Storyboarding for NEPA Document

Description

Participants in this course will learn how to prepare and use storyboarding for projected NEPA documents. The goal of a storyboard is to have a "working" version of your document in place before writers begin to generate text.

Objectives

Upon completion of this workshop, participants will be able to do the following:

  • Identify documentation steps when storyboards would assist environmental writers to be more efficient (and more legally compliant).
  • Create one or more sample storyboards that record useful environmental content.
  • Identify strategies for introducing storyboards to writers and reviewers who have never worked with storyboards.
  • Link storyboards with key team collaboration steps (thus complying with NEPA’s mandate in Section 102(2)(C) for an “interdisciplinary approach.”
  • Integrate collaboration steps with potential software options for recording a NEPA team’s planning decisions.

Content

We tailor each workshop to meet the needs of the participants. The basic format of the interactive workshop includes the following components:

  • Surveying personal and team approaches to writing and editing tasks (especially contrasts between traditional writing and editing and interactive, collaborative writing).
  • Developing team strategies for early and ongoing collaboration on Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements.
  • Practicing storyboard strategies using typical EA and EIS content.
  • Identifying strategies for introducing storyboards to colleagues skeptical about their usefulness.
  • Using storyboard techniques as a feedback tool when a reviewer has to help a writer provide useful and consistent draft text for an EA or EIS.
  • Assessing strengths and weaknesses of available software for enabling project contributors to create and review project documents.

Audience

NEPA writers and editors (including both resource specialists and NEPA project leaders).

Agency managers and decision makers, who are responsible for reviewing draft EAs and EISs.

Agency graphics specialists, especially those with GIS skills.

Agency legal counsels, who often need to review early draft NEPA information before a NEPA team wastes days or even weeks documenting unnecessary information.

NEPA writers, editors, and project manager working for NEPA contractors; for efficiency, Shipley consultants recommend that the first contractor deliverable be a collaborative storyboard.

Process

All Shipley workshops are interactive, especially this one. A storyboard is of necessity an interactive, collaborative products, so the primary tasks in this workshop ask participants to create several short storyboard examples.

Materials

Participants receive the following:

  • A Shipley workshop booklet discussing storyboards and their usefulness in the NEPA process.
  • Other Shipley publications on NEPA documentation strategies (for example, How to Write Quality EISs and EAs, Third Editiion).