User Policy and Procedure for Environment, Safety and Health Programs

(Updated: March 9, 2005 )

Each Collaborative Access Team (CAT) is responsible for providing a safe workplace and for working in an environmentally sound manner. To achieve this end, each CAT shall manage the risks its activities pose to personnel, the environment, and APS facilities by anticipating, identifying, and evaluating hazards and then doing what is needed to reduce recognized risks to acceptable levels and to satisfy applicable standards. Throughout this document, these efforts are referred to as the CAT's safety program and the CAT document describing these efforts is referred to as the CAT's safety plan. Additional APS requirements governing safety programs and plans follow.

Each CAT shall allocate the resources required to support an effective program.

Each CAT shall:

  • Formulate a plan describing its safety program,
  • Notify the User Safety Officer of changes in the personnel assigned to carry out safety roles defined in the safety plan,
  • At least once every twelve months, review the safety assignments and, as appropriate, reassign responsibilities or create new roles,
  • At least once every twenty-four months, review and, as necessary, revise the program and plan to keep them commensurate with the CAT's activities, and
  • Provide copies of the current plan to the APS User Safety Officer.

The CAT Director shall be assigned the primary responsibility for ensuring that an effective program is in place and for ensuring that the CAT's plan accurately describes what the CAT intends to do and how it intends to do it. The APS recognizes the prerogative of the CAT Director to delegate the day-to-day management of responsibilities to other individuals and encourages each CAT to do so as delegation can help build a safety organization that will be able to more effectively formulate and implement safety policies and procedures. The plan shall define the key roles that must be carried out to effectively implement the program, listing the responsibilities associated with and naming the individual assigned to each role.

Additional safety program requirements are implied in many of the safety plan criteria that follow. The safety plan shall conform to the following criteria:

  1. State that the CAT Director assumes line management responsibility for safety.
  2. Identify the CAT safety representative, that is, the individual serving as the primary point of contact with the APS on safety issues.
  3. Indicate that the CAT shall conduct its activities in a manner that conforms to the environment, safety and health requirements of Argonne National Laboratory and the Advanced Photon Source. In part, this requires that, except as provided for by variance, the CAT comply with the policies and procedures made mandatory in the following ANL-E documents:
    • ANL-E Environment, Safety and Health Manual,
    • ANL-E Waste Handling Procedures Manual,
    • ANL-E Hoisting and Rigging Manual,
    • ANL-E Transportation Safety Manual, and
    • APS User Policies and Procedures relating to environment, safety and health issues.
  4. Affirm the CAT's willingness to cooperate with APS, ANL, and DOE representatives engaged in oversight activities.
  5. Acknowledge that the APS has the authority to order a halt to CAT activities that the APS, or other entities with oversight responsibilities, deem unsafe or not in compliance with requirements.
  6. State that the CAT will comply with the APS User Policy and Procedures covering shielding configuration control.
  7. In the pre-MOU version of the plan, state that the CAT will accept APS-designed safety interlocks and will allow the APS staff to install these on the CAT's beamlines and other experimental facilities as appropriate.
  8. Affirm that the CAT will carry out an experiment safety review program that conforms to the requirements set forth in the APS User Policy and Procedure covering the subject.
  9. Commit the CAT to obtaining review by and written approval from the AOD Division Director before changing its operations, facilities, equipment, or procedures in a way that might reasonably be thought to increase the risk of significant adverse impact on APS facilities, the environment, or any person.