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EGR 518 601 Environmental Compliance for Facilities Engineers

3 Credit Hours

Facilities Engineering is the application of multidisciplinary engineering and management required to effectively manage the technical aspects of a large inventory of physical assets. Practitioners include city engineers, town engineers, university facilities engineering organizations, governmental installations at the federal and state level, port authorities, and manufacturing plants. All of these types of installations and organizations conduct operations, maintenance, repair and construction which are subject to environmental regulation. There are literally thousands of such regulations spread across Federal, State, and local jurisdictions, and the Facilities Engineer must be aware of compliance aspects, and from an engineering perspective, how to comply with the regulations. This may very well be the only aspect of engineering where an individual can be held to not only civil, but criminal liability, for acts committed, or allowed to happen, without willful intent, to be in violation of law and regulation. This course will teach the student the complete gamut of environmental regulation across all the media that can be expected for an owner’s Facilities Engineer, as well as for consultants and engineers who support the owners at their installations. Engineering approaches, equipment and solutions to comply with the various regulations will be presented and explained. Presentations and case studies are included, such that students will demonstrate their communication skills.

Prerequisite

Graduate standing with an undergraduate technical degree. It is preferred, but not required, that the student have completed EGR/CE 590, Introduction to Facilities Engineering Systems.

Course Objectives

This course is NC State University’s initial offering of a trans-disciplinary graduate-level course in environmental regulation and compliance for Facilities Engineers.

Upon completion of this course students will:

  • Have an understanding of the numerous federal statutes that apply to an owner-operation, such as a facilities engineering/public works department, a municipal engineering organization, a university facilities engineering organization, or a federal installation such as found in military and civil agencies.
  • Know how to research state and local environmental laws that implement federal statutes, provide for state-led regulation and enforcement, or are laws enacted in addition to federal statute.
  • Understand the application of these various environmental laws and regulations to the operations, engineering tasks, maintenance, repair and other pertinent activities of the owner’s facilities engineering organization.
  • Be able to apply engineering solutions to assist with compliance across the realm of environmental regulations, and also understand the criticality of operating and monitoring emissions and engineered solutions to both remediate past contamination, as well as to ongoing operations of facilities and infrastructure.
  • Be aware of the compliance aspects of these laws and regulations, to include enforcement through both civil action, and criminal charges against the organization and individuals in the organization.
  • Understand the basics of environmental regulation and compliance pertinent to environmental planning and sustainability. Be able to integrate sustainability aspects in engineering planning for repairs, improvements and also new construction.
  • Recognize that environmental laws and regulations are trans-disciplinary, and require an understanding of the engineering aspects of operations across all media, such as air emissions (mobile and stationary sources, construction and repair operations); potable water (production, treatment, distribution and domestic use); waste water (collection, treatment, effluent discharge to bodies of water); hazardous materials (chemicals, solvents, pesticides, rodent control, used in operations, maintenance and repair of facilities); hazardous waste (its generation, collection points, permitted storage areas, disposal); legacy contamination (cleanup of contaminated soil and groundwater); environmental planning (National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and the related laws for which NEPA provides the framework for enforcement).
  • Be able to understand the trans-disciplinary requirements mentioned above, and apply engineering solutions to those requirements irrespective of primary field of study.
  • Be aware of operations, maintenance and repair conducted by a facilities engineering organization and how those activities could, if not properly engineered and managed, cause situations resulting in non-compliance with environmental regulations and laws.
  • Be prepared for communications with stakeholders to translate the actions being taken to ensure planning, operations, maintenance and repair activities comply with environmental regulations and laws, and are protective of human health and the environment.

Course Requirements

The course requires reading and case studies. Students will be required to complete case study reports and oral presentations. There will be a mid-term exam (scheduled during class time) and a final, all open book. The overall course numerical grade will be calculated based on a weighted average as follows:

Student attendance and participation[10%] (deductive)
Case Studies – student teams or individual50%
Mid-term exam20%
Final Exam30%

Textbook

Environmental Compliance Handbook, Second Edition, J.I Bregman and R.D.Edell; CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, 2002. ISBN-10: 1566705657 | ISBN-13: 978-1566705653 $150.00 new; available used $79; may be available in an electronic version.

Updated 11/10/2020