Chemical Waste Software Management Solution

⁠⁠⁠INTRODUCTION
General Services within Facilities Management (FM) is responsible for the process involved with the disposal of chemical waste on campus. The waste is generated by other faculties around the campus and then a request to dispose of this waste (paper based form and through web service) is sent to FM to handle the disposal through a third party/external contractors.

Besides the existing paper based form to process waste disposal requests the current online system has various features and functionalities which include -

• User registration and role management
• Request Management - submit request for disposal
• Approval based on the type of chemicals
• Schedule Management - Scheduling of collection of waste
• Collate requests - daily, weekly, monthly etc.
• Work order management - generate work order to the vendors
• Reconciliation
• Business intelligence - overall reporting
• Database

CURRENT FUNCTIONALITIES -
User registration - Capability to register internal users via online registration form.
Request Management_Besides the manual process the system has capability to record necessary information about chemicals and submit request for disposal of waste thereafter.
Approval_Capability to approve or decline request for waste disposals. Approval should be mandatory for specific chemicals e.g. Radioactive.
Schedule Management_Capability to manage schedules for waste disposals.
Collate request_Capability to collate requests for waste disposals prior to generating work orders for vendors.
Work order management_Prepare work order to the vendors.
Reconciliation_FM reconciles received requests, approved requests, requests processed to vendors, collected for disposal etc.
Reporting_Capability required generating reports by facilities, lab and a combination of both.
Facilities Management creates various kinds of activity reports to fully track the work and expenses for the waste disposals.

The current procedure for chemical waste disposal is that requesters send a hard copy Chemical Waste form OR complete on-line from to FMGS, who collates and sends by email/fax to the external waste removal contractors on a weekly basis.

FMGS receives disposal requests from users (faculties/schools/lower and upper campus chemical stores etc.) through emails and on-line system and follow manual processes to involve external contractors. The disposal and waste management processes have three sections:

a. Process chemical disposal requests
b. Send manifest (disposal) to external contractors and
c. Generate payments for contractors

FM would like to convert the Chemical Waste Inventory Form into an online format. The requester would complete the details online and once submitted the information would be appended into a database which FMGS would retrieve daily, weekly and take actions (collate and send to external contractors for collection of waste). The database will need to have reporting capabilities.

This system, if implemented has the potential to be used across the entire UNSW campus for any department who is responsible for chemical disposals during their lifecycle. There is also the possibility for the system to be extended beyond chemicals to include biological waste disposals.

Current statistics on disposal (Yearly Totals)
2012, 84 tonnes. 7 tonnes/month
2013, 95 tonnes total. 8 tonnes/month
2014,110 tonnes total. 9 tonnes/month

The chemical waste solution must
provide the capability to manage a total of 650 laboratories.
provide the capability to manage a total of 8- 10 faculties/Schools.
support a total of approximately 70,000 users and up to 1000 concurrent users. The system would be accessible to all staff and students.
provide the capability to process up to 1600 requests per day.
be scalable or extensible in order to accommodate more users and business units.

In addition to these, the solution could have the capability to incorporate biological waste disposal.