In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, IndustryWeek's Laura Putre speaks with Emily Domenech, Executive Director of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, about efforts to streamline federal permitting for large manufacturing and critical minerals projects. They discuss how the Fast-41 program coordinates agencies to reduce project delays, improve transparency, and accelerate approvals while maintaining environmental and safety standards. The conversation also explores critical minerals processing, domestic supply chain resilience, and the growing role of AI and digital tools in modernizing the permitting process.

Below is an excerpt from the podcast:

Laura Putre: Hello and welcome to Great Question. I'm Laura Putre, Senior Editor at IndustryWeek. Speeding up the permitting process has been on the minds of many manufacturers. Getting approvals for large manufacturing and critical minerals projects involves approvals from federal, state, and local agencies that don't always work together. Sometimes this can take many years. Is there a faster way to coordinate approvals without compromising public and worker safety, environmental concerns, and quality of life? Today we're talking with Emily Domenech, executive director of the Federal Permitting Council, a Trump appointee who has spent much of her career in permitting and energy policy. Dominic oversees the Fast 41 program, a federal program designated by Congress in 2015 to speed up approval for infrastructure projects that has been a focus of this administration. Today, we're talking about Fast 41's two manufactured-related projects, a zinc smelter called Project Crucible in Tennessee and Riverview East Stack Extension in Florida. A project to add storage for fertilizer byproduct and increase fertilizer production. Welcome, Emily.

Tell me about the origins of the Fast 41 program, and why and how it was started, and why it was needed.

ED: We were established a little over 10 years ago in the Fast Act, established by Congress. We're an independent agency, so when you hear Fast 41, that comes from: we were established in Title 41 of the Fast Act by Congress, and we were really established to be a project manager for critical infrastructure projects that are navigating federal permitting. Very clear direction from Congress, and I was a longtime congressional staffer myself, and it's fair to say that legislation is not always clear about what an agency's goals or mission should be, but for us it is really straightforward. 

We have a mission to support projects that meet a couple of key criteria: they have to be one of our 19 sectors, they have to trigger federal permitting, typically that's through NEPA, and they have to be an investment of at least $200 million

And if a project developer meets those standards, they get the support of the permitting council as they navigate the often complex and confusing federal permitting process. So, our process, we have to evaluate companies within 14 days, and then we have a 60-day period to do what I think is really the bulk of that project management work. Again, this is all spelled out in the statute that Congress wrote back in 2015 so we identify your lead permitting agency, we identify all the cooperating agencies, we identify any states or tribes that might have a permitting action for that project, and then we convene that whole group with the project developer to develop a permitting timetable for the project. 

That meeting really allows us to do what I would say solves, reduces the timeframe for most of our projects—which is we build you a timetable that instead of one permit happening after another, we make it so everything happens in parallel. So we develop a permitting timetable that makes as many things happen simultaneously as possible, and then we have 60 days to post that on the permitting dashboard. And then for that developer, they can go and they can see exactly what's expected of them through every federal permit. 

For the agencies, they know exactly what the agency or the developer is supposed to submit and when they're supposed to submit it, so we can track that a project is staying on time, and our projects end up going about 25% faster, simply because we coordinate them at the beginning and make as many things happen in parallel as possible. 

If you pull up the permitting dashboard, all the timetables you see look like Gantt charts, not one line of things after another. So it allows us to really coordinate the process from the beginning, and then we have someone from our team who's assigned to every project that's on the dashboard to make sure everybody does what they said they would do at the beginning of the process, so we really are there every step of the way for a project developer. 

It is transparent across the board, so you know the developer can't skip anything, and the agencies do their job on time, and it really allows us to move projects to the system much more quickly. It’s really a tool the president can use to move priority projects forward and ensure that they're really at the top of the pile when it comes to navigating federal permitting. 

So that is our origin story. We've been around for a little bit over 10 years, and again, we're an independent agency, but really serve as sort of the executing arm for the president when it comes to getting big projects built.

LP: And how are you shaping the agency? You know, I hear a lot of you know about speeding up the process, you know, since Trump has been president. So, you know, what are you doing to shape the agency?

ED: I would say that we are really finally operating at the full potential of the permanent council. I think Congress had a really good vision for what we could accomplish, but it has, for many reasons, not really been used to the full extent that it could in previous administrations. 

In the first Trump administration, it was a brand-new agency, and they had to build everything up from scratch. In the Biden administration, truthfully, they just weren't quite as interested in moving projects through permitting, and we have really taken advantage of this structure to get agencies to the table to better coordinate between folks to really identify priority sectors we wanted to focus on.

You see that with our mining portfolio, with our now-growing manufacturing portfolio, we're really focusing on those priority sectors out of the White House, and then I'm fortunate to have been appointed by a president who really wants to get things built and wants to use every tool in the toolbox to do that, so we've really been empowered to ensure agencies stay on time. 

This system only works if you've got somebody in the White House who cares about getting things built, and if there's this thought that it isn't as important as it should be, then if we're not as effective. So, we've, for contrast, we've been able to, the Biden administration did 17 projects in the four years that they were in office. So far under the Trump administration, we finished 22 projects already and have added dozens more to the dashboard in a number of sectors. So we're really trying to take advantage of this structure and make it something that's lasting, even when a future president, you may not share our policy goals, comes into the White House.

LP: Okay, so two of the projects are manufacturing-related. Are any of those other 22 that you mentioned related to—would manufacturers care about those?

