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Environmental & Risk Management / Hazardous Materials

Overview

Historically, SDSs (safety data sheets) were available as hard copy printouts in binders only at the location where they were used or stored. It was difficult to keep this information up-to-date as changes occurred, and looking up specific information about multiple products could be difficult and time consuming.

The ARCHIBUS SDS application provides a centralized, electronic repository for your SDS data, providing greater accessibility and better information, and enables you to document the locations in your facility where hazardous products are stored.

Safety managers can search for SDSs by various criteria, such as GIS number, manufacturer, or location on site, so that they can easily look up key information about the products. The ARCHIBUS SDS application addresses the regulatory requirements for the content of an SDS, as well as the requirements for providing access to the SDSs.

Process Overview

1. A business process owner enters basic information about the geographic and building locations. See Defining Background Data about your Facility,
2. A safety officer, or other personnel familiar with SDS management, enters information about the hazard classification system, hazardous products used at your site, and storage containers. When documenting your products and SDSs, you will choose from the list of values defined in this step. See Overview: Business Process Owner - Hazmat.
3. As you receive SDSs from manufacturers, enter key information for them into the electronic system. You can also store the latest copy of the SDS in the ARCHIBUS document management system, or provide a link to the PDF on the manufacturer's web site. See Define Materials and Safety Data Sheets (SDS) .
4. For the products in your building, enter the quantity at each location and assign the material to a location using a floor plan drawing or by completing a form.
5. You will want to periodically survey your facility to be sure that all products are entered into the system. For those products found in the survey but not documented in the system, enter them and their locations into the system using steps 3 and 4 above. If you have the Hazardous Materials mobile app , you can survey the facility using your smart phone and upload the survey results to the ARCHIBUS system where you see the data in Web Central.
6. If needed, safety officers can use ARCHIBUS to produce hard copies for binders or other forms of distribution. See Print SDS.
7. Periodically, manufacturers might update the SDS and inform you of changes. Be sure to enter these updates into the system.

Use Cases

For practical examples of how the ARCHIBUS SDS application can be used, review the use cases.

• Develop an inventory of hazardous products and SDSs
• Provide employees access to SDSs
• Outside contractors comply with your safety standards
• Access SDSs in emergency response
• Meet requirements for hazardous product storage reporting
• Perform an on-site audit of your hazardous products
• Access SDS data from the field

Additional Information

Note that these help topics are not intended to educate you on the regulatory requirements for SDS. Rather, the information contained here demonstrates how to effectively use the SDS application in ARCHIBUS and, where appropriate, explains why you might perform a task. There are many online resources for learning about SDS requirements. Here are some links where you can find additional information:

• General information and links: Wikipedia Safety Data Sheet
• (USA) OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration, under the U.S. Department of Labor) regulations: OSHA 29-CFR (Hazard Communication) 1910.1200(g) Safety Data Sheets.
• (EU) OSHA site for dangerous substances in the workplace: European Agency for Safety and Heath - Dangerous Substances.
• CCOHS (Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety): The SDS A Basic Guide for Users - International Version