Original Date: 05/08/1995
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

McDonnell Douglas Aerospace (MDA)-St. Louis established the Environmental Assurance division to perform technical and business analyses for selecting the most cost-effective and lowest-risk compliance methods to meet environmental directives projected for the next seven years. The company is reducing its environmental impact by altering operations, some of which involve specific modifications to a single process or piece of manufacturing equipment, while others are broad, sweeping modifications to the daily corporate operations. To ensure that all perspectives are reflected, multidiscipline teams have been formed to perform an analysis on each environmental issue requiring action. These teams are chartered with specific boundaries and tasks assignments within the Environmental Assurance division.

The Directives Review Committee is a standing committee comprised of OSHA and environmental representatives who use a disciplined process to review and prioritize requirements. It reviews and maintains all environmental requirements (federal, state, and local environmental regulations, contractual stipulations, and corporate policies) in a corporate database. It then identifies required improvement initiatives and prioritizes the improvement initiatives.

The Technical Review Committee then performs business case analyses (options evaluations, risk assessments, and cost estimations) on the prioritized initiatives, selects a preferred option, develops an action plan for each initiative, incorporates the action plan into an Environmental Assurance strategic plan and forwards recommendations to the Executive Review Committee for further action.

The Executive Review Committee analyzes the Technical Review Committee recommendations, discusses alternatives, risks, and other topics; provides enlightenment on future corporate direction, initiatives and policies; and approves/disapproves the recommendations. At this point, corporate commitment for funding of the initiative is made.

Through this disciplined approach, MDA-St. Louis has been able to implement the majority of environmental initiative projects at the lowest cost option. By doing so, it has been more proactive in the environmental compliance arena, and can maintain the affordability of its products.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.