LAUREL, MD – November 9, 2006 – Greenhorne & O'Mara (G&O) national engineering consulting firm, is working with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop a system that centralizes the Department's legal requirements and regulations for environmental planning and historic preservation. This decision support system (DSS) will house training and reference materials, and provide a tracking method for individual environmental planning activities and historic preservation tasks. It will supply the end user with comprehensive tools needed to prepare environmental planning and historic preservation compliance documents.

The DSS will monitor environmental and historic preservation regulations. The first and largest portion of the project – the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) – is being addressed. Both G&O and DHS employees are working to determine site content and how to present the comprehensive data through a Web interface.

Elizabeth Estes, G&O Senior Project Manager, Mid-Atlantic Environmental Sciences, said, "This tool is designed to be a uniform device for environmental planning and historic preservation throughout all components of DHS. The tool, when completed, will follow the currently established paper processes and therefore be intuitive for the user. The system will set the precedent for national process standardization in DHS."

Greenhorne & O'Mara is a national, full-service engineering consulting firm that has provided solutions in the areas of general civil, transportation, environmental, water resources, and hazard mitigation and security, for more than 55 years. With 16 offices located in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, G&O provides a broad range of services to private industry as well as federal, state, and local government clients.