Each NUWCDIVNPT Department has an Environmental Point of Contact (POC) who serves as liaison with the Environmental Division. Susan worked with these POCs to plan and implement a two-day offsite to educate staff and to begin to identify the environmental aspects and impacts associated with NUWCDIVNPT's activities. The Environmental Division paid for the offsite facility and contracted with a trainer to provide a full day introduction to ISO 14001.
The Captain sent an e-mail to each Department Head requesting that they designate both management and line staff to attend the two-day event. Ensuring that both process workers and management had input into the process was important. Thirty-six NUWCDIVNPT staff, representing nine departments, attended the off-site. The cost of their training came from departmental training budgets.
The first day was dedicated to an introduction and to an overview of ISO 14001, provided by the contracted trainer. On day two, NUWCDIVNPT staff divided into working groups, led by the contracted trainer, and participated in a series of exercises to identify their major products, activities and services. Based on this list, each group then assigned inputs and outputs to their activities and determined which might impact the environment. This provided the initial list of environmental aspects for each department. Based on the list of environmental aspects, each group then identified the environmental impacts of its products, activities and services. Within a day, this concentrated group effort produced the basic framework for NUWCDIVNPT's EMS implementation.
Following the offsite, each department formed an EMS implementation team. The EMS team's first task was to review the aspects and impacts analysis for completeness and accuracy. Their second task was to rate the significance of the department's environmental impacts according to guidelines taken from the Navy Shore Installation P2 Planning Guide (OPNAV P45 120-10-94). Click on the hyperlink for an example of a spreadsheet for Instructions for Identification of Significant Environmental Aspects (Form EMS-14001-431-F010, REV. 3, 6/6/02). Those organizations with unique impacts, such as underwater acoustics' energy transmission impacts on marine life, sought expert advice.
At this point, NUWCDIVNPT's EMS hit a roadblock. Some departments failed to cooperate in moving the process forward. Without the full significance ranking from each Department, Susan could not proceed to goal setting. The Captain agreed to EMS training for the Environmental Steering Committee. This training ensured that Department Heads understood the value of the EMS and the need for them to commit human resources to the implementation process. Today, each NUWCDIVNPT Department has an EMS implementation plan.
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