PACE Scientific Infrastructure and Safety Coordinator annual checklist

• Audit Title

• Client / Site

• Conducted on

  Date

• Prepared by

Weekly

• Paper run

• Generally 6-8 boxes should suffice. Start level 7 and work your way down. No paper for level 5 as they come and collect when needed.
  Usually 1 box per floor for 6 & 7 but 2 for Level 4 academic and 1 or 2 for the Level 4 professional printer.

• Lab consumables resupply

• MIcroshield hand wash, paper towel, ethanol safety glasses wipes, clinical waste bags and cable ties.
  Currently these are the only items that are regularly supplied by the School for the labs. Its often easiest grab a couple of boxes of towel, a box of bags, a couple of bags of cable ties and a few boxes of wipes and add them to the paper run. Just keep an eye on the microshield - if it looks like its nearly empty, order a new container from the Chemstore - chemstore.science.uq.edu.au - this requires an account to be set up via the Facilities committee. See Harry. This year we worked out an approximate total spend on microshield (i think about $1600) and raised a RISQ for that amount - meaning Harry didn't have to continue to complete the form every time i needed to order.

• Lab coats

• Picked up on TUESDAYS, usually before 9am (mostly anyway - the company is pretty shit and doesn't always show up. If you are desperate, the Scientific team (Brendan and Stacey) have contacts there I think). When you go to collect, just take a fresh bag and swap it out for the one that's there. Fresh bags can be gotten from Stacey or Brendan or just ask them to order you a bunch - regular orders through the linen company might actually get them delivering and picking up every week.
  The coats come simply folded. It sucks but its more aesthetically pleasing to have them hanging on the rack on Level 7 rather than folded up there for collection. Because of this, there is a bunch of clothes hangers and a 'hang station' in the storeroom. As there isn't always that many to hang, it generally only takes half an hour to hang whats there.

• Kitchen linen

• Tea towels and the cloths can be found on Level 5 in the scientific storeroom - see the scientific team.
  Level 7 - 3 tea towels, 2 cloths
  Level 6 - 2 tea towels, 2 cloths
  Level 4 (academic) - 3 tea towels, 2 cloths
  Level 4 (professional) - 2 tea towels, 2 cloths
  The dirty ones need to go in a linen bag as well but not the same one as the coats. Usually the bag of dirty cloths can sit for a few weeks until the bag is relatively full.

• Safety Shower and Eyewash station testing

• This is really a fortnightly task. By the regs we are meant to be doing them weekly but we have risk assessed the building so that we might be able to stretch this across 2 weeks. See RA#62667. There are something like 51 in total... I was once doing them weekly and I was doing very little else. Fortnightly seems to be a good in between.
  The way that I worked it was one level a day (with 3&5 on the same day as there is only 2 on level 3 to test {not inside the animal house]).
  The plan i have in my calendar is:
  Level 3 & 5 - Week 1 - Tuesday 8am (to get in before classes start at 9am)
  Level 6 - Week 2 - Tuesday the next week - 1.30pm. Post lunch is a good time to get in and have a look at the lab being functional. A good time to catch people not being complaint and give the opp to remind them to wear their PPE.
  Level 7 - Thursdays - 1.30pm. As above really.
  The timing of all this is much of a muchness really. It was really sorted liek that so i didnt feel like i was spending a whole day testing showers and also because the charge sometimes dies on the machine trying to get all the floors done on the same day if the trolley hasnt had a charge for a while - just added to frustrations in the week plan that way. It was also to fit in with the store delivery collection times (10.30-12). Outside of these hours there was little chance people would be calling to collect or to give signatures to delivery drivers.

• Friday WHSC meeting

• I used to always bag out my old boss for going to this as a glorified way to run away for the morning and have coffee. This is somewhat true, but it is also the best way to make friends in the UQ safety world. If it wasn't for Friday mornings I would have felt horribly uncomfortable dealing with everything that UQ requires from the safety side. Every Friday from 9 the WHSC group meet at Lakesdide Cafe for coffee and a meeting about anything safety related. It is a forum to ask questions, seek clarification of things you are doing and generally get to know others in the safety realm in the uni. It is really helpful and I cannot recommend this stay on the agenda enough. It might seem trivial and a 'waste of time' to some but it is definitely worthwhile.
  I found walking there was the best too. A nice 30 min walk from here in the morning in the sun is an amazing way to start the day.
  It is also probably worth signing up to the WHSC email group as well - currently the email group owner is away on 12 months leave but her name is Narelle. Prior to her return, I would say just ask the question at the first meeting and someone will sort it out for you.

• Temperature Controlled Entities (TCE) reports

• Fridge/Freezer/Incubator checks daily to ensure you are able to pick up on any changes and be able to identify a potential real issue over user misuse. Daily logs help show trends over time as to the performance of the freezers and incubators. This has turned out to be awesome - researchers don't look at anything here. Just as I write this today a researcher opened a freezer with a sign saying 'don't use hanging right in front' and another hadn't noticed his freezer flashing alarm despite looking right at it...

