Challenges for Health and Safety in Higher Education and Research Organisations

This book provides a summary of the main obstacles for creating and maintaining high standards of health and safety in higher education and research organisations. The obstacles include high staff turnover and an uncertain and constantly evolving research environment, small groups lacking unified management structure, deadline time pressures, restricted funding models and existing "old school" culture. Often the Health and Safety specialists and personnel managers in these organisations find themselves reiterating the same information, which gets lost as soon as the new cohort of workers arrives. Providing insight into methods of managing health and safety, training, and supervision, which help to build a strong and reliable health and safety system, this book is a collection of "best practices" from experienced safety professionals and researchers in Europe and the United States. These experiences demonstrate how health and safety professionals have overcome these issues and provide readers with ideas and models they can use in their own organisations. The information contained within is aimed at health and safety professionals and managers in universities and research organisations conducting scientific and engineering research with transient workers and students worldwide.