Laboratory Managers Conference 2008

10–12 November 2008
Darling Harbour, Sydney

Laboratory managers, as a group, have not been recognised to any extent in Australia. The Science Industry Association (SIA) aims to redress this situation by holding annual conferences which seek to address issues that are of specific interest to laboratory managers as a whole.

Even though the conference is branded as ‘Laboratory Managers’, it is equally relevant for technical, scientific and facility managers to attend as the topics covered are extremely germane to their areas of work and responsibility as well as laboratory managers.

SIA has also formed the Australasian Laboratory Managers’ Association (ALMA) to bring laboratory managers closer together and keep them informed on relevant topics.

The 2008 conference is to be held in November at Dockside in Sydney, on the water next to Darling Harbour, a great showcase for Sydney’s charms. It will run over three days (10, 11 and 12 Nov) and, as well as a series of presentations, will feature the chance to visit two leading Sydney laboratories.

A new feature of the conference will be a Knowledge Sharing session, where the participants will break into groups with like interests to share information and confer about common problems. This is a feature which has been requested by many former participants, and we hope it will foster a greater sense of participation and enable much more effective networking.

The conference presentations are built around four themes:

• Employing and managing people
• Laboratory design
• OHS
• Automation and systems

Each of the themes will be covered in a series of presentations by experts in their respective fields. The keynote address for the first theme will be by well-known science employment specialist Diana Heery, who will talk on ‘Employing and retaining staff’. For the laboratory design theme, Jeff Freeman, project director, Australian BioResources at the Garvan Institute in Sydney, will speak on ‘Recent trends in laboratory design’ with special reference to the new Garvan facility at Moss Vale.

After the conference sessions, on the third afternoon, delegates will have the option of visiting either the Garvan Institute in Darlinghurst, a leading medical research establishment, or the National Measurement Institute in Lindfield, the premier government-funded analytical facility.

The conference will start on Monday 10 November with a day of workshops, where participants will have the opportunity to learn new skills under the guidance of experts from Box Hill TAFE in Melbourne. The topics to be covered are:

• Running a compliant laboratory (full day)
• Recruiting, motivating and managing staff (half day)
• Financial controls in the laboratory: metrics and budgets (half day)

Additionally, an important part of this and every Laboratory Managers Conference is the trade exhibition. SIA corporate members will be showcasing the latest trends in automation, productivity tools, and laboratory design and outfitting in an adjacent exhibition area to the conference room.

A unique initiative first introduced in 2006 at the first Laboratory Managers conference in Melbourne will be repeated at this conference. Each exhibitor will have the opportunity to address the assembled delegates for two minutes on what delegates can expect to see and learn by visiting the exhibitor’s booth.

Feedback from the previous conferences has shown this to be a very well accepted and looked forward to initiative by the conference organisers.

Further details of the conference and enrolment forms can be downloaded from the SIA website.