ABSTRACT
No management structure has yet been published which has been specifically designed for the Environmental Assessment of a project, and at present the work is usually carried out by a team of specialists gathered together for the occasion, and most often led by the planning or engineering firm which will take charge of the planning permission submission. For smaller Environmental Assessments, such as those for the more straightforward and single-purpose projects in Schedule 2, most of the work can be done by one firm with the help of specialist consultants for the more esoteric or complicated studies but, for Environmental Assessments like the ‘Big One’ (the Channel Tunnel), a consortium of consultant firms may be employed. Many larger firms of planners, architects, civil engineers, and landscape architects are now offering a comprehensive service which covers all aspects of an Environmental Assessment but, even so, special advice and assistance is often necessary to provide a complete assessment. Even the comprehensively staffed and experienced Building Design Partnership, which carried out just part of the Environmental Assessment tasks for the Channel Tunnel, consulted 45 organizations in order to cover all possible aspects of their work. There are many disciplines which may be involved in an Environmental Assessment, although it is unlikely that all, or even most, of them will form part of the Assessment team except in the case of major Schedule 1 projects. The disciplines listed and described below provide the environmental skills most likely to be employed in the assessment of a development in a fairly densely settled area.
