Johanna San Martin, Group Facilities Manager

Role: Group Facilities Manager — a non-clinical operational role

Registration: Not applicable. Facilities management is not a registered health profession. The Dental Board of Australia does not register facilities, operations or administrative staff, and no AHPRA registration attaches to this role.

The practice publishes no further biographical detail for this position. The full team list is on the our team page, and the clinicians' registration categories are set out on the dentists and registered specialists page.

A facilities title is not a clinical qualification. Only a registered practitioner may diagnose, recommend treatment or explain clinical risk.

That is a statement about the law, not modesty. Ahpra's Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service list the dental profession's protected titles as "dentist, dental therapist, dental hygienist, dental prosthetist, oral health therapist" — and no operational or administrative title appears on that list or on any other. Under the National Law, a person "must not knowingly or recklessly claim or hold themself out to be registered or qualified to practise in a health profession or a division of a health profession if the person is not so registered" (section 117, as Ahpra summarises it). The registrations that do exist here are checkable free on the public register at ahpra.gov.au.

What facilities management covers in a dental practice

The building and everything in it that makes clinical work possible:

• Surgeries and their fit-out — chairs, lighting, delivery units, suction
• Plant and building services — compressed air, suction plant, water, ventilation, power
• Equipment maintenance, servicing and replacement, including autoclaves and imaging equipment
• Waste management, clinical and general
• Accessibility and wayfinding
• Security, after-hours access, and emergency procedures
• Contractor management and the compliance that comes with it

None of it is visible to a patient when it works. All of it is visible when it does not. The scale of the operation is described in everything under one roof — we do it all at Smile Solutions.

Accessibility in a heritage building

Worth addressing directly, because the practice occupies Level 1 of the Manchester Unity Building, a 1932 building on the Victorian Heritage Register — see our location.

Heritage listing constrains what can be altered. Changes to a listed building's fabric require approval, and that genuinely limits what is possible — doorway widths, floor levels, lift dimensions and bathroom layouts in a 1930s building were not designed to modern accessibility standards, and cannot always be brought to them.

What that means practically: phone ahead on 13 13 96 if you have specific access requirements — a wheelchair, a mobility aid, a pram, a companion, an assistance animal, or an interpreter. It is not an imposition and it is the single most useful thing you can do, because arrangements that are straightforward with notice are difficult improvised on the day. The contact page has the other ways to reach the practice.

Things worth asking about when you call:

• Lift access and step-free entry from the street
• Accessible bathroom facilities
• Whether a particular surgery suits a wheelchair transfer, or whether treatment can be provided in the chair you arrive in
• A quieter time of day, if noise or crowding is difficult — the same adjustment that helps with dental anxiety, and one of the practical measures set out in visiting the dentist: caring for a child with autism and oral health care for children with special needs
• Parking and drop-off, which in the Melbourne CBD needs planning
• Longer appointment time, if you need breaks

Say what you need rather than what you have. ‘I cannot manage stairs' or ‘I need to stay in my chair' is more useful to the person arranging it than a diagnosis. How can I ease my anxiety about visiting the dentist? covers the same conversation from the other side.

The infrastructure behind infection control

Infection control is usually described as a clinical process. A large part of it is actually plant.

Dental unit waterlines. The narrow tubing carrying water to the handpiece and the three-in-one syringe has very low flow and a large surface-to-volume ratio, which makes it prone to biofilm if untreated. Managing it — disinfection, flushing protocols, and water quality monitoring — is routine and continuous. It is a fair thing to ask a practice about, and one of the questions worth raising in 5 questions you've always wanted to ask your dentist.

Compressed air and suction. Both are shared plant serving every surgery. Air must be dry and oil-free; suction must maintain flow, because effective suction is part of aerosol control, not just comfort.

Ventilation and air exchange. Since 2020 these have been treated as infection control rather than comfort — air exchange rates, and the time allowed between aerosol-generating procedures, are now part of how a day is planned.