• PACE Weekly Lab Safety Inspection

• One a week - the report sent to the group leader for review and follow up.
  This is new - I admit, this has only begun during preparations for my departure. The idea is solid though (says the creator). The concept comes from my inability to service the safety of all groups in a functional and organised way. Too many times I did general lab tours myself and identified where groups were being non-compliant or just lazy and sent emails to the whole PC2 Labs group email. Initially this worked but has tended to die over time and now people generally laugh at the silly things people do but dont actually fix any of it, especially within group areas - mostly the shared spaces are fixed with that method.
  I'm hopeful that by instigating a weekly lab inspection using the audit tool then it might do the following things:
  1. Provide you with an introduction to each of the specific lab group areas
  2. Get you out and about across all the labs meetng at least one member of each group
  3. Keep the groups aware of the very simple safety and lab concepts in the audit.
  4. Provide some idea of the level of knowledge of the groups on lab safety
  5. Present the info gathered in a professional looking report that can be sent to the Principal Investigator (PI)/Group leader rather than the whole PC2 labs email.
  6. Allow you to gather some info on areas of concern or merit(rare) lol #i'moldandbitter
  7. The audit tool also allows you to set follow-up actions with time frames which, given that you send them on the the PI/GL, give you scope to chase them when things arent completed by the due date. Also this will provide a quick summary of corrective actions at the bottom of the report for someone to follow - easy to read often makes it easy to complete - sometimes my email rants were long and confusing as to what I wanted them to actually do.
  8. Escalate any issues to the Facilities Committee with a pretty detailed report on specific group behaviour (hopefully not needed but you will be new so might take time to develop meaningful relationships and garner support of some of the groups and leaders).

• Chemical deliveries from chemstore (twice a week)

• These come twice a week - Wednesdays and Friday's (these are the only days the chemstore deliver off campus so this isn't really negotiable with them). As with all the Haz and DG chemicals, we need to barcode these and put them in the spreadsheet. As I mentioned, there was the idea of a colour coded system between flammables vs corrosives for the benefit of the users... So your call really lol
  The system is a little laborious but the school never had the money for the scanner and program originally and I was always too busy or distracted Ruth other projects I simply left the system as it was. Might be worth chasing a solution if you find it too frustrating.
  Note - as the school is off campus, the groups can order chemicals from anywhere, not just the chemstore which is mandated on the st Lucia campus. Of course, this means you'll get Chemical deliveries from sigma and the like during the other days but often these are smaller than the chemstore ones.

Monthly

• OH&S report

• Another new thing. I love new things. The concept behind setting up a monthly report was to keep it all on track from your end as well as try to provide a bit of relief to Leanne and Anne that the safety side was being covered. Similar to the info to be gathered from the Lab Inspections (to be reported on in this report), much of it is stuff that you will need to access for meetings and the like, so it would also be helpful for you to get to know how to access reports from various systems. Also by having reports saved you can have stuff to flick around and probe trends etc if you find you aren't getting support.

• Morning tea and trade displays (once a month - same day as LMF)

• These happen if you organise or when they make contact. This year I changed it up and sent an email at the beginning of the year to all the reps we had visit the previous detailing I'd like to combine them with the LMF. For me, it made me feel more comfortable that the rep wouldn't be standing all morning waiting for people and no visitors embarrassing me for inviting them. It also provided morning tea for my meeting! For the rep, it also almost guarantees that at least one member from each group gets exposure to the products of the company, regardless of whether they initially thought it would be worthwhile. I gave the rep the first 10 minutes of the meeting for a brief overview of who they were and any new products and then we would disappear for the LMF out to the cafe deck. Any interested parties could then return to the trade display when we were done.
  Most rep booked in twice for the year and seemed happy with the new system.

Quarterly

• Chemical inventory update

• Quarterly equipment maintenance

Annually

Incidentals

Executive Committee report

• To ensure that safety information as reaching the highest levels, Prof. Little (the current HoS) introduced the Exec OHS report. Although you aren't invited to the entire meeting, you are asked to provide a brief overview of any OHS items. To make this easy and to make sure that there was always something to be presented at the meeting (keeping OHS in the forefront of the minds of the exec) I developed a standard report. This can be found in the meetings folder on the shared drive: health@UQ/Pharmacy/OH&S 2016/Executive reports.
  Essentially it is as follows:
  Projects
  Monthly Highlights
  Information from the OHS Division
  OHS Management Plan KPIs
  Local incidents/near misses
  
  The standard agenda works well i think as it is then always pretty comparable to the last meeting report. It also allows you to be able to submit something every meeting, even as just an update on the KPIs and the current projects, even if you cant make the meeting.
  If the Faculty OHS meeting has happened and you have the pretty graphs across all the Schools that Leanne has, its sometimes good to show how the School is going against the others in the Faculty. They are often surprised we aren't as amazing as they think we are...
  

