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).
Audit Sample Program is to develop consensus standards for the manufacture and analysis of audit samples for source emission testing.
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 4.1.7.2 and 5.2.6.1 (a)
REQUEST:
At present, our laboratory has a NELAC Lab (Lead) Technical Director who fulfils the NELAC requirements as per referenced sections above. We also have three other Technical Directors whose responsibilities are either for environmental analysis of representative organic analytes or inorganic analytes for which our lab maintains NELAC accreditation. Our laboratory is in process of management change where current NELAC Lab Technical Director will be reassigned to other duties and no longer will have responsibility over the NELAC accredited lab. The annual renewals of the NELAC accreditations with our primary and secondary Accrediting Bodies require a "Certificate of Compliance" to be signed by a Lab Key Staff, often listing a Lead Technical Director as the one who needs to sign this document. The Lead Technical Director is also listed on each NELAC certification we maintain.
Although the NELAC standard allows for more than one Technical Director, do we must have a Lead Technical Manager/Director who fulfils above requirements for both inorganic and organic environmental analysis. At this time only our Lead Technical Director fulfils the requirements
TNI FINAL RESPONSE:
(Quality Systems Expert Committee and NELAP AC, 2-24-14)
There is no requirement for a "lead technical director". The standard requires that the individual (or individuals) who are identified as technical directors meet the applicable credentials for the areas over which he/she has oversight.