It’s no secret that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) dam safety regulatory process can be confusing and overwhelming. Keeping track of all the paperwork and timeframes of various submittals needed for a construction project, annual, or Part 12D inspection action items or overall coordination of your dam safety program is no easy task. It can sometimes seem as if the process is purposely obtuse. A well-informed dam safety engineer can go a long way toward explaining and guiding the process from start to finish.
Here are 5 things a dam safety engineer can help with:
- Getting approvals for what you need to build. Specifically, approvals for construction and drilling. Owners need to maintain their infrastructure, and sometimes construct new project features, but it’s not always easy to know what FERC will require to approve the project.
- Timelines. Can’t remember what is expected with each review phase? No problem! A dam safety engineer can help you in the planning phases, so you have a good estimate of the FERC review timeline going into your project. They can also help you keep track of the timelines during the project execution phase—so your project can stay on track.
- Construction-ready paperwork. Enough said. Who doesn’t love completing lots of paperwork, only to find out something else was needed? Avoid this by leveraging someone who can guide the process or complete the paperwork for you from cradle-to-grave.
- Owner’s Dam Safety Program, Emergency Action Plan & Dam Safety Monitoring Plans. Whether you need help reviewing, revamping or rewriting your crucial documentation, a competent dam safety engineer has you covered. We can even create a comprehensive, tailor-fit seminar to provide dam safety training to your management, staff, or emergency responders.
- Security & Public Safety Plans. Need to audit your plan, submit your annual paperwork or check that it is functioning effectively? A dam safety engineer will have you covered.
As dam safety engineers, it’s part of our job to demystify FERC, and act as a guide for owners/operators through the morass that is the FERC regulatory process. However, simply guiding is not always enough. We also strive to illuminate what is happening through each step, so the process doesn’t seem like a black box. In this way, we hope to empower dam owners/operators with knowledge of the process they can use moving forward.
