Insignia has numerous Project Managers who are well-versed with the specific requirements and regulations that are applicable to energy and utility infrastructure projects. Due to our experience and expertise in this area, our clients often rely on us to manage their environmental efforts, if not entire projects.

Our staff’s engineering and real-world construction experience translates into routing and siting studies that address permitting and constructability factors. Insignia has conducted routing and constraints analyses for numerous projects, including new electric transmission line, substation, solar generation facility, wind farm, natural gas pipeline, and slurry pipeline projects that range in length from only a few miles to several hundred miles.

Insignia has supported our clients by conducting constructability reviews for entire projects, as well as individual project components. Our project managers and seasoned environmental inspectors can help vet projects by reviewing design data and identifying potential flaws that may impede construction, or factors that may cause impacts to any stakeholder in terms of time, cost, or quality. Our staff can also identify alternative sites, routes, and/or construction methods to improve the project design as appropriate.

Having secured thousands of permits for energy and infrastructure projects, Insignia is both knowledgeable and skilled at determining the appropriate environmental permits and authorizations required for utility projects at the federal, state, and local levels, often using resourceful and inventive permitting strategies to ensure timely acquisition of permits while ensuring that each project is appropriately permitted by all relevant agencies.

Insignia has extensive experience with navigating through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process for various utility projects, including electric and natural gas transmission line projects, as well as working with various federal land management agencies (e.g., the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) acting as lead agencies. Our range of experience is comprehensive, carrying projects through all phases of the NEPA process, including the preparation of Plans of Development, project proposals, Environmental Reports, Environmental Assessments (EAs), Environmental Impact Statements (EISs); noticing; facilitation of the scoping process and agency and public review and comment phases; drafting Records of Decision (RODs) and data request responses; and finalization of NEPA documents for issuance of a final decision by the lead agency.

Insignia regularly guides clients through the complex state environmental review and regulatory compliance processes associated with the California Environmental Quality Act. Our staff works closely with clients, agency personnel, and legal advisors to ensure every potential regulatory requirement has been addressed to minimize legal challenges and procedural roadblocks. We have also honed our ability to develop clear and effective mitigation measures to reduce potential project impacts to a less-than-significant level.

Our environmental impact assessments are catered to the needs of our clients and their individual projects, whether it be a brief resource-specific assessment, an in-depth technical study to support a permit application, or a full analysis document to support review of all potential resource area impacts by a state or federal agency.

Insignia’s biologists have diverse knowledge in habitat types and sensitive species throughout the U.S. with specific expertise in the west and a clear understanding of what it takes to successfully implement a project in sensitive areas. Our staff maintains U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Section 10(a)1(A) Recovery Permits for the following federally listed species:

• California red-legged frog
• Coastal California gnatcatcher
• Least Bell’s vireo
• Quino checkerspot butterfly

Insignia has extensive experience in developing and implementing protection, mitigation, and enhancement measures for all resource areas that may be affected by project implementation.

Our plans have received expedited approval from jurisdictional agencies and have been proven in terms of implementation during construction on several projects. Insignia provides biological monitors, cultural resource specialists, and/or environmental monitors to oversee construction projects and ensure they are adhering to the specific resource permit requirements, mitigation measures, and applicable regulations. Our environmental monitors all have several years of experience monitoring construction activities and are well-versed in identifying ways to avoid impacts, as well as working collaboratively with construction crews and supervisors

Insignia is well-versed in delineating the jurisdictional extent of wetlands and non-wetland water features under the following jurisdictions:

• Federal wetlands and waters of the U.S. subject to the regulatory authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA).
• Wetlands and waters of the state subject to the Regional Water Quality Control Board pursuant to Section 401 of the CWA and the Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act.
• Water features (e.g., streams and riparian habitats) under the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s jurisdiction pursuant to California Fish and Game Code Section 1600 et seq.
• California’s coastal wetlands regulated by the California Coastal Commission under Section 30233 of the Coastal Act.

Insignia biologists have delineated thousands of wetlands and non-wetland water features, from dry desert washes to vernal pools to perennial rivers. We have developed electronic data collection applications to efficiently and consistently collect wetland and waters data and automatically generate the required forms to support project permitting.

Insignia supports several of our clients in developing long-range policy and regulatory implementation programs, as well as identifying the optimum approach to and obtaining programmatic permitting to facilitate ongoing operation and maintenance of energy facilities. Our objectives center on optimizing the utility-regulator interaction, standardizing procedures for implementation across utility workstreams and agency offices, and streamlining the agency review and approval process to eliminate wasted effort and increase both transparency and accountability. We regularly engage resource and landholding agencies at the state and federal levels to identify opportunities where efficiencies can be created and to enable synergy between effective resource protection and providing safe, reliable energy.