ED: They certainly should. So, the bulk of them are mining projects. There's a pipeline, a water project, a broadband project and then a number of mining projects in that number that we finished permitting on. But really, I would say we are taking this sort of whole of supply-chain approach to priority projects, and we started really the first year of the Trump administration really emphasizing the mining sector. We took our portfolio from one project to 57 in a year, so a huge growth, and really focused on sort of the first step of the supply chain.

But if you're going to be able to control a supply chain and ensure that you're not reliant on China or our other adversaries around the world, you have to control the manufacturing and processing for critical minerals, too. So I think we're really shifting this year to try to focus on bringing more of those critical mineral processing facilities online. We obviously won't have as many as we do in the mining sector, because they're really capital-intensive investments, but we're, you know, it is very much in our goal—our set of goals to grow the manufacturing sector across the board, not just in the mineral processing space, but also in other energy-intensive manufacturing industries. We were included in the pharmaceutical manufacturing EO [executive order]. We've been a part of efforts to talk about manufacturing of other heavy machinery that requires federal permits, so the sector itself, we have manufacturing, is one of our 19 sectors, is like the broadest one we have, because it's not limited to one particular type of manufacturing. It really is across the board.

LP: Okay, great, so the zinc refinery, smeltering.

ED: I think it's a smelter, that's how we would describe it. But it's okay, zinc processing.

LP: Yeah, so what's involved in getting that project up and running, and how is that going to help the manufacturing community?

ED: Yeah, so we're in the process of developing a timetable, the permitting timetable for Project Crucible, which is a Korea Zinc project in Tennessee. When we finish that timetable, it will include not just the permits from the federal side, so that's, you know, the Army Corps, your Endangered Species Act review, the Section 106 review, your NEPA environmental assessment, all of the things that go into supporting a large project with that size and scope, but it'll also include the state's permits that are delegated Clean Air Act authorities from the EPA. 

So, we have a state that actually has, I believe, seven permits that it will have to list for Korea Zinc. for that project, and we have signed, we signed an agreement with the state to ensure the state would opt in and participate in Fast 41 It's not optional for federal agencies, but it is optional for states to participate in that timetable development. So we have been really working on signing agreements to get them to the table, but what that will do for the industry is one, it'll give the developer Korea Inc. a predictable timetable for when they can expect to begin construction and operations of that project. 

For way too long, the permitting has been the biggest question mark for developers, and they really have no idea when they're going to get done. Our process is really designed to give them certainty on how long it will take. We also want to be able to provide them certainty with what work they need to do to comply with federal permitting requirements, so that shouldn't be a question mark. What you need to accomplish as a developer in order to get something permitted, you should know what's required for you, and you should be able to meet that standard. And we should hold every single developer to meeting those environmental standards, because they're very critically important as we develop these projects. But there shouldn't be any mystery in this process, so we're going to really get rid of all the question marks. We're going to develop this timetable, and then we're going to ensure everybody sticks to the timetable they set, so that we can make sure that this project can come online on time.

LP: Okay, what was delaying things in the past? Was it just a lack of coordination or lack of priorities?

ED: I'd say it's a little all of the above. So, one, I think prioritizing projects is really important to ensure they don't just get lost in the stack of paperwork from—you know, every field office has different priorities, and ensuring that critical projects are really moving through the system, it’s unfortunately not something that happens organically. It needs to have somebody along there to sort of sherpa you through the process. 

The second thing I would say is that I think many of these delays come from lack of communication or lack of coordination between federal agencies and project sponsors. So our process, where we have this kickoff meeting, where we put everybody in the same room and say “you've got to work out what is required and get rid of all the question marks up front,” saves a ton of time because what tends to happen in projects that are not supported by Fast 41 is they sort of go along doing one set of expectations and then they find out they need another permit, and then they work on that one, and then they find out they need another thing, they work on that one. There's no coordination, and it wastes a lot of time that way. 

So, our ability to really convene federal agencies and ensure they're talking to each other, ensure they're not doing redundant reviews, ensure it's clear who's in charge and who's the lead agency from the very beginning, they're all really common=sense solutions. None of this is rocket science. We're not changing policy in a really significant way, but what we are doing is saying “let's coordinate in the system we have, let's coordinate everybody from the very beginning, and then let's keep people accountable, so that we are really moving things through the system in a predictable way.”

So it's again, I think the delays can happen for lots and lots of reasons, but a huge force in what makes it difficult to get through federal permitting is simply that there was nobody saying, “Hey, did you do your job this week? Hey, did you get this project moving? Hey, are we on time?” There was no accountability to the system, and Fast 41 really does bring accountability to agencies that have participated in this process. 

LP: How big is your staff and your budget?

ED: So we have about 25 staff. We've got a number of contractors who support our team as well. So it's a very small agency, but we accomplish a ton with that team. We have projects in 29 states. We have been able to continue to grow our portfolio again. It's more than double the size it's ever been in the agency's history. So it is, we are really robustly using this agency, and we have yet to run out of the ability to hire folks to come in and again provide that permitting expertise to our projects as they come through the system. We have received appropriations from Congress in a number of ways, sometimes through annual appropriations, sometimes through lump-sum appropriations that have allowed us to grow and make big investments. We did not get funding from Congress last year, but our budget request for FY 27 is $10 million, which is about our operating budget for the year.