Karen:

 

If you’re interested in hearing details about how we manage our inventory, feel free to give me a call.  Our researchers mostly receive chemical shipments directly to their own labs.  The system we’ve implemented relies on (believe it or not) the students and lab workers to enter their own containers into the inventory system.  It’s a barcode-based tracking system. 

 

Our office is the administrator of the program and two of our full-time staff manage the researcher training and overall program oversight as part of their job duties.  We’ve also hired part-time, temporary staff to assist with the implementation (mainly to conduct in-lab training and help the researchers get their current chemical stock into the system, which is the most labor-intensive part of implementation).

 

As you can imagine, researcher compliance with the upkeep has proven inconsistent; however, the next phase of our program development will include periodic audits of flammable liquids and high-hazard materials.  We maintain hope that an institutional behavioral change will happen if we do our part to support it.

 

We’re still moving through multi-year roll-out, but since we’ve recently received more resources to fund the additional temporary staff, the process is accelerating nicely now.

 

 

 

I’m interested in hearing from academic campuses that have instituted a campus-wide chemical inventory system.  We currently have a centralized inventory for the Sciences Building, but not for the entire campus.  For those of you who use a single inventory for the entire campus, who manages it and how do you receive the chemicals and then get them out to the different buildings on campus?

 

Thank you,

 

 

Karalyn (Karen) Humphrey, Ph.D

 

Laboratory Safety Program Manager

& Radiation Safety Officer

Department of Environmental, Health & Safety

Baylor University

 

Office: Draper 244.10

Phone:  254-710-2002

 

 

"… our job in safety is to make the task happen, SAFELY; not to interfere with the work…” Neal Langerman