Hello, The Birck leadership and staff are slowly working our way towards preparation of the facility for Phase2 of the plan outlined by EVPR’s office. In preparation for that, the first step was to prepare the public areas of Birck, write a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for Birck as a whole, and get it approved by the campus Building task force. Ron Reger and his team have prepared an SOP that I attach below. Please go through it carefully and if you have any questions, suggestions for improvements, concerns, please contact Ron immediately. After the building committee approves Birck, its SOP, the next step is to write and submit individual lab SOPs. We are attaching here the latest list of lab#s and PI affiliation. Please use the attached Birck SOP as a starting point and create a SOP for your lab. Please make sure you consult the Staff liaison to your lab and ensure the two of you agree with the SOP. Note that the staff are working full time, and will be easy to reach by email, phone, Teams or webex audio/video chat. I hope both the PIs and Staff proactively reach out to each other and get started on the lab SOPs asap. (I dont expect the SOPs to be dramatically different for testing labs, but wet labs, growth labs, shared facilities may have some extra things to add). When the document is ready, please email a copy titled “Lab#_SOP.docx” to Ron. The plan is the have this ready for submission/review by the building committee so that there is minimal delay in the process. At the latest, please send it by Monday May 25, 2020 9am. In the excel sheet below you will also see the square footage and unfilled column G on # of researchers allowed in lab at a given time. The leadership and staff are working towards a gradual introduction and ramp-up. Chances are initially we will allow ~1 or 2 researchers per lab at a given time and we will ask you to setup your own lab reservation schedule such that the students establish a rotation. We would love to hear your thoughts on the process (which may have changed since the last time I asked). In the end we will perform a slow ramp-up, continue to modify and improve our SOPs, ensure safety and protect ALL users and staff. If we all work together on this, we will make Birck a Safe and High Impact research environment for post-Covid era. thank you, Sunil.