PI Space Introduction

MIT has developed a system that identifies and defines duties, roles, responsibilities, and authorities of key faculty, researchers and personnel in local laboratories, centers and departments in implementing and sustaining the MIT's Environment, Health and Safety Management System (EHS-MS). Those with this role have specific environmental program and regulatory compliance responsibilities locally in departments, laboratories and centers. At MIT, PI/Supervisor is the pivotal role upon which the success and sustainability of the EHS-MS rests, and is the primary point where information converges. From a logistics standpoint, the system associates PI/Supervisors with the types of potential hazards with which they work in order both to plan for and to provide the appropriate EHS operations support and emergency response.

Note: If you need help using PI Space, you can either call the EHS office 252-3477 or send email to environment@mit.edu.

The PI Space Registration and SARA Reporting component is used to record EHS information about the following:

DLC master data - The master data information includes DLC committee, department head, EHS lead contact, EHS coordinator and Emergency Preparedness Coordinator. PIs/Supervisors and their DLC affiliations In order to maintain roles and responsibilities of the EHS-MS, PIs or Supervisors are registered in the PI Space Registration system. The information registered for each PI/Supervisor includes roomsets, rooms, potential hazards and emergency information. For reporting purposes, PIs are organized by their DLC affiliation.

Roomset - Is a collection of rooms under one PI for a DLC. Twice a year there is a single inspection and inspection report that need to be prepared for each PI/Supervisor roomset. The exception to this is the Department of Facilities and in the Division of Student Life.

Rooms, Shared rooms & Subrooms - Only rooms that have potential hazards need to be registered but administrative rooms can optionally be registered. Shared rooms are rooms with one primary PI and one or more secondary PIs. Subroom: a room that is divided into distinct spaces that are assigned to one PI i.e. no secondary PI is assigned. Each space (subroom) is registered in the system along with its contacts and hazards and must be inspected separately.

Potential Hazards - The potential hazards that are registered include core hazards, additional potential hazards and safety equipment.

Emergency Information - Emergency contact information for each room in a roomset is collected for emergency response and is retrieved by two methods. The first method is via a green card posted outside the room, which contains public and phone information for the contacts. The second method is online with access by emergency responders. The information online may contain a private emergency phone number that is suppressed in the Green Card.

SARA Reporting - As part of the EPA's Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA), Congress decreed that facilities that use large quantities of hazardous chemicals must inform the local community of their presence and work with local fire departments to plan for accidents and releases. These requirements to inform the Public of chemical use and storage are known by the acronym EPCRA, or Emergency Planning and Community Right to know Act. This means that once a year MIT compiles a targeted inventory of acutely toxic chemical substances and substances that are present in aggregate in greater than 10,000 lbs. This is called SARA Reporting. Compiling the SARA Reporting inventory is supported by this component. A person is designated as having the role of SARA Reporter for the PI or Supervisor's roomset. Upon being notified by the system, the SARA Reporter takes the information that was in the system from the prior year and updates it for the roomset.