Customized Training for the State Water Resources Control Board Water Leadership Institute: 2003-2007
CONCUR worked with counterparts from UC Davis and the State Water Resources Control Board to design and present a new Water Leadership curriculum. CONCUR co-instructors Scott McCreary, and Eric Poncelet developed and taught a curriculum of four pilot courses in 2003-2005, and continued through 2006-2007. They are "Designing Effective Stakeholder Collaborative Processes", "Effective Use of Scientific Information", "Negotiation and Facilitation in Water Resources Collaboration" and "Advanced Course in Negotiating and Facilitating in Collaborative Processes".

State Water Resources Control Board: April 2001
In April, 2001, CONCUR organized the first-ever customized negotiation training course offered to enforcement officers from Regional Water Quality Boards from throughout California. The course focused on environmental negotiations, and included a panel discussion presenting case studies of how mutual gains bargaining has been applied to past projects at the Board. For this course, CONCUR developed a multiparty simulation focused on establishing an effluent limit and monitoring regime for a fictional contaminant, negotiating penalties for discharge violations, and funding research to inform the development of TMDLs.

Pacific Gas & Electric: March and October 2000
CONCUR designed and lead three customized training courses for staff of PG&E during March and October, 2000. CONCUR designed two new simulation exercises modeled after actual PG&E cases as well as a series of new Teaching Notes. Participants included staff from Technical and Ecological Services, the Law Department, Hydropower Relicensing, Hydro Generation, Environmental Support and Services, Power Generation Services, and Building and Land Services. The course emphasized negotiation with regulators, and taught the tools to reach mutual gains outcomes.

San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board: June 1999
CONCUR worked with staff at the Regional Water Quality Control Board to design and deliver a customized training course to 80 staff members.
 

Nevada Division of Water Planning: June 1998
CONCUR delivered a two-day Negotiating Effective Environmental Agreements to 20 senior staff from the Division of Water Planning, the Division of Water Resources, the Division of State Parks, the Division of State Lands, the Division of Wildlife and the State Attorney General’s Office. The course included simulations customized to reflect Nevada issues and disputes.
 

Santa Clara Valley Water District: July and September 1997
CONCUR delivered a one-day training course in Negotiating Effective Environmental Agreements to technical, planning and managerial staff at the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Due to the success of that course, CONCUR was asked to return to the District to deliver a second environmental negotiation course to additional staff, as well as senior administrators and Board members.
 

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: January 1996
CONCUR delivered a two-day negotiation course to Bureau staff in Laughlin, Nevada. Participants included staff from the Boulder City, Phoenix, Yuma, Grand Canyon, Native American Affairs, Southern California, and the Lower Colorado Dams Facilities offices. The overall goal of the course was to BOR managers and senior staff everyday tools to build effective environmental agreements. The course detailed the sequence of steps in a negotiation process; tips on preparing for a negotiation; and provided a checklist for debriefing negotiations. It also included a customized simulation.
 

Monterey Institute of International Studies: October 1996
CONCUR presented a two-day training course to 25 graduate students in international environmental policy. Topics included: elements of principled negotiation, obstacles to implementation of environmental policy in developing countries, independent scientific reviews of proposals for resource extraction, cross-cultural aspects of negotiation, and facilitation techniques. CONCUR Principals also addressed the challenge of integrating environmental protection and restoration considerations into national economic development planning. The course included simulation exercises and demonstrated facilitation styles and techniques.
 

U.S. Department of Agriculture: February and May 1995, January 1996
CONCUR traveled to Mission, Texas; Rapid City, South Dakota; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Sacramento, California to deliver one-day workshops to the U.S. Department of Agriculture on mutual gains bargaining. After guiding attendees through the key principles of a successful mutual gains bargaining process, CONCUR instructors led enrollees through a CONCUR-developed simulation applying mutual gains bargaining to an environmental negotiation over the initiation of a state-wide boll weevil pest control program. Attendees included representatives from the animal control unit and the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service.
 

San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board: February 1995
CONCUR presented a one-day workshop in environmental negotiation and mutual gains bargaining to about 80 professional staff members of the Water Quality Control Board in Oakland, California. CONCUR developed a five-party simulation to address specific issues faced by the Board, in particular, on initiating a dialogue on the cleanup of a contaminated site. In the simulation, participants had to establish a working relationship to negotiate site access, determine the scope of the remedial investigation, and frame the appropriate level of site cleanup.
 

City of Davis Planning Department: July 1995
CONCUR presented a one-day negotiation training course to staff of the planning, public works, and city manager’s offices, as well as a half-dozen local developers. Presentations and simulations focused on the application of negotiation and facilitation of agreements to local land use disputes.
 