PACE Monthly OHS report

• Sent across to the Faculty OHS team this document is just a summary of the major School KPI's - Incidents and Hazard reports as well as a simple report and comment section on the Weekly Lab inspections.
  The Faculty team are really helpful and if you are having trouble with some lab safety issues don't hesitate to call on Leanne; she's great.
  I hope by now when you're reading this you arent getting scared that this is all too much reporting to people - it's me trying to be organised enough to not have you flailing if you felt that way coming in without much of a handover. The reporting is just a way to keep on track and let everyone else know that you are on track. without having to have them come and micro manage (not that they do that). Autonomy can be scary when you are new though... #myownwayofmicromanagingtherolefromafar :P

Lab Management Forum

• Held the third Thursday of every month on the cafe deck at

Vendor morning tea and trade displays

• This year I tried to attach a morning tea and trade display to every LMF. It seems to work ok. It was so that each meeting is catered (by the morning tea) and then the rep that was here was at least guaranteed (in theory) one member from each group attending to see what the company had on offer. If they ask I always tell them cater for 20-30. We never get huge turnouts but the groups have gotten to know that the LMF often comes with cake and a short 10min speil from the rep. If nothing else it adds a bit of life to what could end up another boring meeting.
  We have these organised until years end with the following:
  August - Thermo
  September -LabTek
  October - Scientific Life
  November - LabGear
  December - Noone yet but its the 19th of December so...

PACE Labs Monthly Equipment Maintenance Report

Professional Staff meeting

• This is a general meeting of all the professional staff. Each person gets an opportunity to raise any items that they would like. It is mostly made up of the administration staff from level 4. You can use this forum to raise OHS issues relating to the admin areas, the general school areas or anyhting else you would like. There isnt often much people have to say but gives Deryk the opportunity to keep everyone up to speed about all the school happeninigs.

Scientific Meeting

• This is a general meeting of the Scientific staff from Level 5. They run all the teaching side of things in regards to practicals and tutorials. You may have less to do with these guys but i think its important to go to these meetings. This will give you some insight into how the teaching is run across the wet and dry labs here at PACE and give the team an opportunity to quiz on safety stuff.

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

Autoclave service

MAY

Annual asset stocktake

• Contacted IT and Finance for pre-meeting in April

• Received the spreadsheet downloaded by Deryk

• It's a glorious idea that you might be able to do this live using a computer or a tablet but I have found at mostly it is easier to simply mark each item off a printed spreadsheet. I tried and failed but good luck if you are wanting to give it a go. Using the paper removes the need to sign out a computer and stuff around trying to get eduroam to work all the time as you travel through the building. I tended to have to spend weeks look for items interrupted so others are often in need of the laptop; having it booked out the whole time is near impossible.
  The likelihood that you will need to add info is minimal and simple notes on the side have always sufficed for any changes needing to be done on the spreadsheet later.

• Printed hard copy of the register on A3 pAper

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

Test and tag

Chemical safety month - organise checks on all DG cabinets across PACE using the online a Assessment from DG safety website.

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

Autoclave service

DECEMBER

Be strong on:

• Access - this is the cornerstone of the safety of all staff and students

PACE OHS Meeting

• You are the chair of this meeting as the school WHSC.
  The committee sits on a Friday morning at 11am every 8 weeks.
  You often get small turnout but try not to get disappointed. Due to the combined nature of your role it will often end up the case that all the follow up tasks become yours but I would suggest that you try hard to flick these onto other people if it doesn't involve too much safety or lab knowledge. These types of things i think would be perfect to get some better collaboration and a bit of buy-in across the group.
  There is a standing agenda and Leanne or Anne from Faculty will be able to assist in the fist few and are always there for consultation if needed.
  The agenda and minutes can be found in the OHS 2016 folder: Health@UQ/OH&S 2016/Meetings

Facilities Committee meeting

• You will be the administrator for this committee. This involves taking minutes basically.
  The committee sits on a Thursday afternoons - 1-3pm every 6 weeks.
  The standard agenda and minutes layouts are in the Facilities Committee 2016 Meetings folder:
  Health@UQ - Committees/PHM-Facilities/2016 Meetings.
  You might end up with some jobs out of this meeting but more often than not, the final decision on matters here are for the chair of the committee and the School manager - you might simply need to coordinate purchases and do some research - Harry (the chair) is the best person to chat to about what he would like out of you.
  This meeting is also where you will be able to raise any issues identified in the Monthly Equipment Maintenance Report or any lab or safety items that are not gaining ground from just your voice, or are building related or would benefit from funds. The OHS Committee is actually a sub committee of the Facilities committee so all OHS funds must be approved by Harry and the committee in any case.