Project Description

This partnership of military installations, state and federal regulatory agencies, and regional military environmental offices provides a forum for installations to interact with regulators to discuss program impacts and policy development, to work with peers to share environmental restoration techniques, and provide training on permitting and new technologies. SMITH/Associates provided facilitation, training and meeting management support to this forum.

Description of Services

SMITH/Associates provided program development and facilitation support to environmental restoration partnering teams throughout the United States resulting in the establishment of long-term, mutually beneficial relationships among DoD installations and state and federal regulators. We designed and delivered training, team building and facilitation services and developed individualized materials for each partnering session such as agendas, handouts and presentations. We coordinated meeting space and facility support as needed, created and maintained team web pages and provided meeting minutes, summarizing topics and action items.

SMITH/Associates has provided support services to a number of high-visibility teams dealing with complex issues by assisting them in identifying common goals and developing and achieving long-range clean-up objectives. Our support has been lauded by members of all Department of Defense services, the US EPA, and various State agencies and organizations. We strive to address and understand the unique problems facing each team that we work with in order to ensure a customized, applicable approach towards meeting each team’s needs and objectives.

SMITH/Associates facilitators utilize collaborative decision-making processes to produce positive results for the military through structured partnering sessions. Our facilitated sessions encourage fairness and prevent any one agency or activity from dominating a meeting. By focusing discussion and stressing open communication, lessons learned at one installation can be readily exported and applied at another installation.

SMITH/Associates led meetings consist of building teams, moderating discussions, managing conflict, raising issues, evaluating meeting success, drafting agendas, establishing individual and team goals, developing meeting summaries, identifying lessons learned, and assigning due dates and responsible parties.
Each facilitated team meeting is custom designed to encourage effective collaboration and outcomes.

With the end goals in mind, our facilitators gather information and plan meeting processes that produce desired results. We continuously evaluate meeting effectiveness to ensure all parties are seeing a return on investment. We emphasize flexibility and creativity in our support, so our facilitators are able to quickly change methods and approaches based on group dynamics.