Waves of Progress in a Shrinking Talent Pool
Globally, every industry from food and beverage to manufacturing has been struggling to find and retain employees, all while contending with the pending retirement of their senior professionals in possession of institutional knowledge and unique expertise.
Recently, Environmental Standards’ Senior Technical Chemists have been traveling throughout the United States to food and beverage processing and manufacturing sites as well as clients’ internal laboratories to help train new environmental and chemistry professionals in the best practices of wastewater and stormwater sampling and analysis as well as creating guidance documents like standard operating procedures (SOPs) and training manuals.
Since 1972, as a requirement of the Clean Water Act, US EPA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) was designed to define and protect water quality standards through the regulation of point source dischargers.
Since 1987, Environmental Standards’ Geoscience and Chemistry professionals have been supporting permittees by providing the following services:
- On-call Technical Assistance Help Desk for water sampling and analytical troubleshooting
- 24-Hour availability to answer emergency response sampling and analytical questions
- Review and provide opinions on laboratory results that are called into question
- Investigator, Mediator and Arbiter of sampling and analytical complex issues
- Laboratory identification and vetting
- Design and troubleshoot sampling and analytical programs
- Review or creation of sampling and analytical SOPs
- Sampler and laboratory staff training and evaluation; auditing sampling programs
- On-site auditing of commercial laboratories
- Pollutant forensic investigations
- Critical third-party data validation
- Design of electronic data deliverables (EDDs) specifications
- Writing technical specification manuals for contract laboratories
Environmental Standards’ Team of Geoscience and Chemistry professionals have experience in assessing data quality and improving in-house and contracted sampling and analytical services. We can evaluate your sampling and laboratory testing programs to ensure their compliance not only with associated regulatory programs, but with your company requirements. We will provide guidance in reporting and data analysis practices, procedures, and systems employing efficiency and consistency. We provide an independent assessment on limitations of laboratory results and develop statistically informed sampling designs. We are also well versed with the QA and analytical programs required for ISO 14000 Environmental Management Accreditation.
