Request for Comments on the Draft Standard V2M1 General Requirements for Accreditation Bodies Accrediting Environmental Laboratories

Date Posted: 12-1-2020

Revision of the 2009 TNI Environmental Sector Standard Volume 2 Modules 1 and 3, Consolidated into a Single Module, Volume 2 Module 1
Approved for Publication for Comments by LAB Expert Committee, November 17, 2020

The TNI Laboratory Accreditation Body Expert Committee is providing for your review and comment the following documents:

  • a Draft Standard that both combines Volume 2 Modules 1 (V2M1) and 3 (V2M3) of the 2009 TNI Environmental Laboratory Sector Standard into one module (Module 1), while also updating the module to incorporate the 2017 revision of ISO/IEC 17011 (click here to view PDF),
  • a Summary of Proposed Changes with Justification for those changes (click here to view PDF) and
  • an Excel file of all comments received in response to the earlier Outline of Proposed Changes and draft document as published in April 2019 as well as all public comments from TNI conference sessions of the LAB Expert Committee since the initial Notice of Intent to Revise the Standard was published in December 2016 (click here to download).  All submitter names and contact information have been removed for this publicly available version; where identifiable, submitters have been notified of the resolution of their comments.

The comment period will be open for ninety (90) calendar days, in accordance with recent revisions to the Consensus Standards Development SOP 2-100, located at https://nelac-institute.org/docs/sop/CSDP_SOP_2-100V1.1.pdf.  The NELAP Accreditation Council may request a thirty (30) day extension of this comment period.  Please send your comments and proposed revised text to both Carl Kircher ([email protected]) and Lynn Bradley, the Program Administrator for the LAB Expert Committee ([email protected]).  All comments will be tracked by Lynn and you will be notified of the committee’s response to your comment after all comments are considered and addressed if they are deemed persuasive.

Within this Draft Standard, all ISO language is italicized and unchanged from the most recent (2017) version of ISO/IEC 17011.  The TNI-added language is in plain text, but has been marked to identify language carried into V2M1 from the 2009 V2M3 (single underline), new language (double underline) and language from the 2009 Standard that was deleted (strike-through).  Some language in this document may be denoted both by single-underline and strike-through.  This key is also explained in the Preface of the Draft Standard itself.

This V2M1 will be the first Draft Standard offered for public comment under the new procedures described in the Consensus Standards Development SOP 2-100.  While commenters are no longer asked to “vote” on the document, now called simply the Draft Standard, you are invited to provide comments on any portion of the Draft Standard, as you see fit.  We do ask that you provide alternative wording that would address your concern whenever possible.  As with prior revisions of TNI standards, all comments will be ruled either persuasive, non-persuasive, or editorial by the committee, and addressed accordingly.  If substantive or controversial changes are required to the Draft Standard, it will be re-presented for public comment at a later date.