College Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) departments without a modern technology platform have difficulty demonstrating their efficiency and effectiveness, which contributes to funding challenges.
College and university Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) professionals have broad responsibilities for ensuring safety and compliance in campus operations.
Managing EH&S is difficult, especially at institutions with large research operations, multiple campuses, or a large geographic footprint. Campuses may have only a small number of professionals responsible for managing all EH&S programs, protocols, and compliance activities in complex environments. With endless tasks to manage, EH&S offices are often over-committed and under-resourced.
EH&S Offices are Chronically Under-Resourced
With the core missions of teaching and research driving the budgets of most colleges and universities, EH&S is often viewed as a cost center, making it less of a funding priority for leadership. in the institution. EH&S offices without a modern technology platform often struggle to demonstrate their efficiency and workload, which contributes to these funding challenges.
It can also be very difficult for campuses to find qualified individuals to fill vacant EH&S positions. Experienced EH&S professionals are always in high demand, and some positions may require an advanced degree or knowledge of multiple disciplines, including occupational, chemical, fire and life, radiological, and biological safety. . Additionally, new EH&S professionals may struggle to navigate all of the unique, inter-departmental relationships, risks, and safety issues they will encounter when starting their new role.
Finally, EH&S generally has the resources to be accountable and is not necessarily responsible for performing every inspection and compliance activity on campus. Collaboration with everyone in the campus safety community is critical to ensuring compliance and improving safety outcomes, however, EH&S professionals often struggle to create this culture of accountability using a combination of spreadsheets, share drive, tribal knowledge, and systems designed for other industries. .
Using Technology to Improve EH&S Efficiency and Efficiency
An EH&S technology platform can help transform campus safety and compliance efforts in many different ways, including:
1. Centralized Data Management
By providing a centralized hub for your campus safety community to update, manage, store, and analyze data related to inspections, safety issues, incident tracking, plans emergencies, permits, safety assets, hazardous waste, and incidents, EH&S professionals can give everyone access to the data they need. At the same time, they can more easily monitor risks, activities, and key safety results.
Additionally, an EH&S technology platform offers new members of your campus safety community a faster on-ramp to understand key risk areas, assigned tasks, and historical issues they will encounter in their new roles.
2. Automated Notifications
The technology helps EH&S professionals automatically update members of the campus safety community about critical tasks that need to be completed, including inspections, issue remediation, chemical inventory, and permitting. to allow. This often alleviates the need for EH&S to directly manage thousands of individual email threads related to these activities.
3. Mobile Access
Mobile access can be a significant efficiency multiplier for EH&S professionals who are rarely at their desks. A modern, mobile EH&S platform allows users to update chemical inventory, view building safety systems, access asset safety documentation, process safety issues -log, and review previous inspection history while they are on the move, allowing them to do more without returning to their desktop to reference paper documents, spreadsheets, and shared drives.
4. Comprehensive Reporting
Access to comprehensive reporting of inspections, incidents, and issue fixes allows EH&S professionals to find key trend data that can help impact safety outcomes. It also helps demonstrate EH&S workloads and effectiveness, information that senior leadership often needs to support increased spending on safety and compliance activities.
Embrace Technology as a Key EH&S Resource
It takes a village to create a culture of safety, and EH&S professionals must embrace the contribution that technology can offer in enhancing cross-functional collaboration. By relying on technology as a key resource, EH&S professionals can improve compliance and foster a culture of safety while simultaneously saving valuable time and staff resources.
Joe Price is the CEO and co-founder of CampusOptics, a cross-functional EH&S platform designed for higher education institutions. CampusOptics was created to help campus safety professionals improve collaboration, reduce institutional risk, and foster a culture of safety.
The views expressed by guest bloggers and contributors are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Campus Safety.