Insignia has designed and developed numerous compensatory mitigation solutions to address agency-required mitigation for project impacts. We have provided guidance in the selection of mitigation sites and whether using mitigation banks, fee programs, a mitigation and monitoring plan, or a combination of these options will work best for the restoration of specific habitats while ensuring cost-effectiveness. In addition, Insignia regularly communicates with a wide variety of research and land conservation entities to maintain a current list of potential mitigation site and mitigation bank opportunities.

Insignia employees have extensive public outreach and community relations experience through all phases of linear utility development, from initial project routing and development strategy through construction completion and project energization. From project inception, we anticipate issues and create innovative communication strategies to eliminate potential roadblocks. We rely on tested methodologies and the most current technologies to engage stakeholders with diverse perspectives.

Geographic information system (GIS) mapping and analysis play an integral role in identifying, quantifying, and tracking potential impacts to sensitive resources, as well as documenting changes in project design and approach over time. Insignia integrates GIS into every facet of our approach and has established methods and tools for data collection, post-processing, analysis, and visualization that enable rapid turnaround of field-collected information, as well as flexibility when producing maps and associated materials for agency negotiation and permitting. Our GIS specialists also have extensive experience leveraging online platforms to quickly deploy data to our clients, team members, and agency staff for review.

Insignia has implemented multiple technologies to accelerate the post-processing of field data. Our field data collection forms validate records while staff members are in the field, which reduces the potential for typographical errors, ensures values are formatted correctly, and avoids missing data points. In most instances, these forms are developed using our clients’ internal GIS schema standards. As a result, minimal post-processing is required to return formatted data to the project team.

By combining GIS analysis, CAD modeling, and Photoshop, we are able to create photo-realistic visual simulations of projects. Our process identifies key observation points (KOPs) with views of project locations and collects standardized, high-accuracy, georeferenced photos at these locations. Using digital elevation models, GIS reference data, and three-dimensional CAD renderings of project features, we create at-scale visual simulations from the KOP photo locations. These simulations enable innovative visual resource assessment and aesthetic impact analysis of project sites.

Insignia provides general regulatory training, custom-designed programs, and project-specific training to help our clients comply with environmental commitments for projects. We incorporate interactive training techniques so that programs are effective in keeping the audience’s attention. Our training services include the development of training booklets, brochures, pocket references, hard-hat decals, videos, and other materials designed to reinforce information presented during the training sessions. We have experience presenting to individuals, small groups, and groups of more than 100 in settings that range from convention centers to the field. To date, we have trained more than 6,000 individuals.

Our staff has significant experience with the management of successful environmental compliance programs for projects ranging from a few hundred feet to several hundreds of miles long. We are accustomed to providing environmental inspection for projects that involve work on multiple spans of transmission lines or spreads of pipelines simultaneously and require multiple environmental inspectors, biological monitors, and cultural resource monitors, as well as complex reporting systems. Our staff looks for effective ways to cooperatively work with construction teams to minimize the burden of implementation while meeting the letter and spirit of the project requirements in the field. To support our field efforts, we custom design programs, tools, and procedures to maintain compliance throughout construction.

Insignia has provided innovative and cost-effective solutions for managing both storm water and non-storm water for hundreds of miles of electric and natural gas infrastructure. Insignia has Certified Professionals in Erosion and Sediment Control, a Trainer of Record, and Qualified Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP) Developers/Practitioners on staff.

Insignia has assisted clients with all phases of restoration work and has years of experience monitoring and reporting on the success of restoration efforts. In many cases, we have been able to complete and close out monitoring efforts in advance of the established timeframe due to achieving the success criteria prior to the anticipated timeline.

Insignia’s subject matter experts can assist in addressing the federal and state regulatory proceedings to complement our clients’ internal litigation or regulatory teams, specific to pipeline, liquefied natural gas, and electric transmission construction, associated permitting, agency decisions, and compliance matters. Our expertise is built on our years of experience and proven sound technical approach.

Insignia’s Environmental Justice (EJ) services focus on the goal of engaging with people who are traditionally underrepresented in the project development process. Our program addresses the requirements of Executive Order 12898, the Council on Environmental Quality Environmental Justice Guidance Under the National Environmental Policy Act, as well as applicable state EJ guidelines and programs. We identify the potentially affected communities within a study area using ArcGIS webtools mapping and data from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EJSCREEN, and local communities. Insignia then develops outreach and public involvement strategies that are tailored to each project to overcome linguistic, institutional, cultural, economic, historical, and other potential barriers to effective participation.