About
A digital-first path to a CE determination
ClearPath NEPA turns a manual, weeks-long Categorical Exclusion screening into a structured, auditable, machine-readable determination, with a human reviewer in control throughout.
The product
ClearPath screens a proposed action against the real federal Categorical Exclusion catalog, proposes applicable CE(s) with citation and confidence, and runs an extraordinary-circumstances and GIS screen. Every AI output is a recommendation a human reviewer approves or overrides; the system never makes an automated decision. On approval it generates a digital-first determination (machine-readable JSON + rendered PDF) and an administrative record of every input, AI suggestion, and human action.
The same machine-readable record serves all four ClearPath user groups: project proponents, agency reviewers, agency leadership, and the public. It is modeled to cut administrative effort by roughly 80% versus a manual screening-and-memo cycle, and the record is litigation- and FOIA-ready at the time of decision.
ClearPath NEPA was selected in the Council on Environmental Quality’s Permitting Innovators Call for Solutions (2026).
Who stands behind it
Built by Nuvitek
- Founded
- 2012
- SBA certification
- 8(a)
- Recognition
- Inc. 5000
- Headquarters
- Tysons, VA
Nuvitek is a federal-focused firm in exactly the disciplines this work requires: case management, workflow automation, paper-to-digital transformation, and FedRAMP-compliant cloud modernization across AWS and Salesforce.
- Lean, senior, and fast. A small full-stack team, amplified by agentic AI engineering, took ClearPath from concept to a data-standard-native working product in days, and iterates with agencies at that pace.
- Integrated disciplines. Senior full-stack and cloud/DevSecOps engineering inside FedRAMP / NIST 800-53 guardrails, paired with NEPA and permitting policy advisory that grounds the decision logic in statute and agency practice.
- Capacity to sustain. An established FedRAMP-aligned cloud practice and active federal contract vehicles (GSA, GWACs, MACs, BPAs, IDIQs) take an agency from demonstration to authorized pilot without standing up a new vendor relationship.
The people
The team
A lean, senior team: the named lead below, with the policy, cloud, and engagement roles that carry a pilot filled from Nuvitek’s federal practice.
Eric Himes
Product & engineering lead, ClearPath NEPA · Nuvitek
Built ClearPath NEPA natively on the federal NEPA & Permitting Data and Technology Standard: the thirteen-entity schema, the CE screening engine over the real 2,105-CE catalog, the append-only administrative record, and the data-standard OpenAPI surface. Owns the demo’s architecture, AI governance, and data-standard conformance.
[Teammate name]
[NEPA / permitting policy advisor: fill in before printing]
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[Teammate name]
[Cloud / DevSecOps engineer: fill in before printing]
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[Teammate name]
[Agency engagement lead: fill in before printing]
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Why it holds up
The data model is the standard
ClearPath is built natively on the federal NEPA & Permitting Data and Technology Standard: thirteen entities, canonical field names, and six provenance fields on every record. Nothing is adapted to the standard after the fact.
Multi-agency & interoperable
Any partner agency or system reads the same case record through a data-standard OpenAPI endpoint, provenance intact on every entity. You configure the platform to your agency’s context from data, not by redeploying it:
- Secure data portability. Every process instance, decision payload, document, and event serializes to standard-named JSON at
/api/standard/…. - Configurability. The screening engine runs against any agency’s CE set, selected from the catalog rather than re-coded. The same engine serves Forest Service, BLM, NPS, FWS, and others.
- Real federal data. 2,105 Categorical Exclusions from CE Explorer, each carried as a legal_structure with its citation and issuing authority.
Security & federal readiness
This demonstration runs locally so you can explore it without an account. The production architecture is designed for the federal context from the start, on the same data standard and decision logic, so the path between them is short:
- Authorization path. AWS GovCloud landing zone, FedRAMP Moderate baseline, and NIST 800-53 control inheritance toward an agency ATO.
- Identity. Login.gov / agency SSO via OIDC and PIV/CAC, with role-based access mapped to the standard’s user_role.
- Human-in-the-loop by design. AI is always advisory, every recommendation carries confidence and citation, and every AI call and human action is written to the administrative record.
- Swappable AI. The assistant is model-agnostic and degrades to a deterministic fallback, so a FedRAMP-authorized model substitutes in without changing the workflow.
How the numbers are measured
Timeline and days-saved figures are modeled from stated, visible assumptions. Leadership sees exactly what drives them:
- Manual baseline: 45 calendar days. A typical manual CE screening-and-memo cycle, labeled as an assumption everywhere it appears.
- Per-phase SLA model. Screening 3 days, review 5 days, determination 2 days: the model projects a completion date that holds up on a thin dataset and flags at-risk cases.
- Empirical average. The average days-to-determination on the dashboard is read from real completed cases, not the SLA model.
- Append-only event store. Every status, projected date, and days-saved figure derives from the append-only case_event log, so the record and the dashboard never disagree.
The interface meets Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA: semantic landmarks, a skip link, visible focus indicators, AA contrast, and scrims behind text over photography. State is conveyed by glyph and text, never by color alone.
Reach the team
Organization details
Ask for a live demonstration on your agency’s CE catalog, or start with the product overview and the guided walkthrough.
Nuvitek LLC
8065 Leesburg Pike, STE 502, Tysons, VA 22182
UEI NYUCLC7Y8AG1 · CAGE 742Q0 · EIN 45-5031283