Autoclaves. Servicing, validation and calibration are scheduled maintenance obligations, and the records are part of what a practice is audited on. Radiographic equipment carries its own testing regime — how safe are dental x-rays and how safe are dental X-rays and when do they become unsafe? deal with the dose question.

Dose auditing, and a gap worth knowing about

In medical imaging generally, equipment performance is benchmarked against diagnostic reference levels. ARPANSA defines a DRL as "an indicative measure used to assess whether, in routine conditions, the amount of radiation used is unusually high (or low) for a specified procedure", and is explicit that "a DRL is not a regulatory limit, it is a benchmark that when exceeded triggers a review".

Where national DRLs exist, the obligations on an imaging service are concrete. The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care requires services to "have a program to collect radiation dose data, calculate FRLs and compare these to the established national DRLs", to "undertake an annual audit", to "provide in the audit records a justification when the median radiation dose (the FRL) is higher than the national DRL", and to "update practice policies within six months of new or revised national DRLs being published by ARPANSA".

Here is the part that is rarely said out loud: those national benchmarks do not yet exist for dentistry. ARPANSA states plainly that "there are no Australian DRLs for planar radiography, dental X-ray, cone beam CT or mammography" — its DRL programme has so far covered CT, nuclear medicine and PET, and coronary angiography.

What follows from that is not alarm, it is where the responsibility actually sits. Without a national dental benchmark, dose control rests on equipment registration and compliance testing, on the operator's technique, and on the clinician justifying each exposure individually. Internationally published typical doses — the IAEA's figures are the ones this site quotes on how safe are dental x-rays — fill the comparison role a DRL would otherwise play. The IAEA also notes that "a qualified expert (e.g. medical physicist) can measure the abovementioned dose quantities", which is who a practice engages for that work.

Waste, including the part with a real environmental dimension

Dental practices generate several separated streams:

• Clinical and infectious waste, handled under state requirements
• Sharps, in approved containers
• General and recyclable waste
• Lead foil from older film-based radiography
• Chemicals, including processing chemistry where film is still used

And amalgam. This is the interesting one. Dental amalgam contains mercury, and waste amalgam must not enter the sewer. Practices fit amalgam separators to chairside suction, and the captured waste goes to licensed recycling.

This is an environmental control, not a patient-safety one. The Minamata Convention — the international treaty driving the global phase-down of dental amalgam — is an environmental instrument concerned with mercury in the ecosystem. It is not a finding that amalgam fillings harm the people who have them, and the two are constantly conflated. There is no good evidence that intact amalgam fillings harm health, and removing sound amalgam fillings to ‘detoxify' is not supported by evidence — it destroys tooth structure and releases more mercury vapour than leaving them alone. The material comparison for new work is in dental fillings: porcelain, amalgam or composite resin?, the service page is tooth fillings, and what is holistic dentistry? and the practice's holistic dentistry page set out where that approach does and does not follow the evidence.

Emergencies, and the building

• Evacuation procedures matter more in a multi-tenant high-rise than in a standalone clinic, and they have to account for patients who are mid-treatment, sedated, or unable to use stairs.
• Power failure in a dental surgery means no suction, no light and no chair movement. Practices plan for it.
• Water interruption stops most clinical work outright.
• The medical emergency kit, oxygen and defibrillator have locations, expiry dates and check schedules — a shared responsibility between facilities and the clinical team. In a medical emergency, call 000. For a dental one, see emergency dentistry and what should I do in a dental emergency?

Where to direct what

• Clinical questions — your dentist or specialist
• Access, parking, the building, an equipment problem — reception, who will route it to facilities
• Costs and quotes — a treatment coordinator; indicative fees are on the price guide
• Unresolved complaints — practice management, then the Health Complaints Commissioner in Victoria, or AHPRA for practitioner conduct

Registration

The Dental Board of Australia registers dentists, dental specialists, dental hygienists, dental therapists, oral health therapists and dental prosthetists — not facilities, operations or administrative staff, dental assistants or dental technicians. Appliance construction happens in the Smile Solutions laboratory, which is a technical rather than a clinical function.

The registrations that matter for your care are those of the clinicians treating you, verifiable free on the AHPRA public register at ahpra.gov.au. The Dental Board states that "Ahpra publishes an online register of all dental practitioners that provides the profession and the public with up-to-date information about a dental practitioner's registration status", and that it "also includes details of the specialty or specialties for dentists who hold specialist registration". Every registered practitioner is bound by the Board's Scope of practice registration standard (in effect 1 July 2020), which requires them "to practise within the scope of their education, training, and competence at all times" — and by standards on continuing professional development and recency of practice (both in effect since 1 December 2015), professional indemnity insurance (1 July 2016), English language skills (18 March 2025) and criminal history (15 July 2026). None of those obligations attach to an unregistered role, which is the honest reason this page keeps pointing at the clinicians.

Common questions

Should I have my amalgam fillings taken out because of the mercury?

Not on the strength of anything in the independent reference material behind these pages — and that cuts both ways, so here is exactly what we can and cannot tell you.

What we can tell you. The Minamata Convention, which drives the global phase-down of dental amalgam, is an environmental treaty about mercury in the ecosystem. That is why this page discusses amalgam under waste management, and why practices fit separators to chairside suction. A phase-down driven by what happens to mercury after it leaves the surgery is not a finding about what it does while it is in a tooth, and the two are conflated constantly — including by people selling removal.

What we cannot tell you. The curated third-party library behind this site — regulators, national bodies and peer-reviewed clinical literature — contains no statement on the safety of dental amalgam, or of composite resin, in either direction. We looked. There is no Australian regulator statement in it saying amalgam is safe, and none saying it is harmful. Anyone citing one to you, in either direction, should be asked for the document.

What is not in dispute is the arithmetic of removal itself. Taking out a sound, intact filling removes tooth structure that does not grow back, commits that tooth to a larger restoration, and — during the removal — releases more mercury vapour than leaving it undisturbed would. So a removal proposed for a reason other than the state of the filling is asking you to accept a certain, irreversible cost against an uncertain benefit.

The decision rule that follows is the ordinary one for any restoration: replace it when it fails — when it is fractured, leaking, decayed underneath or no longer restoring the tooth — and not on a schedule or a theory. If you want composite for new work or for a genuine replacement, that is a straightforward conversation. See dental fillings: porcelain, amalgam or composite resin?.

How do I know the X-ray machine is set correctly for me?

This is the patient-facing version of the dose-auditing gap described above, and the honest answer has two halves.

The benchmark you might expect does not exist for dentistry. ARPANSA is explicit: "there are no Australian DRLs for planar radiography, dental X-ray, cone beam CT or mammography". So a dental practice cannot do what a CT service must do — collect dose data, calculate its own facility reference level and compare it to a published national figure, with an annual audit and a written justification whenever it sits above the national number. That machinery simply has no dental equivalent yet.

What does the work instead is a three-part arrangement: equipment registration and compliance testing, operator technique, and — the part you can actually influence — the clinician justifying each exposure individually. The published radiology principle is that "strict and individualized justification should determine the prescription of each radiograph" and that a justified radiograph "should make a substantial contribution to distinguishing between treatment options".

So the useful question is not about the machine, it is about the image. What is this radiograph for; what would change depending on what it shows; and is there an existing image that already answers it. Records and radiographs travel between practices on request, and repeating an image that already answers the question is the avoidable exposure.

For scale, the International Atomic Energy Agency publishes typical effective doses of "1–8 μSv" for an intraoral dental X-ray and "4-30 μSv" for panoramic examinations, describing intraoral doses as "usually less than one day of natural background radiation". A cone beam CT is a different proposition and belongs to a different conversation — ask what scanning volume is proposed and what decision it will change. See how safe are dental x-rays.

I have an allergy. Who needs to know, and how far ahead?

Tell reception when you book, and tell the clinician again when you sit down. Both, because they act on it differently: one arranges what comes into the room, the other decides what is used in your mouth.

Chlorhexidine is the example worth understanding, because it is common in dentistry and unusually hard to avoid by reading labels. The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, with the Australian and New Zealand Anaesthetic Allergy Group, describes it as "a highly effective antiseptic agent" and states that "allergic reactions to chlorhexidine are rare, but are increasing in frequency, possibly due to increased use of chlorhexidine containing products".

The labelling problem is the reason advance notice matters. ASCIA warns that "the presence of chlorhexidine is often not obvious, and labelling can be inconsistent", that "there is no universal symbol identifying that a product contains chlorhexidine", and that it may appear as an abbreviation such as "'CHG' in dressings or 'AGB' on central venous lines". It is present in mouthwashes, in skin preparation, in some dressings, in lubricants and as a coating on some medical devices. ASCIA also records that "people with chlorhexidine allergy often have more than one reaction due to misdiagnosis or accidental re-exposure caused by inadequate labelling or awareness".

One piece of good news from the same source: people with chlorhexidine allergy "should be able to tolerate other antiseptic products due to the lack of cross-reactivity", so a substitution is normally straightforward once it is known about.

What to bring. If an allergy has been formally diagnosed, bring the documentation or the name of the clinic that tested you, and say which reaction you had. "I react to something in mouthwash" and "I have tested positive to chlorhexidine" lead to different handling, and the second one should be recorded in your file so it is not relied on your memory every visit. The same applies to latex, local anaesthetic, antibiotics and metals.

I use a wheelchair, or I cannot manage stairs. What should I actually ask before I come?

Ring before you book rather than after, on 13 13 96, and describe the day rather than the diagnosis. The section above lists the things to ask about; this is how to make the call productive.

Describe the whole journey, not just the chair. Getting from the street into the building, the lift, the corridor, the waiting area, the bathroom, and the transfer into or out of a dental chair are separate problems, and a building can solve some and not others. A practice can only plan for the parts it is told about.

Ask what cannot be done, explicitly. This matters more in a 1932 heritage-listed building than in a modern fit-out, because — as set out above — alterations to a listed building's fabric require approval and some things genuinely cannot be changed. A straight answer about a limitation is more useful than a reassurance that fails on the day, and it is a fair question to put directly.

Three practical requests that are usually accommodated with notice and rarely at short notice: a longer appointment, so there is time for transfers and breaks; a quieter time of day; and treatment delivered in the chair you arrive in, where that is clinically possible. If a companion, carer, interpreter or assistance animal will be with you, say so when booking rather than on arrival.

And if the answer is that the building cannot accommodate something, ask what the alternative is. That is a legitimate question and the practice should be able to answer it rather than leaving you to work it out. Parking and drop-off in the Melbourne CBD are worth settling in the same call — see our location.

Related pages: Our Team, Our Location, Contact Us, Our Technology, Why choose us.

Practical details

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000. Phone 13 13 96, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment.

If you have specific access requirements, phone ahead on 13 13 96 so the appointment can be arranged properly.

Sources for the externally verifiable statements on this page

• Ahpra — Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service, for the protected titles and the holding-out provisions.
• Dental Board of Australia — Registration Standards and the Scope of practice registration standard.
• ARPANSA — the definition of a diagnostic reference level, and the modalities for which Australian DRLs do and do not exist.
• Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care — Advisory DI21/03, on comparison with national diagnostic reference levels.
• International Atomic Energy Agency — typical effective doses for intraoral and panoramic dental imaging; and a peer-reviewed study of radiograph justification (PubMed Central).
• Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, with the Australian and New Zealand Anaesthetic Allergy Group — Chlorhexidine Allergy patient information, June 2024.

This page records a staff role as published by the practice. General information only. Waste, radiation and building regulation are set by state and national authorities and change; confirm current requirements with the relevant regulator.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.