develop consensus standards for use by TNI's programs. This group has a support role in assisting other programs with activities such as guidance and standards interpretation.
fosters the generation of data of known and documented quality is through the National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program, or NELAP. The purpose of this program is to establish and implement a program for the accreditation of environmental laboratories.
is to establish and maintain a national PT program to support TNI’s National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program, and other activities.
Field Activities Program (NEFAP) Executive Committee is to establish and implement an accreditation program for field sampling and measurement organizations (FSMOs).
on a variety of topics of interest to the environmental measurement community. TNI also hosts two regularly scheduled meetings per year, typically in January and August. Both are a week long and involve open meetings of TNI committees as well as training courses and other special sessions.Standard Interpretation
Standard: 2009 TNI
Section: V1M2, Section 5.2.6.1
REQUEST:
The 2009 standard, below (b), no longer contains the wording "environmental" analysis in the area of experience. Since it now states "such analysis" does this pertain to any type of laboratory experience in chemical, physical or environmental sciences (not just environmental)?
b) Any technical manager of an accredited environmental laboratory limited to inorganic chemical analysis, other than metals analysis, shall be a person with at least an earned associate's degree in the chemical, physical or environmental sciences, or two (2) years of equivalent and successful college education, with a minimum of sixteen (16) college semester credit hours in chemistry. In addition, such a person shall have at least two (2) years of experience performing such analysis.
And on the same topic, the 2009 standard for (c) below for limited microbiological analytes also no longer contains the wording "environmental" and just states "microbiological analyses", so may this also be interpreted as any microbiological laboratory analyses and not just environmental?
c) Any technical manager of an accredited environmental laboratory engaged in microbiological or biological analysis shall be a person with a bachelor's degree in microbiology, biology, chemistry, environmental sciences, physical sciences or engineering with a minimum of sixteen (16) college semester credit hours in general microbiology and biology and at least two (2) years of experience in the environmental analysis of representative analytes for which the laboratory seeks or maintains accreditation. A master's or doctoral degree in one of the above disciplines may be substituted for one (1) year of experience. A person with an associate's degree in an appropriate field of the sciences or applied sciences, with a minimum of four (4) college semester credit hours in general microbiology may be the technical manager(s) of a laboratory engaged in microbiological analysis limited to fecal coliform, total coliform, E. coli, and standard plate count. Two (2) years of equivalent and successful college education, including the microbiology requirement, may be substituted for the associate's degree. In addition, each person shall have one (1) year of experience in microbiological analyses.
TNI FINAL RESPONSE:
The terms "such analysis" indicates that the technical manager shall have experience in the fields of accreditation for which the laboratory is seeking accreditation. The experience required is of environmental analysis in the first question, and environmental microbiological analysis in the second. In both cases, the Standard requires that the analyses performed which would qualify as experience are those that would be performed by the laboratory at which a person would be the technical manager.