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Hazardous Materials

National and international conventions governing hazardous products typically require that a manufacturer provide a safety data sheet (SDS) with each potentially hazardous substance that they distribute. These sheets are designed to provide the recipient with comprehensive safety-related information about the hazardous substance including: physical properties, component chemicals, safe handling procedures, fire-fighting procedures, storage requirements, classifications, such as UN Number, GIS number, OSHA Tier category, and ecological information. An SDS can be 16 to 20 pages.

As a recipient of a hazardous product, you must review the SDS information and handle the substance accordingly. Moreover, a recipient must make the SDS available to employees and local emergency and safety personnel. Failure to do so can result in hefty fines and, more importantly, can compromise the safety of your employees.

Since organizations such as hospitals, universities, research centers, and manufacturing facilities might handle hundreds or even thousands of hazardous products in the course of daily work, a corporate safety manager needs a convenient way of electronically inventorying the SDS documents that they receive. Simply storing the hard-copy SDSs in a binder will not suffice; safety managers need to be able to search for SDSs by various criteria, such as GIS number, manufacturer, or location on site, so that they can easily look up key information about the materials.

To enable safety personnel to effectively manage the SDSs for the materials used at their site, the Archibus Hazardous Materials application provides a comprehensive electronic inventory system for cataloging the SDSs that are received on site and then associating these SDSs with the particular building locations housing these substances. With just a few keystrokes, safety managers can access complete SDS information for the substances found in a specific room. This type of information is vital to the employees working in this room and first responders containing a building emergency.

Rather than inputting into the Archibus system all the data from the manufacturer's SDS, safety managers enter key information about each SDS and then link to the complete SDS stored on the company's web site or the SDS stored in the Archibus document system. Thus, safety managers enter the most pertinent safety data and the data needed to locate SDSs, and rely on the company's web site or the SDS document checked into the Archibus document management system for other details. This structure enables the Archibus system to act as a repository of your SDS documents, rather than storing every detail of each SDS.

Additionally, sites with the Hazardous Materials mobile app can make the SDS and materials information to all users with smart phones so that users can access SDSs and look up the materials stored at each location directly from their smart phones. This is very convenient for safety managers, emergency responders, and facility managers who often are in the field and away from their desktop machines. If they wish, sites can assign mobile users with the additional ability to edit material information from the field and conduct materials surveys.

With the Archibus Hazardous Materials application, safety managers will find that they have a consistent process and reliable structure for managing their inventory of SDSs, thereby enhancing workplace safety and ensuring that they adhere to the many regulations concerning hazardous substances.

Hazardous Materials
Location	This is available in both Archibus SaaS and the Archibus non-SaaS offering. Sustainability & Risk / Hazardous Materials
Also known as	Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) Product Safety Data Sheet (PSDS) Safety Data Sheets CLP Regulation Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 on the classification, labeling, and packaging of substances and mixtures Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS)
Business Result	Reduce the risks, complexity, and time associated with gathering, maintaining, and retrieving required documentation for the safe handling of potentially hazardous products. Ensure a complete SDS inventory, decreasing risk and regulatory violations. Efficiently manage your hazardous product documentation.
Used By	Health and Safety Officers Compliance Officers Health and Safety Managers Laboratory Directors Emergency Responders Process Engineers General Employees Chemical Safety Auditors
Reasons for Automating	To save time by reducing the manual effort involved in keeping an ongoing record of every SDS required throughout an organization. To gain transparency into the presence of hazardous products and reduce potential exposures and errors in handling. To share data and coordinate with other business units in order to reduce exposures to hazardous products. To leverage other facilities data, such as space inventory, floor plans, and GIS mapping, for use with hazardous product data. To quickly and reliably retrieve critical information for first responders.
Prerequisite Applications	None
Applications Using the Results of this Application	Hazardous Materials mobile app
Reports/Results	Retrieve Data Safety Sheet (SDS) Print SDS SDS Locations List Chemical Constituent Inventory Material Inventory Material Inventory Exceptions Chemical Constituents by Material SDS Details by Provider Chemical Constituent Locations Material Locations List Material Locations Highlight SDS Geographic Drill-Down

The following users are typically involved in managing, analyzing, and SDSs. They may access basic SDS information from the Archibus system, and then consult the actual SDS document for further details.

User	Tasks
Health and Safety Officer Compliance Officer	Has overall responsibility to ensure that the company complies with regulatory requirements. Ensures employee and public health and safety. Use summary lists of chemicals or SDSs for high-level reporting requirements, fast access to focused information for emergency response teams, and an overall perspective on hazard locations and risks associated with them.
Health and Safety Manager	Coordinates a hazard communication program at a plant or site level under authority of a plant manager. Screens all chemical procurements to ensure that proper documentation is in place. Ensures that employees have access to SDSs and appropriate training.
Lab Director	Oversees the details of chemical storage, use, documentation, and training in academic, research, or clinical settings.
Emergency Responder	Checks for the presence of potentially hazardous products and plans for necessary precautions and safety equipment. First responders may also use SDS data when administering treatment to those exposed to hazardous products. These users may with to use the Hazardous Materials mobile app so that they can access SDS information from their smart phones.
Process Engineer	Reviews SDS information to properly design work processes and procedures that consider special handling and storage of substances and the required personal protective equipment.
Chemical Safety Auditor	Uses the Hazardous Materials mobile app to conduct an on-site inventory of locations to identify the hazardous product and quantity at each location and then upload the collected data to the central database.
General Employee	Anyone who works with or may be exposed to hazardous substances in the course of their day-to-day work. People in this potentially broad and diverse group need ready access to SDSs so they can understand the nature of the products with which they work, proper handling procedures, and emergency guidelines. These users may not be frequent Archibus users, perhaps only signing in as needed for SDS information. If these users have access to the Hazardous Materials mobile app, they can access the SDS information from their smart phones.
Business Process Owner - Facilities	Sets up background data about the facility, such as locations, organizations, and equipment information. This information provides the physical and organizational context in which the rest of the application operates. The Facilities BPO has knowledge and authorization to define and edit this facility information, but will not necessarily interact with the SDSs or other Risk domain features.
Business Process Owner - SDS	Sets up the background data from which users can choose when entering SDSs into the system. This information includes lists of materials, lists of chemical constituents, categories, and hazard ranks. The person entering this data is well-versed in SDS and safety procedures and management.

See Also

Hazardous Materials application overview