Many property and facility managers at office buildings and office complexes think that only manufacturing facilities really need to be concerned with environmental exposures and liabilities. Looking at their own buildings and property, they just don’t see all the environmental risks and potential problems, at best focusing mostly on issues related to mold and asbestos.
I have a lot of respect for regulators at all levels, local, state, and federal. It sometimes surprises people that they are very often willing to work with facilities to improve their environmental, health and safety practices and address exposures.
Of all the ways a facility can get in trouble, including not having required permits or failing to follow certain regulations in your manufacturing process, one of the most common we see as environmental consultants might be a surprise.
You might think you have all your environmental permits in good order at your facility. Fair enough. But I want you to think again. Say you're the facility manager of a manufacturing facility. During the manufacturing process, some emissions are generated. But you’ve determined that the emissions and process throughput do not meet the threshold for requiring an air permit. You’re golden.
