What is an environmental gorilla?When it comes to environmental issues, many facilities are primarily focused on environmental compliance – let’s make sure we meet our permit limits. Let’s stay out of trouble - today. While environmental compliance is an important aspect of environmental management, it should not be the sole focus of a facility. Each facility should also actively reduce its risk of potentially significant future environmental liabilities on a daily basis. The easiest way to start is to manage your environmental gorillas.
According to Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, authors of the best-selling book The Invisible Gorilla, “Imagine you are asked to watch a short video in which six people – three in white shirts and three in black shirts – pass basketballs around. While you watch, you must keep a silent count of the number of passes made by the people in white shirts. At some point, a gorilla strolls into the middle of the action, faces the camera and thumps its chest, and then leaves, spending nine seconds on screen. Would you see the gorilla?”
Well according to the authors, when they conducted this experiment at Harvard University a few years ago, half of the people that watched the video and counted the passes missed the gorilla!
This experiment reveals a significant behavioral tendency - we are not aware of a lot of things around us, and we do not recognize this lack of awareness. This causes many of us to simply overlook the obvious.
Here is a state-of-the-art chemical mix room with all of the “bells and whistles.” This facility was proud of the investment that it made to protect the environment by ensuring any release from drums and totes stored in this area would be contained by the trenches and sumps within the self-contained chemical mix room. The trenches and sumps actually contained sensors that would sound an alarm if any released material entered the structures.
It’s a nightmare scenario for any facility/plant manager. One of your key employees is resigning, retiring, or otherwise leaving the job. There’s more turnover than ever these days, especially with employees switching jobs to obtain promotions rather than climbing the corporate ladder at the same company. Now you’re faced with trying to find a replacement while at the same time trying to cover the tasks they were responsible for, as well as your own job. Recruiting, reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, and more – that can take forever. Then, once you’ve hired someone, you must train them, hold their hand at the beginning as they get settled… that sort of thing. It’s a big investment of time and money. But there is another way…
Subleases can be a great way for a leaseholder who is no longer conducting their own operations at a site to make money. But your actual responsibility goes way beyond just collecting rent checks. As the leaseholder, you are ultimately responsible to the property owner for what your tenant does at the site. That is, unless you insert key clauses in your sublease agreement to protect yourself. Here are some guidelines of what should be included.