QMUL Fire Safety Adviser Richard Wheatley Delegation visited QMES to conduct a fire safety audit

On January 10, 2020, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) Fire Safety Adviser Richard Wheatley, Faculty China Operations Manager Tom Hewitt, Lab Safety Manager for School of Engineering and Materials Science (SEMS), QMUL, Benjamin Gridley visited Queen Mary Engineering School, NPU (QMES) to conduct a fire safety tour. Vice Dean Xiaoli Fan, Executive Vice Dean Andy Bushby, and Vice chief of the Fire Protection Department of Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) Pengcheng Yang and other related staff accompanied this audit.

Entrusted by Jie Kong, the Dean of QMES, Vice Dean Xiaoli Fan expressed a warm welcome to Richard Wheatley and his delegation, and gave a brief introduction of the school fire safety system, safety facilitiesconfiguration and the situation of the regular safety drill running. Later on, Richard Wheatley and his team visited the school office, innovation laboratory, internet smart classroom, other related office and teaching areas, and the living apartment for British teachers, providing a safety assessment on the safety guidelines signs, fire hydrants, fire extinguishers, fire shutters, smoke alarms and other fire safety facilities.

In order to improve the school safety management level, to provide a safe, harmonious working and studying environment for both teachers and students, there established a safety work leading group at the beginning of the QMES foundation according to the school requirements. The safety leading group is in charge of formulating and implementing a series of safety management policies and emergency plans for all the related working space including dormitory, office area, teaching area, laboratory and network information. In September, 2019, the safety leading group finished updating and improving the fire safety facilities after carrying out a school fire safety inspection collaborated with the NPU Security Department. At present, the school has installed 83 smoke detectors, 7 sound-light alarms, 5 manual alarm buttons, 8 fire hydrant alarm buttons, 5 fire shutters control modules, and 14 fire safety broadcasts.

Richard Wheatley expressed great recognition and affirmation on the school safety work, and provided important suggestions for further improvement referring to the relevant fire safety regulations ofQMUL.

Xiaoli Fan mentioned that the school has always paid great attention to the hidden safety problem within studying, working and living areas. The safety work leading group has installed corresponding safety facilities and arranged regular maintenance according to the relevant requirements of NPU. She hoped that the school safety management level and related safety facilities would be further improved with the help from this safety tour.

Richard Wheatley and the safety team went to visit the functional polymer laboratory, mechanics laboratory and the center of chemistry experiment School of Science afterwards and had a nice communication. On the afternoon of January 9, they also visited the State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing and Analytical and Testing Centre based in the School of Materials Science and Engineering in Youyi Campus.All laboratories mentioned above are open to QMES students for the lab courses and graduation projects. The fire safety warning signs, smoke sensor and spray device were clearly labelled and fully equipped in every laboratory.

The safety tour not only enhance the school toimprovethe fire safety facilities, build up a complete and standardised safety system, and promote the fire safety management level, but also reflect the common attention of teachers and students safety management from both QMUL and NPU, showing further exploration and communication of all-round cooperation and healthy sustainable development beyond just teaching and scientific research.