The Public Safety Core is integrated with campus-wide services under the direction of Boston University Police and Boston University Medical Center Public Safety Departments and is supported by leadership, administrative and technical resources well beyond those identified in the budget and program submission. The continued integration and improvement of Public Safety programs across Boston University is the responsibility of the Executive Director, Public Safety and Chief of Police while the implementation of changes and improvements impacting the NEIDL specific initiatives are the responsibility of the Assistant Director of the Public Safety Core. The NEIDL Public Safety Core is a fully operational department that has maintained its focus on facility safety and security. This is accomplished by highly trained and disciplined personnel, state of the art security monitoring and automation systems, appropriate Standard Operating Procedures and constant collaboration with all NEIDL Cores. The Public Safety Core Team continues to focus on the transition of the NEIDL from its current state to an active BSL4 Laboratory. Core personnel meet regularly to discuss operational planning and strategies for ramped up activities from access control, background screening, systems configurations, staffing, training, and emergency response and contingency planning. In December of 2011 the Core achieved its goal of centralized dispatch and monitoring. The Security Command and Control Center with-in the NEIDL centrally houses all of the monitoring capability, systems controls and radio communication and interagency operability. This advancement not only provides greater efficiency, more effective monitoring and response but also give the team the opportunity to exercise and revise as necessary standard operational procedures designed for Control Center Operations. The Executive Director, Public Safety and NEIDL Leadership meet regularly to review SOPs, staffing, security issues and incidents and work closely to ensure coordination between institutional and NEIDL programs.
The Public Safety Core is responsible for the overall security of the NEIDL facility, preventing unauthorized access to the perimeter, facility, BSL-3 and BSL -4 locations and protection of the select agent program from theft, loss and release. This is accomplished through a program of threat and risk assessment, highly trained personnel, electronic security monitoring systems, audit processes, defined Standard Operating Procedures and ongoing training programs.
| LeDuc, James W; Anderson, Kevin; Bloom, Marshall E et al. (2009) Potential impact of a 2-person security rule on BioSafety Level 4 laboratory workers. Emerg Infect Dis 15:e1 |
