The Engine Accelerator grew from 10 to 50 laboratory resident companies since implementing SciShield.

About The Engine Accelerator:

The Engine Accelerator bridges the gap between discovery and commercialization for the most promising breakthrough inventions, ensuring they don't get stuck inside a lab. Their mission is to provide founders with access to the infrastructure, resources, and community they need to scale their companies. They create co-working spaces for early-stage companies in the creation phase, so these companies don't have to worry about the overhead of leasing and building out their own space.

Business Challenges:

Over the last six and a half years, The Engine Accelerator has experienced significant growth and success, rapidly scaling two separate functions under one organization. That sounds amazing, so where is the challenge in that? With growth, it's essential to make sure your organization can scale. If you're going to be a home for "tough tech," then having software to automate and organize your company foundation is crucial.

“We’ve replaced Excel, paper, and Access databases with efficiency, turning manual tasks from hours into minutes."

One of the complex parts of the Lab Operations team's responsibilities is coordinating between 50 different resident companies, ensuring they have everything they need to perform cutting-edge research while maintaining compliance. This includes everything from de-risking the organization from fines, proving the research environment is safe, and falling within the lines of regulations set by local ordinances and federal regulations. Previously, Lab Operations relied primarily on Excel spreadsheets to manage these complexities.

Benefits:

Automating manual inventory processes.

Quantifying all chemicals by hazard class can be a miserable process. Without the resources available within ChemTracker, Lab Operations spend unknown hours collecting this information at their current scale. Additionally, understanding information about chemical inventory, such as the location of compressed gases, allows Lab Operations to make informed decisions about where Resident Companies should be located.

“We get really weird chemicals and mixtures, and you can find them
in ChemTracker most times.” 

Minimizing time-intensive compliance reporting.

One of the most time-intensive responsibilities for Lab Operations is maintaining compliance with various permitting obligations. With ChemTracker, Lab Operations has increased efficiency so much that The Engine Accelerator expanded their offerings to permits that they otherwise wouldn't be able to support. With the bandwidth to offer rDNA permits,

"We've added 25 companies performing work with genetic engineering technologies to our portfolio."

Successes:

Hours turned into minutes!

For their customers that used Excel, paper, and Access databases, after the implementation of ChemTracker, they experienced an efficiency improvement for identifying hazard information for resident companies, locations, and individuals from several hours to less than 5 minutes. 

"The time spent identifying hazard information for resident companies, locations, and individuals shrank from several hours to less than 5 minutes."

Increased confidence.

Using ChemTracker has increased confidence in Lab Operations in their knowledge of the presence of hazardous chemicals, the accuracy of their data, and their preparedness for regulatory audits. This means streamlining burdensome permitting and reporting, which ultimately allowed for growth and portfolio expansion at scale.

Extended success.

The benefits of ChemTracker also extend to Residents at The Engine Accelerator. They can quickly determine how many chemicals are in inventory, locate digital SDS instead of relying on paper binders, and have greater awareness of the hazards present in their labs.

"ChemTracker is like their very own shopping cart."

Researchers know what chemicals are undercounted, overcounted, or unaccounted for to help them be more sustainable with ordering for their next big project.

Learn more about The Engine Accelerator - https://engine.xyz/