Safety correspondents (COSEC) are the first safety contact for each research unit.
Roles and responsibilities:
Professors and heads of unit are by default the safety correspondents (COSEC) for their unit.
They may delegate this task to an experienced employee.
The role of COSEC is to:
- Transmit the information sent by the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) to the unit staff.
- Inform the OHS service of any safety-related changes in the unit, such as new hazards, major changes in infrastructure, new activities and scale-ups of experiments.
- Participate in the safety audits.
- Inform the Principal Investigator of any safety-related problems in their research unit (dangerous behavior, refusal to wear personal protective equipment, hazardous handling of reagents or waste, etc.).
- Inform the OHS of safety-related accidents via the dedicated tool (Incident Manager)
- Create and update “door safety data sheets” every time there is a change related to hazards present in the room and at least once a year.
- Check and update first aid equipment (e.g. eye showers, first aid kits, fire blankets).
The COSEC must be a person who:
- has an extensive laboratory experience and ideally a fix term contract in the research unit.
- is aware of all hazards and laboratory activities present and carried out in the laboratories used by their unit.
- has the ability and the authority to impose safety rules in the laboratory.
Safety visits
The audit is done with the presence of the COSEC, and with the laboratory responsible person, if present. Please read our “Safety visits” page and the “Audit guidelines“.
Trainings
Please find here the trainings for COSEC and other safety trainings for laboratory personnel: