Agreed. I generally encounter these kinds of complaints from safety-compliance perspectives. At the core is a lack of alignment and collective ownership of the

Agreed. I generally encounter these kinds of complaints from safety-compliance perspectives. At the core is a lack of alignment and collective ownership of the necessary final outcome. My overriding impression has always been that at the high level, both safety inspectors and the people in the labs want the same thing: a safe working environment and the ability to get science done. There is always some tension there (scientists, especially young scientists, are sometimes willing to accept more risk to get science done, as it is their time, and hence lives, being gradually consumed by additional measures to improve safety), but there is general agreement that safe working conditions are a huge net benefit. It is difficult for the workers in the labs to place themselves in the shoes of the safety inspectors -- what seems like paperwork is actually a surface check to see if you are organized. If you can't explain your safety procedures to someone versed in scientific safety, how can you possibly explain them to an untrained worker/student? The one thing that can frustrate the entire process, which I suspect is at the root of most university troubles, is a lack of goal-alignment between departments within the organization. If safety inspectors don't feel ownership of getting quality science out the door and only want to reach internal safety targets and scientists are only interested in holding their small lab's accident rate to zero, rather than that of the much-larger university as a whole, nobody's goals will ever get met. When things are going right, inspections are a chance to show off how awesome your systems are and an opportunity to improve.