BACKGROUND

State departments of transportation (DOTs) and other transportation agencies routinely establish commitments to complete specific environmental impact avoidance or mitigation as part of project planning and design under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and related federal and state laws and regulations. Federal agencies and state DOTs are responsible for ensuring these legally binding commitments are implemented throughout the life of a project and ultimately fulfilled. Proper implementation of environmental commitments affects all phases of project delivery including planning, design, construction, operations, and maintenance.

Tracking environmental commitments is essential to ensuring that specific commitments are implemented. DOTs face challenges in the successful documentation and verification of such commitments. Common challenges include inconsistencies with terminology and language and failure to ensure that commitments are incorporated into design, construction, operations, and maintenance. Lost and unfulfilled commitments can lead to legal issues, violations and fines from regulatory agencies, loss of public trust, and ultimately poor environmental outcomes.

Research is needed to provide a comprehensive approach to documenting and verifying environmental commitments. 

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this research is to produce a documentation and verification process workflow with tools to facilitate the definition, implementation, monitoring, verification, and maintenance of environmental commitments established through the life of a project. 

The components of the workflow and tools shall include the following:

• The parameters and purpose of an environmental commitment process and tracking systems, including appropriate terminology, legal and regulatory context, and other factors driving the need for effective tracking of environmental commitments;
• A project timeline for establishing, implementing, and tracking environmental commitments over the full life cycle of a project, from planning to post-implementation operations and maintenance; 
• Performance criteria of an effective system for mitigating/tracking systems and workflows;
• A compendium of established and recommended environmental commitment methods and practices for the identification, documentation, and tracking of environmental commitments for a project throughout the project lifecycle. It should be flexible to accommodate the unique needs of state DOTs and should accommodate commitments agreed to inside and outside of the NEPA regulatory structure;
• Consultation methods, documentation, and record keeping;
• Methods for managing, extracting, querying, and reporting project level environmental commitments;
• Methods for managing change in environmental mitigation commitments, such as those caused by the late discovery of environmental impacts or mitigation technologies or techniques;   
• Methods (and sample language, as appropriate) for establishing formal roles and responsibilities with external parties for compliance with commitments; and
• Methods for risk management, particularly through contract language and agency agreements that ensure long-term management and compliance with environmental commitments.

The final deliverables will include:

• An environmental commitments documentation and process workflow;
• Tools that will facilitate the development, execution, and validation of environmental commitments established for a project through its entire lifecycle;
• Presentation materials that explain the purpose and value of project products, and recommendations and lessons learned from the research to agency staff and leadership;
• An implementation plan focused on the practitioner that markets and encourages adoption of the products of this research, including potential pilot applications to demonstrate implementation; and 
• A conduct of research report that describes and documents the full research project.

STATUS: Contract start date is October 1, 2024.