A Case Study in Distributed Multi-Tiered Enterprise Environmental Compliance Assessment in the Air Force

摘要

Assuring compliance with local, state, federal, and even foreign environmental regulations across a dispersed enterprise such as the Air Force is a daunting endeavor for enterprise level environmental managers. Environmental managers are unable to visit all field locations to assess compliance and resolve related issues as often as they would like due to resource constraints. Additionally, environmental managers at all tiers of the enterprise have historically struggled with ready access to environmental data in standardized electronic formats that can be easily used to support trend analysis, cost of compliance assessments, risk management, and to meet reporting requirements such as the Defense Environmental Programs Annual Report to Congress (DEPARC). The Air Force Civil Engineer Center (AFCEC) has been working to address information management related challenges. A key aspect of their strategy includes the implementation and institutionalization of modern information management solutions such as the Air Force's Air Program Information Management System (APIMS). Although its name reflects its original purpose for which it was intended when conceptualized and initially developed 20 years ago. APIMS has evolved to support many of the information management related requirements of all environmental compliance media areas. APIMS is a web-based information system managed by the Air Force. It is hosted at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and is readily accessible by all branches of the armed services. The system's user base currently consists of over 2.000 regular users and 200,000 transient users at over 200 Air Force, Army and Marine installations worldwide. APIMS was designed to provide all tiers of the enterprise, from the shop level to headquarters level, the tools required to satisfy recordkeeping and reporting requirements. Some of the major capabilities APIMS provides include: generation of air emissions inventories: compliance assessment management; refrigerant compliance management: water quality; environmental sampling; storage tanks; and Clean Air Act section 118(d) vehicle inspection and maintenance compliance. Although this paper focuses on how APIMS is being used to support environmental compliance, it should be noted that APIMS is a companion system to the Defense Occupational & Environmental Health Readiness System (DOEHRS) and the Enterprise Environmental Safety & Occupational Health Management Information System (EESOH-MIS). These three systems, through similar process-centric data structures and interfaces provide a powerful and comprehensive EH&S information management solution. Key to the effectiveness of the APIMS solution is how AFCEC is implementing it to better integrate compliance monitoring into the everyday duties of shop personnel, helping to prevent compliance from becoming an afterthought. One such effort currently underway is the use of APIMS by shop floor personnel to perform periodic environmental compliance assessments as prescribed by their regulatory permits and/or internal procedures. Objectives of this new approach include reducing risk of non-compliance, replacing outdated paper forms and filing cabinets, driving efficiencies in the compliance assessment process, and largely automating environmental compliance reporting; while providing enterprise compliance managers with better visibility to the environmental compliance posture across the enterprise. Similar Initiatives are currently underway in other environmental media areas such as with storage tanks, boilers, and water quality systems. The common goal in these endeavors is to drive compliance monitoring down to the shop floor, facilitating individuals who are intimately familiar with and have ready access to the processes and equipment to become the primary assessors of compliance. APIMS then provides instant visibility of compliance status and associated nsk to enterprise decision makers so that limited resources can be selectively applied where most needed.