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Newsletter: 

RECRUITING FOR ASQ/EED ANALYTICAL LABORATORIES TECHNICAL COMMITTEE

As the Chair of the new Analytical Laboratories Committee of the Energy and Environmental Division of the American Society for Quality, I compiled a listing of people who have recently attended large environmental/energy conferences. This demonstrates their active interest in issues affecting, among others, the analytical laboratory community. 

This E-Mailing is intended to inform you about the ASQ-EED-ALTC, and invite you to join us. Please respond to me at paul.mills@mentorprises.com, and I’ll either keep you on the list for future mailings, or drop you from it, as you wish. To avoid clogging the E-mail pipeline, if you would respond with a short note instead of using your e-mail “reply” button (that sends this whole message back to me again), I’ll have fewer megabytes to download from the server. If you know someone who may be interested, please forward this message to them. Thanks for your consideration.

Topics Of This Mailing:
ASQ EED Background Information
Analytical Laboratories Technical Committee (ALTC) Draft Mission Statement
ALTC Goals, Work Areas and Volunteers Needed: 
Upcoming Conferences and Paper Opportunities

ASQ ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL DIVISION BACKGROUND INFORMATION
(for more details, see http://www.envnet.org/asq/eed )
Division Mission Statement: To provide educational resources, technical information, and communication services to enable people to apply the quality principles and practices in the energy and environmental fields and to facilitate the integration of quality, environmental, safety and health management practices.
Division Vision: To be the preferred source for information, education, professional development, and networking for quality in the energy and environmental sectors of business and government and to be the preferred source of information, education, and networking related to the integration of quality, environmental, safety and health management systems.
Division Constituents: The EED has a two-part constituent base. The base has an energy component and an environmental, safety and health component. The EED supports the energy industry with quality and environmental management services and expertise and also supports all industries, businesses, and the other 21 ASQ divisions involved in the environmental, safety, and health fields. 
The Division is expanding into the areas of health and safety. The integration of quality, environmental, health and safety management is becoming a single departmental function in many companies (particularly those in the energy industries). The Division is sensitive to the role our members may be asked to play as such integration occurs.
Division Standards: The EED has four of the total of 25 standards issued by ASQ. The ASQ environmental quality systems document developed by the Division (“E-4”) has been adopted and implemented by executive order for the EPA’s QA program.

ANALYTICAL LABORATORIES TECHNICAL COMMITTEE DRAFT MISSION STATEMENT
Technical Committee Mission Statement: To apply the mission statement of the Division to analytical laboratories in the energy and environmental industries.
Technical Committee Vision: To be the preferred source for information, education, professional development, and networking for quality in the energy and environmental sectors of business and government and to be the preferred source of information, education, and networking related to analytical laboratories.
Technical Committee Goals: Continuously improve quality in analytical laboratories in the energy and environmental areas. Lead, promote, educate, influence, communicate, and support quality improvement efforts.
Technical Committee Constituents: Members whose primary function or interest involves working in these areas and with analytical laboratories are encouraged to join the Division and become active in the Technical Committee. 

ALTC GOALS, WORK AREAS AND VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: 
The following list of goals was presented and approved by the Division Council at the Orlando meeting, October, 1998. 
1) Help environmental laboratories, their clients, and regulators in the development, implementation, certification, and auditing of Performance Based Measurement Systems. We can provide significant resources to assist all parties with definitions, training, certification, auditing, validation, and general guidance. Working with EPA, NELAC, ACIL, etc. we should be able to make transitions from prescriptive to performance based approaches smoother for all concerned.
2) Establish quality improvement tools for use by analytical laboratories. Provide training as part of conferences, at workshops, by in-house presentations, interactive training on computers and the Internet. Topics could include TQM, quality improvement teams, quality tools, statistical tools, team-building, and metrics.
3) As more labs continue to automate, the need to continually develop, refine, and apply appropriate Good Automated Lab Practices will increase. The Committee should lead in preparing guidance for implementation of GALP in environmental laboratories. Adapting the EPA's existing guidance, and drawing from pharmaceutical and food labs, should provide a good starting point.
4) Provide guidance, definitions, and examples for ethical laboratory conduct. There is no quality without integrity, and with the ASQ credo and professional pride as our support, we should be leaders in this area. Quality professionals need guidance in how to investigate these issues and what standards apply. 

In subsequent meetings with interested members, the following were also recommended:
5) Benchmarking: Conduct surveys of laboratories with successful quality programs to establish comparative measurements. Apply the survey results to assist labs in improvements. Despite the mass of guidance available, labs still need good models for adequate quality systems for all lab operations.
6) Green Chemistry: Compile recommended sources, practices, references and guidance for labs in minimizing waste and promoting Pollution Prevention and responsible Hazardous Waste Disposal.
7) Liaison/Networking: Coordinate activities with other groups working in support of analytical labs to provide quality improvement input (such as CENSA, ISO, ASTM, A2LA, ACIL, NELAC, etc.).
8) Standards Source: Serve as a developer and coordinator for quality standards applicable to the analytical laboratory. Alert constituents and other organizations including regulators when those standards may need to be changed.

ALTC GOALS, WORK AREAS AND VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: 
Each of these topics leads to opportunities for the Division to present information to the users--via conference, workshop, written and electronic media. We need active volunteers, and will be recruiting members to lead these efforts. Volunteers are needed for the following positions: 

Newsletter Editor for future E-mailings
WebCruisers to suggest helpful/related sites (like http://www.frtr.gov)
WebMaster to develop Technical Committee Webpages on the Division Website
Liaison Volunteers to NELAC, EPA, DOE, DOD, USGS, states, A2LA, ACIL, etc.

UPCOMING CONFERENCES AND PAPER OPPORTUNITIES--See the Activities page for professional development activities that you can join.
 

I look forward to working with the current and prospective Division members to help raise the quality of analytical laboratories. If you have questions, please call me at (703)-723-5997, or e-mail me at paul.mills@mentorprises.com.