Tip 2: Minding Your Ps and Ts (Pages and Time)

Key Points

• Begin the EIS process by setting your page and project schedule goals.
• Keep the team informed and hold team members accountable.
• Determine page budgets for the entire document and each section of the document, and adhere to them.
• Complete as many tasks as possible before the NOI is released.

Create schedule and task “health monitoring” checklists. Monitor progress frequently and regularly. Make course corrections weekly or biweekly (Tip #3).

Minding Your Ps (Pages)

• Determine an initial page budget for each section to guide planning (see sample attached). Identify what should stay in, what can become reference materials, and what can be eliminated.
• If utilizing a contractor to prepare a NEPA document, incorporate page and schedule requirements into the contract.
• Develop a detailed, annotated page budget, with pages allocated by subsection. Factor in tables, figures, maps, and other supporting material.
• Establish clear roles, process, and expectations for monitoring document size and content and making course corrections.
• Focus the purpose and need statement to the specific project and bureau’s authorities and correspondingly the range of reasonable alternatives (see Tip #6).
• Scope out (screen out) content that is not related to significant impacts or essential for an informed decision (see Tip #7). Include the type of analysis and level of detail expected on significant issues.
• Design document structure to minimize redundancies and extraneous material.
• Minimize explanations, especially where expected impacts are negligible and minor.
• Develop a plan to combat the tendency to think that more is better.
• Incorporate by reference, and do not repeat the material being incorporated.
• Use graphics (maps, figures, tables) in place of text where appropriate (see Tip #8).
• Put detailed information, such as unique analysis methodologies, in an appendix or on-line reference document (see Tip #10).
• Empower your writers and editors to adhere to page limits. Good writers and technical editors can be worth their weight in gold.

Minding Your Ts (Time)

• Establish clear roles, processes, and expectations for monitoring the schedule and making schedule changes and course corrections.
• For an EIS, break the schedule into two parts: 1) pre-NOI activities; and 2) the one-year schedule to prepare a Final EIS.
• Optimize the one-year period after the NOI is released by identifying and conducting activities that could occur before NOI publication (see sample list attached).
• When developing the EIS project schedule, include
  • critical action dates
  • reviews, revisions, and approvals
  • printing and distributing the document
  • filing the document with USEPA
  • and timelines for consultations, if applicable
• Prepare and maintain a series of project schedules targeted to each of the principal EIS audiences: project management team, writing team, internal bureau and attorney review team, first line SES, and DOI Review Team.
• Ensure interim schedule adjustments are agreed upon by key staff and quickly provided to the team and to management.

Sample Checklist of Pre‐NOI Activities

Sample Page Budget for Initial Planning​