing Regulations require agencies to write concise and to-the-point documents, focused on significant issues, “rather than amassing needless details.” Efficient documentation skills will save agencies money and time and result in compliant documents.
Objective 2: To ensure all NEPA documents (and supporting files) are as close to 100 percent clear as possible. Clear documents also satisfy the CEQ’s Regulations mandating Federal agencies to write NEPA documents clearly, using plain language and appropriate graphics. Decision-makers, the public, and Federal judges should clearly understand all information presented in a NEPA document.
To meet these objectives, we started asking participants this question at the end of each training, "What is your biggest pain point in the environmental review process?"
This question helped us identify four consistent problems many federal agencies and organizations face and inspired us to launch the NEPA Tools learning platform to address these problems.
Problem 1:
Staying up-to-date on the constantly changing environmental laws is challenging.
Each new administration has shifting priorities. Staying current can take hundreds of hours and pull your staff away from your organizations mission.
Solution:
NEPA Tools provides monthly video updates on the constantly changing environmental requirements. We draw information from CEQ updates, court cases, and the Federal Register to keep you up-to-date.
Problem 2:
Subject matter expertise siloed within environmental programs is an obstacle.
Knowledge held by a group of specialists in a narrow field within your organization has little value in and of itself. Only when that knowledge is synthesized with the rest of the knowledge held within your organization or agency can you truly fulfill your mission.
When organizational knowledge is siloed, mistakes are made, deadlines are doomed, and projects are postponed.
Solution:
NEPA Tools trains your entire organization on the environmental compliance skills needed to fulfill your mission. With distributed knowledge, your organization will understand the timing, schedule, and requirements of the environmental review process.
Problem 3:
Communicating technical information effectively often feels impossible.
Producing clear, effective, and short documents and records for the public is vital in the environmental review process and many people lack the necessary skills to do so effectively.
Solution:
NEPA Tools teaches you tools and techniques to communicate clearly and effectively. Our short on-demand videos will improve your communication efforts with the public and make your job easier.
Problem 4:
Effective collaboration among agencies, organizations and the public is hard.
When collaboration is not done effectively, you create unnecessary opposition and lose the trust of the public.
Solution:
NEPA Tools teaches you how to effectively collaborate among agencies, organizations and the public.
Effective collaboration gains buy-in from all parties, instills trust among those involved, and creates long-term relationships.
NEPA Tools
This ever-expanding library will become a vital resource for building your staff’s skills as they continue in their professional development.
Join us today at NEPA Tools and become an asset in your organization’s environmental compliance process.
