Your department administrator will receive a notice by email approximately 1 month before your inspection quarter begins to confirm dates and approximate times for your department’s survey. This will give your administrator, principal investigator, lab manager, or other trusted lab representative an opportunity to coordinate attendance during the physical walkthrough. It is important that a representative with access to all areas of the lab is available to provide access.  

Our survey team cannot schedule exact times when we will be on site. You will generally have a 1-4 hour window for your survey.

Pre-survey tasks:
  • Perform an informal self-assessment prior to your scheduled survey. You may use the Survey Checklist and Common Findings as resources.  
  • Check your lab’s yellow CAUTION door signage and update any emergency contact information that may be out of date.  
  • Check your lab’s SciShield (formerly BioRAFT) profile to ensure that all information is up to date and the correct personnel have lab manager permissions (referred to as a “group compliance liaison” in SciShield) 
  • Check that your lab has updated your chemical inventory in ChemTracker (link to ChemTracker page).  
  • Request chemical waste disposal for any outdated, unusable, or waste.  
  • Check that your lab members have completed all required training, particularly any new lab members that may have missed onboarding tasks. Optional training on the survey process and BSL1 and BSL2 work is offered as an instructor-led course via scheduled Zoom. 

Required: Reply by email to the scheduling notice to confirm your survey date. Complete a Biosafety Information Sheet and return it by email to the research safety survey team lead.    

During the survey:  

You, your lab manager, or another trusted lab representative may choose to be on site during the survey so you can answer questions about your lab, address findings at the time of discovery, and take notes for future communication within your group. Please note that while our specialists are always happy to answer questions, our team does operate on a schedule. Accordingly, please limit questions and discussions on site; you can always reach out by email before or after your inspection for non-critical concerns.  

Required: Ensure at least one lab representative is on hand during the scheduled survey window to provide access to all lab areas and to answer questions.  

After the survey:  

Results of the completed survey will be provided to the Department Administrator within two working days of the survey.   

Any items that were not addressed on-site should be corrected or in the process of being corrected within 3 working days of notification. To avoid disruption to research through subsequent visits to lab spaces, we ask that labs send photo documentation of all corrections.   

If a correction will take longer than 3 days, please email the research safety specialist team lead and indicate an estimate time for correction.  

Required: Respond to all findings, with photo documentation if relevant, within 3 working days. If not able to be corrected within 3 working days, communicate such to the research safety survey team lead.

Survey Schedule: