Quality Reminder
By Ginger Collins
ASL has successfully renewed accreditation with the National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program (NELAP), using the Oregon Laboratory Accreditation Program (ORELAP) as the primary accrediting authority, for the seventh year in a row. NELAP certification is a stamp of quality. With this premier accreditation, one can be assured that ASL's analytical results and work products are of a quality that more than complies to the highest of industry and federal agency standards.
NELAP is designed to implement laboratory performance standards established and promoted by the National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Conference (NELAC). This cooperative association of states and federal agencies works to ensure that environmental laboratory data used for public health and environmental management decisions is of known and acceptable quality. NELAC also provides a means for private sector input to the process. The standards cover both analytical testing of environmental samples and the laboratory accreditation process.
There are 12 states that offer NELAP accreditation; ASL can use our primary ORELAP accreditation to get secondary accreditation in any of the other NELAP states. Additionally, many other non-NELAP states accept NELAP accreditation rather than performing their own onsite assessment. This expedites the accreditation process and allows ASL to quickly meet the accreditation requirements of customers and projects.
To maintain the lab's NELAC accreditation, ASL annually submits an application that provides general laboratory information; requested methods, analytes, and matrices; the laboratory quality manual; demonstration of capabilities and method detection limits for each method, analyte, and matrix; and standard operating procedures. ASL is also required to perform biannual proficiency testing samples and complete an onsite assessment performed by the ORELAP assessment team every other year.
ASL is continually adding parameters and state certifications for CH2M HILL projects. If you have an analytical project that requires a specific state or federal agency certification, contact me (Ginger Collins) 541-768-3111 to confirm our certification. If we don't currently have it, we can evaluate the need and proceed with acquiring it.