Sacramento River Interagency Mitigation Team: September 1995
CONCUR delivered a two-day course in Negotiating Effective Environmental Agreements to approximately 20 state and federal resource professionals representing agencies including the California Department of Water Resources, Reclamation Board, State Lands Commission, Department of Fish and Game, Army Corps of Engineers, National Marine Fisheries Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service. The training course, done in collarboration with the U.C. Davis Common Ground Center for Cooperative Solutions, included a simulation exercise in which parties literally exchanged real world roles to negotiate a mission statement and groundrules. Also included was an examination of the Comprehensive Malibu Creek Watershed Mediation Effort and the Lower American River Task Force.
 

Ministry for the Environment, Hungary: October 1993
CONCUR collaborated with Partners for Democratic Change and Konfliktusmegelozo es Kezelo Kozpont to deliver a three-day course in environmental negotiation and policy analysis to senior officials from Hungary’s Ministry of the Environment, as well as representatives of the organization Ecoglasnost. Exercises included a simulated regulatory negotiation and coalition building. The course addressed how to discern and avoid the escalation of ecological conflicts and presented an array of regulatory and non-regulatory tools for environmental policy implementation. Attendees were provided case studies of successful and unsuccessful negotiations. The aim of the course was to train attendees to find the most desired approaches and methods to resolve a range of ecological conflicts in their towns, regions and districts.
 

U.C. Davis Extension and UCLA Extension: October 1993
CONCUR Principals served as a faculty in two courses to introduce planners to the use of negotiation and bargaining skills in disputes related to general plan amendments, specific plans, zoning, and CEQA. Special attention was given to the challenges that characterize land use decision making and the need to customize mediation to cases that are, respectively, "upstream" or "downstream" of flood litigation.
 

Center for Dispute Resolution (CEDR): October 1992
CONCUR presented the first-ever training seminar on environmental dispute resolution through CEDR, a recognized leading provider of mediation services, located in London. The course focused on the resolution of disputes in the United Kingdom and in the broader European Community. Specific topics addressed included rail alignments, waterfront planning, and forest protection. Participants included senior barristers, judges, the Environment Council (a trade association of businesses), representatives of the Greenwich Waterfront Authority, British Rail, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, and the Marine Protection Society.
 

Ministry for the Environment and Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand: May 1991
CONCUR delivered a training program to representatives from the Auckland Regional Council and 12 different indigenous Maori groups to improve their relationship as partners in making wise and stable decisions over the use and allocation of resources. The course presented topics on internal team building, coalition building, special needs in cross-cultural communication, handling differences in access to technical information, and translating informal agreements into formal agreements. It included an explanation of negotiation techniques, with special reference to resolution of environmental and natural resource disputes, using a combination of presentations, simulation exercises, debriefing and small group discussions, and a presentation of several case studies. The workshop outlined the elements of a negotiation process that would be responsive to the specific the needs of both the Maori and the Auckland Regional Council. The instructors used local case studies dealing with the Auckland Sewerage and Manukau Harbour to outline those elements.
 

Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality: December 1991
CONCUR delivered a training course in mediation and conflict resolution to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. The course focused on using mediation as a tool to develop effective environmental policies and regulations, and included discussions and simulations on escalation and entrapment, coalitions, interpersonal conflict, process design, meeting preparation and analyzing technical information.
 

Pacific States Sea Grant Program: August 1990
CONCUR Principal Scott McCreary served as an instructor for a Pacific Sea Grant College Programs agent/specialist training meeting in Hawaii, teaching conflict resolution techniques through lectures, discussion, and a number of mediation exercises. The emphasis of his presentation was on developing an appreciation for the techniques of principled negotiation. Debriefing sessions following each exercise offered a chance to analyze the dynamics of the role-playing exercises and share observations about the experience. Small group sessions followed at the end of the day to discuss opportunities for the use of mediation programs.
 

Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach: November 1990
CONCUR collaborated with the University of Southern California Sea Grant Program to offer a two-day course to 20 planners, engineers and environmental assessment staff from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Course content focused on avoiding escalation and entrapment, building coalitions and resolving coastal zone and marine policy disputes using negotiation techniques.
 

The Law Firm of Baker & McKenzie: August 1989
CONCUR delivered a training course to the Land Use and Natural Resources Practice Group of the San Francisco Law Firm of Baker & McKenzie. The course focused on international environmental policy, principled negotiation, and environmental dispute resolution. The course included lectures, seminars, gaming simulations, and debriefing sessions, and stressed the development of interpersonal skills needed to become a more effective negotiator. Complementing the focus on principled negotiation, the course examined the role of culture in negotiation, and introduced a comparative perspective on international environmental policy and regulation.