Laboratories
Quality Assurance in Laboratories and Chemical Analysis to ISO/IEC 17025
An applied programme in ensuring the validity of chemical test results to the requirements of ISO/IEC 17025: method validation, estimation of measurement uncertainty, internal quality control with control charts, and interlaboratory comparisons and proficiency testing.
Overview
About the programme
Duration
5 days
Delivery
Training hall · Virtual · At your premises
Language
Arabic or English
Objectives
Training outcomes
- Distinguish quality management, quality assurance and quality control, and link each to the relevant clauses of ISO/IEC 17025 (7.2, 7.6 and 7.7).
- Identify the sources of random and systematic error in chemical analysis and deal with them.
- Plan the validation or verification of an analytical method: linearity, working range, limits of detection and quantification, trueness, precision, selectivity and robustness.
- Estimate the measurement uncertainty of an analytical method and prepare an uncertainty budget.
- Build and interpret control charts, and use reference materials, duplicates, spikes and blanks in internal quality control.
- Take part in proficiency testing, interpret the results with z-scores, and follow up unsatisfactory results.
Content
What the programme covers
Day 1: quality in the analytical laboratory
- Quality management, assurance and control, and the ISO/IEC 17025 requirements for ensuring the validity of results.
- Types and sources of error in chemical analysis: random, systematic and gross.
- Ways of expressing concentration, significant figures, and basic statistics: mean, standard deviation and relative standard deviation.
Day 2: method validation
- The difference between method validation and method verification, and when each is needed.
- Performance characteristics: linearity and working range, limits of detection and quantification, recovery, repeatability and within-laboratory precision, selectivity and robustness.
- Planning a validation study and documenting it in a report.
Day 3: measurement uncertainty
- Concepts and sources of uncertainty in chemical analysis.
- The uncertainty budget approach and the approach based on validation and quality control data.
- Expanded uncertainty and the coverage factor, reporting uncertainty, and decision rules for statements of conformity.
Day 4: internal quality control
- Certified reference materials, blanks, duplicates and spiked samples, and calibration verification solutions.
- Control charts: mean and range charts, calculating warning and action limits, interpretation rules, and the action to take when results go out of control.
- Documenting analytical methods and control procedures to the standard.
Day 5: external quality control and application
- Proficiency testing and interlaboratory comparisons: choosing a scheme, interpreting z-scores and investigating unsatisfactory results.
- Integrated exercise on the data of an analytical method: estimating performance and uncertainty and building a control chart, followed by the assessment.
Who it is for
Target audience
Chemists, analysts, technical section supervisors and quality officers in chemical testing laboratories for water, environment, food and industry; participants should preferably be familiar with the requirements of ISO/IEC 17025.
Method
Delivery method
Short lectures and calculation exercises in spreadsheets (Excel) on analytical data, with every participant working on their own computer. The laboratory’s own validation and quality control data can be used if shared before the programme. Delivered in person or online, in Arabic or English.
Questions
FAQ
What do participants need before the programme?
Practical knowledge of chemical analysis and of the requirements of ISO/IEC 17025, and a laptop with Excel for the exercises.
Can the exercises use the organisation’s own laboratory data?
Yes. The organisation can send the centre validation data or quality control results for one of its methods before the programme, and the exercises are built on them while keeping them confidential.
How does it differ from the Statistical Methods in Laboratories programme?
The statistical methods programme teaches the tools themselves: distributions, significance tests, regression and outliers. This programme applies those tools to the standard’s requirements for valid results: method validation, uncertainty, control charts and proficiency testing.
A programme tailored to your organisation
The duration and topics of the programme are adjusted to the organisation's needs, and it is delivered at its site, in a training hall arranged by the Center, or virtually.