Gresham Smith staff have been assisting the Columbus Regional Airport Authority (CRAA) with environmental consulting services since 1994, and since 2002, the firm has acted as the CRAA’s on-call environmental consultant at John Glenn Columbus International (CMH). As part of this work, we completed an environmental review of the CRAA’s operations and developed an Environmental Management System (EMS). Gresham Smith’s approach allowed CRAA to implement elements of an EMS in operationally and financially manageable timeframes.

Gresham Smith first conducted a gap analysis to identify the extent to which the CRAA already had the elements of an ISO 14001 EMS in place and to identify elements that needed further development. Our team also reviewed past environmental performance to identify areas of strength and weakness in existing environmental management programs. Based on the results of the gap analysis and environmental performance review, CRAA targeted key EMS elements that needed to be developed or further refined.

As a foundation for the EMS, our project team assisted CRAA in developing and implementing an environmental policy statement. Based on information gathered during the environmental review, Gresham Smith developed a list of environmental aspects and impacts and assisted CRAA with determining criteria for ranking the significance of the aspects. From the list of prioritized environmental aspects, we interviewed airport operations staff and wrote environmental standard operation procedures to serve as operational controls for work activities related to the significant environmental aspects. Gresham Smith continues to provide support through reviews of annual reports on CRAA’s environmental progress.

Client

Columbus Regional Airport Authority

Location

Columbus, Ohio