In the event of a serious incident within the department or university, the safety committee will report the incident via e-mail to the entire department.

If any two members of the safety committee plus a committee chairperson feel that the incident warrants a notice, then a safety alert e-mail will be sent out.

The members of the Engineering Physics / CEDT Health and Safety Committee are:

Dr. David Novog (Co-Chair)
Doris Stevanovic (Co-Chair)
Hanna Budz
Dr. Qiyin Fang
Peter Jonasson
Graham Pearson

Role of the Eng Phys / CEDT Health and Safety Committee

The Committee receives it authority and mandate from the Terms of Reference of the Faculty of Engineering JHSC.

The Committee is obligated to:

address departmental health and safety matters
conduct inspections of Engineering Physics and CEDT laboratory and office space
report to the Faculty of Engineering's Joint Health and Safety Committee

How to Form a Health and Safety Committee at McMaster

The Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) of Ontario legislates that a Joint Health and Safety Committee (JHSC) is required at any workplace where twenty or more workers are regularly employed [OHSA Section 9(2a)]. To comply with this legislation, McMaster University has established a Central Joint Health and Safety Committee, as well as additional JHSCs to represent individual faculties and certain other working groups (e.g. Physical Plant, Downtown Campus, etc.) within the McMaster community.

Composition of JHSCs is legislated so that at least four people must compose the committee in a workplace where more than 50 people are employed [Section 9(6b)]. Furthermore, at least half of the members of the JHSC must be workers who do not exercise managerial functions [Section 9(7)].

One primary responsibility of the JHSC is to ensure that the workplace is regularly inspected by a worker or workers designated by the non-managerial members of the JHSC [Section 9(23)]. The workplace must be inspected at least once a month [Section 9(26)], or, if monthly inspections are not practical, at least a portion of the workplace must be inspected each month such that the entire workplace is inspected at least once each year [Section 9(27)].

To meet these responsibilities, McMaster University and its JHSCs establish Departmental/Unit Health and Safety Committees which conduct workplace inspections and report to their respective JHSC. Each JHSC writes a Terms of Reference (TOR) document to define how Departmental/Unit Health and Safety Committees are structured, as well as the specific inspection and reporting responsibilities of these committees. Generally, each Departmental/Unit Health and Safety Committee must be composed of at least one managerial representative (e.g. faculty member) and at least one non-managerial employee representative. At least half of the committee members must be non-managerial members. The non-managerial committee members must be permitted to inspect the entirety of the workplace annually, though preferably monthly.

The following diagram outlines McMaster University's internal Health and Safety Committee structure. The diagram also identifies Risk Management Manual documents and Terms of Reference documents that define the delegation of responsibilities at each level.