Triple portrait: NWO-I health and safety coordinators at work

Marchel Gerbers, health and safety coordinator at ASTRON

At his previous employers (including Philips and Ericsson), applied physicist Marchel Gerbers (51) specialised in the lifespan and reliability of products. Twenty years ago, he was recruited by ASTRON to contribute ideas about how the institute could produce telescopes safely. Marchel: "What makes our institute so unique is that it houses all the people we need to facilitate our research. From the astronomer who comes up with what they want to measure, the development department and the instrument makers that make a product for this, the operations group that manages and maintains the telescopes, to the data processing that provides the data the astronomer will work with."

Not a full-time job

“I ended up in the health and safety field via LOFAR, the large radio telescope in the centre of the Dutch province of Drenthe, which is connected with seven other countries. During the development of that telescope we had to think carefully about how we could optimise the safety of colleagues who worked on installing the telescope or who would later carry out its maintenance. I have been the health and safety coordinator at the institute since 2021. It is not a full-time job. I do it in addition to my work as head of the Technical Support Group, a department that provides support during the production of prototypes. My group also manages all of the instruments and machines from the Innovation and Systems department."

'We're the only NWO Institute to assess the risk of snake and tick bites'

“At ASTRON, health and safety covers a wide range of subjects, from office safety to risks during lifting work at the telescopes. We’re the only NWO Institute to assess the risk of snake and tick bites. The countryside around the building is the number one snake hotspot in the Netherlands. Colleagues work on the telescopes in the open air or take a walk during their lunch break. Each spring, we warn them about the risks again."

Talking with somebody

“We also pay attention to the high work pressure and have compulsory active bystander training. During these training, all colleagues learn how to point out unsafe behaviour to people. I think it is vital to create a safe work environment at our institute and across the entire NWO-I organisation. Therefore, point out unsafe behaviour to people instead of talking about a colleague’s unsafe behaviour behind their back. By giving feedback, you exchange information and everyone can work in a safer and more enjoyable way."

Chara Karafantis, prevention officer at DIFFER

Chara Karafantis (24) graduated in Integral Safety Studies and started to work at DIFFER in April 2024. As a prevention officer, she works on prevention, the risk inventory and evaluation (RI&E), gives advice to the works council and provides basic safety training. Chara and her colleague Joost Ketelaars together form the Department of Occupational Health, Safety & Environment at DIFFER.

Chara says that she is impressed by the work of her DIFFER colleagues every day: “I know nothing about physics and chemistry, but loads of cool things happen here. Fortunately, everybody is always willing to tell me about the research. There are many different disciplines at DIFFER and each of these has its own risks. Examples are radiation, lasers, electricity, plasma sources, electromagnetic and high-magnetic fields, ion beams and chemical substances.”

Risk awareness

“Health and safety are important subjects for everybody, and that makes my work varied and pleasant. Researchers come to us if they want to change something in their setup. Recently, more radiation was released than expected during the firing on materials with an ion beam. ‘In such a situation, we stop the experiment and jointly examine how we should proceed. We combine the RI&E with the so-called Safety Culture Ladder, an objective measure to score how the organisation is doing in terms of safety culture. The outcomes confirmed that our tenured researchers are aware of the risks and act accordingly, whereas the guest researchers still need to learn this.”

Open day

At the time of the interview, DIFFER had just held a successful open day for the public. Chara: “There were far more visitors than we had expected, but, but we were well prepared. The safety of staff and visitors, for example during the experiments, had been optimally considered and guaranteed. The evaluation of the day revealed that the walking route was not entirely clear, which was why the flow of visitors got hampered at certain points. We will use this information to prepare for the next open day.”

“We learn a lot from the consultation with the other health and safety coordinators at NWO-I, and Sjoerd Wouda (central health & safety and environmental coordinator, ed.). Sjoerd is always available to answer questions; that exchange is also very handy in practice. For example, if another institute has a written procedure, we can benefit from that.”

Bram van der Gaag, head of health and safety at Nikhef, AMOLF an ARCNL

There is a homemade apple tart on Bram's desk. Each year in October, he treats his colleagues at NIKHEF because the trees in this garden produce a lot of apples. For 30 years, Bram van der Gaag (62) did applied scientific research at eight different employers (including TNO and KWR).

At KWR, a research institute in the field of water quality, he came into contact with prevention work. In 2013, he began attending an evening course in Higher Safety Studies, which resulted in a definitive career switch in 2017: he became the health & safety and environment adviser at Nikhef and head of the health and safety department of Nikhef, AMOLF and ARCNL. Bram: “I wanted a job in which I could continue to learn. From my previous work in large international projects, I knew what researchers came up against.”

Safety chain

Bram set up a safety chain within the three institutes: “Five health & safety coordinators work together on overlapping subjects. They are supported by 24 prevention officers who (for 0.1 FTE) monitor specific risks, such as working safely with lasers. I aim to make health and safety part of the primary process. It is more efficient and cheaper to tackle risks at an earlier stage in the process, for example during the development of a project or product, than to discover that things need to be redone during the final audit.”

Combining different areas of expertise

This ties in with Bram's conviction that a dynamic risk inventory and evaluation (RI&E) offers advantages compared to an organisation-wide RI&E every three years: “If something changes in a scientific process, then you need to monitor the risks at that point in time. At our three institutes, a health and safety step has been added to all steps of this process. With this approach, we combine various fields of expertise. In addition to the expertise of the researcher, we also make use of the expertise of the technician who constructs the setup, and the expertise of an engineer, a safety expert and a building manager.

Each research group makes a checklist of risks and then the colleagues come up with the best solutions. Thanks to this model, it only takes ten minutes to discuss health and safety during a work meeting. An advantage of this approach is that everybody continually talks about safe behaviour. A standard comes into being that is picked up by new employees (one-third of the employees changes each year). As safety experts, we are present in the background to observe whether everything takes place in accordance with the legislation.”

Text: Anita van Stel

Newsletter Inside NWO-I, November 2024
You can find the archive of the newsletter Inside NWO-I on the NWO-I website.