Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems

Centre Safety newsletters

Our safety and health newsletters highlight important safety messages for staff arising from meetings of the Centre and School's safety committees. Newsletters from 2011 are published below.

August 2011

Small O-Tube Incident

 You may have noticed a puddle in the corridor on the ground floor outside of G93 (small o-tube lab) early in May.  This was caused by the wave tank overfilling.  The incident was investigated and preventative measures have been put in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

 If you notice something unusual or a potential hazard then please report it to Lisa (safety officer), Manuel (safety rep) or the area supervisor immediately.  Unfortunately accidents do happen from time to time and they are best dealt with as quickly as possible to reduce the chances of any injuries happening. 

Standard Operating Procedures

 All equipment in our labs will now have Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) beside them.  These are a guide to let people know what the equipment is, the potential hazards and a checklist of what needs to be done when operating the machine.

 Please note that you need to be trained by the area supervisor on how to use the machines before you start using them.  You are not allowed to use any piece of equipment that you have not had training for.  Most of the equipment we have is custom made so even if you think you have used similar machines previously you still need to get the training first.

Chemicals

 We will be having a chemical audit in September.  Claire and Usha have been busy compiling a list of all the chemicals in our labs and entering them into the ChemAlert database. 

 This database is a UWA wide system that has the details of all chemicals on campus.  If you need to purchase a chemical then please talk to Claire first so she can check the database to see if anyone has surplus stock of that chemical on campus.  This is particularly useful if you only need a small amount.  It saves money, storage concerns (storage of large amounts of chemicals) and wastage.

 Safety and Health Audit

 COFS and CRE are having their 3rd safety audit from the 9th to the 12th August.  The previous 2 were in 2006 and 2008.  This year it will be slightly different as COFS and CRE are being audited separately.  This means the auditor will be in our building for 4 days instead of 2.  The auditor will be Peter Carlyon from the Safety and Health Office.

 The CRE audit will be on Tuesday and Wednesday (9th and 10th August) and COFS will be held on the Thursday and Friday (11th and 12th August).  The audit process involves the auditor asking safety personnel specific questions on the 1st day and will check all documentation and walk around our labs on the 2nd day.  He may ask some people questions during his walk around (and visual inspection) - please answer him honestly.  If there are any safety issues that aren’t being taken care of then we would like to know about them.

Updated Safety Manual

 The updated Safety Manuals for COFS and CRE have almost been completed.  They will be uploaded onto the websites in the next couple of weeks and a copy of each will also be put in the tea rooms.  There have not been any significant changes to the previous versions.  The main thing to take note of is to follow the rules for each specific lab and to follow the instructions of the area supervisors.

 Storage in Driveway/Hangar Area

 Space is fast becoming an issue in the driveway/hangar area.  There are things being stored there that have not been used for quite some time and also some things which could be stored elsewhere.  If you have anything stored in these areas please decide whether it’s actually needed anymore or if it can be stored elsewhere.  If it’s not needed then please either recycle it or dispose of it (in the multi skip or if it needs special disposal please talk to the purchasing people).

 It has created a hazard since it is difficult to get the forklift in and out when there are large deliveries or large samples to be moved around. Please help us make this area safe.

 Any other business

 If there’s anything that you would like the committee to discuss at its next meeting (which will be in October), please email Monica, [email protected] or see any of the committee members (Liang, Mark C, Lisa, Amin, Claire, Manuel, Don, Hongwei or Nandish).



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