The Innovation Lab Safety Checklist: 10 Risks to Review Before You Build

Most lab incidents do not start with a dramatic mistake. They start with a cable run under a bench, a laser cutter running with its interlock taped down, or an unlabelled bottle at the back of a shelf that everyone assumes belongs to somebody else.

A small innovation lab sits in an awkward place: not a garage, not a fully engineered facility with a safety officer on call. It has a handful of people, a growing pile of kit and a strong urge to get on with the build. That is exactly why a pre-build review earns its keep.

Ten risks, in four families: electrical, chemical, tool and workspace.

Electrical: the hazard you stop noticing

Once the bench lights up and everything runs, trailing leads and humming power supplies fade into the background. Settle these before you build:

• Know what your supply can carry and how many sockets sit on each circuit. Add fixed equipment — a kiln, a welder, a big compressor — only after someone qualified has looked at it.
• Use residual current device (RCD) protection on anything portable or used near water, and keep portable appliance testing up to date for kit that gets moved and reused.
• Ban daisy-chaining. One extension lead per socket, fully unwound, never under a floor covering or across a walkway.
• Give lithium batteries their own charging spot: a non-combustible surface, clear of anything that burns, never left charging unattended overnight.

If you cannot trace where a circuit goes, that is your answer. Get an electrician in. Mains wiring is not a skill to pick up mid-project.

Chemicals: know what is actually on the shelf

Solvents, resins, etchants, adhesives and printer powders accumulate faster than anyone expects. This is where guessing costs you, because the hazards are not always visible and the quantities creep up quietly.

Start with the safety data sheet for anything you bring in. If you employ people, remember that assessing substances hazardous to health and putting suitable controls in place is a legal duty, not a housekeeping preference. If you are unsure how something should be handled, stored or disposed of, have a competent person assess it before it reaches the bench.

• Write an inventory: every container, quantity, location and owner. Review it every few months and get rid of what nobody will use.
• Label everything, including the decanted bottle of "probably isopropyl alcohol". Secondary containers need the substance name and the hazard, not a marker squiggle.
• Segregate by hazard. Acids away from bases, oxidisers away from organics, flammables in a dedicated cupboard — not wherever there was a gap.
• Match extraction to the process. Soldering, resin printing and open solvent work all need different handling. Local exhaust ventilation should capture fumes at source, not just stir the air.
• Keep a spill kit stocked, an eyewash within reach, and a waste route that does not involve the sink.

Tools and machinery: guards, interlocks and training

Guards exist because somebody got hurt. Never let a taped-over interlock become normal, and never leave a guard off because a jig is awkward. If the guard makes the job impossible, change the job or change the tool.

For each item of kit, ask three questions: does the guard work, does the emergency stop work, and has the person using it been shown how? Then check the specifics:

• Laser cutters — extraction running, interlocks tested, material confirmed, never left cutting unattended.
• 3D printers — ventilated space, suitable filament, and an awareness that heating plastics gives off fumes and fine particles.
• Soldering irons — extraction at the tip, a stand that will not tip, and a clear place to put the iron down.
• Bench and hand tools — sharp, stored, and never used with gloves near anything rotating. A glove caught in a drill press is worse than cold hands.
• Compressed gas — secured upright, valve protected, regulator checked.

Record training rather than assuming it. A one-page sheet listing who may use what takes ten minutes and prevents a lot of awkward conversations.

The workspace itself

Before you add equipment, look at the room as a room. Can two people pass each other at the busiest bench? Is the fire extinguisher the right type for what is actually in the space? Is there a clear route out that is not blocked by a pallet of stock?

Then the unglamorous details: lighting bright enough to see a burr on metal, benches at a height that does not wreck shoulders, heavy items kept low and light ones above head height, and a floor clear of offcuts and cable. Noise deserves a mention too — a shop vacuum and a compressor in one small room add up.

If people work alone or out of hours, write the rules down. What can be done solo, what needs a second person, how someone raises the alarm, and how they check in.

The ten-point pre-build checklist

Use this as the gate before a new project, a new machine or a new occupant.

1. Supply and protection: circuits known, RCDs in place, no daisy-chained leads.
2. Equipment tested: portable items in date, plugs and cables undamaged.
3. Battery charging: dedicated non-combustible surface, nothing left overnight.
4. Chemical inventory: current, labelled, quantities sensible.
5. Storage: segregated by hazard, flammables in a suitable cupboard.
6. Extraction and ventilation: sized for the worst process in the room, filters and ducts in good order.
7. Fire and emergency: extinguishers matched to the hazards, spill kit stocked, eyewash reachable, exit clear.
8. Guards and interlocks: tested, not bypassed, replacements ordered when broken.
9. Training and permissions: recorded for every tool used on this build.
10. Lone working and waste: rules written, waste route agreed before the first job starts.

Keep the checklist alive

A checklist that lives in a folder is decoration. Put a name and a date against it: who reviewed it, when, and what changed. Run a five-minute walk of the lab at the end of each week, and log near misses rather than shrugging them off. The cable that tripped someone and the iron that was left on are free information.

Then repeat the review whenever the equipment, the chemistry or the people change. Small labs drift quickly, and a document that was accurate six months ago can be quietly wrong today. Ten risks, reviewed honestly, keep a lab building things instead of recovering from them.

Photo: igorovsyannykov / Pixabay