Il sistema di gestione integrato della sicurezza e della qualità nelle Università e negli enti di ricerca: l'esperienza della Sezione di Chimica Biologica e dei Laboratori Universitari di Ricerca Medica dell'Università degli Studi di Verona.

The route of my PhD consisted in: • an initial study of the relevant legislation about health and safety of workers and management systems of quality and safety; • a study regarding the application of regulations concerning safety at Italian Universities and analysis of the university context; • the testing of a Safety Management System (SMS) in two Sections of the University of Verona. Specifically, a survey has been on the evolution of legislation on health and safety at work from its origins to the D.Lgs. 106/09, which introduced a new vision of the subject, based on organizational behavior of security within the enterprise system. Aspects that are still lacking in the organization of safety provided by D.Lgs. 106/09, however, are: • verification and performance measurement of health and safety company, in connection with the evaluation of risks; • providing for periodic audits to verify compliance with decisions planned for safety management; • compliance with the policy and the achievement of safety targets set by management. The way to overcome these deficiencies, however, is delineated by the law itself which indicates the models of business organization, in accordance with the Guidelines for SGSL INAIL-UNI (2001), or to BS OHSAS 18001:2007, as models suitable to have effect on the administrative liability of legal persons, companies and associations. Given that, to succeed a SMS should be part of the system of organization, I proceeded to make comparisons between D.Lgs. 81/08, OHSAS 18001:2007, Guidelines for UNI-INAIL SGSL and standard ISO 9001:2008 for Quality Management Systems. This comparison revealed that it would be a great saving of energy resources to implement an integrated management system of Safety and Quality. As regards the application of safety standards in Universities, I quoted a survey conducted by CRUI in 2005. This study showed that almost all Italian universities said had formalized the systemic approach in a regulation, but that there isn’t a good match between formal actions and effective implementation of operational and managerial actions, yet. Moreover, the main technical deficiencies were found in: fire prevention, electrical systems, heating systems and architectural barriers. In general, we have seen that university must combine prevention organization with a very complex and flexible organizational reality, given the autonomy and freedom of research and teaching and the high turnover of staff. In the University of Verona, has developed a "Rules for the management of health and safety at work at the University of Verona," in which procedures for identifying responsibilities, procedures, processes and resources for policy implementation for the prevention of the University, in compliance with health and safety regulations, are defined; there are, however, some difficulties to take over a full SMS, which should be whised by senior management and shared in the spirit and objectives by all university constituents. For this reason it was decided to adopt local SMS. In particular, in the Section of Biological Chemistry, we defined first the organization, identifying the roles of all the figures according to the D.Lgs. 81/08. Then, we built a list of all the activities carried out by each research group, and finally we collected: o the list of biological agents and genetically modified microorganisms used o the list of chemicals o the list of equipment and instruments o the list of exposed to risk carcinogens and mutagens o the Section planimetry, with the intended use of the rooms. With this information, the Direction of the Section is able to define: • Policy Section for the health and safety of workers; • objectives and improvement plans; • Management Procedures; • Procedures and Safety Operating Instructions; • aspects to be checked periodically, with planned audits; • the rules for carrying out through periodic "review management”, to ensure continued suitability, adequacy and effectiveness of the Management System. Unfortunately, work in the Section of Biological Chemistry was hampered only by a formal adherence to the trial by the Head of Section. This has led to a non-involvement of most staff and the total absence of the key elements of management systems. Therefore, we tried to work through successive approximations, first by implementing the procedures necessary to meet the mandatory regulatory requirements, then we would implement procedures of common interest and then Procedures / Operating Instructions related to individual processes / activities, relying on a growing interest from all research groups. The following step will be to take into consideration all the laboratory methods and turn them into proper operating instructions, which also contain safety information. This collection of operative instruction would be an important starting point for a quality management system that could be eventually implemented in the future. University Laboratories for Medical Research (LURM) has faced the problem of identifying the academic and hospital components, as in the structure, which is headed by university staff, operate 23 research groups applying to 5 Departments of University Hospital Integrated - Verona. After having defined tasks and responsibilities of all the figures involved in LURM, we drew the organization chart of the structure. Then we gathered information in a way similar to the one which has been done for the Section of Biological Chemistry. To assist the Director of LURM in the task of promotion and supervision of compliance relating to the prevention measures to be taken, a database containing all the information above was implemented. This DB appears to be a powerful tool around which to build most of the procedures of SMS, especially in the case that the DB will be supplemented with the following information: • the risk profile of each employee; • the Personal Protective Equipment delivered to the individual worker; • training on safety held by each employee; • recording of accidents occurring; • recording of accidents or near misses occurred within research groups. Thank to this tool one can define the rules by which to run all information pertaining to safety, from the Supervisors to the Directors of Departments and of LURM and vice versa, and moreover to the Prevention and Protection Service, the Health Monitoring Service, the Radioprotection Service, the representatives of workers' safety. Once implemented an SMS based on the core of OHSAS 18001:2007, one can integrate procedures already developed for the SMS with the requirements of the QMS, and take a path of Quality System Certification. The two experiments carried out showed that the push by the proactive management is essential to design a policy for the safety of the section, set goals, engage staff in the spirit and in the belief of the importance of the Safety Management System implementation, in order to obtain better working conditions.