IUPAC

To develop a guide for selection and use of proficiency testing schemes for limited number of participants (chemical analytical laboratories).

The International Harmonised Protocol for the Proficiency Testing of (Chemical) Analytical Laboratories adopted by IUPAC in 1993 has been revised now. The ISO/DIS 13528 (provisional version) "Statistical Methods for Use in Proficiency Testing by Interlaboratory Comparisons" is under development as complementary standard to ISO/IEC Guide 43 "Proficiency Testing by Interlaboratory Comparisons". However, all these documents are mostly oriented on proficiency testing schemes for a relatively large number of laboratories-participants (20 and more). The problem may arise when proficiency testing scheme is to be organized - selected and used - for a limited number of participants (less than 20), for analysis of analytes specific for a local region, or for an industry under development, or for analysis of non-stable analytes and similar. It is appropriate now for the IUPAC WP QA to undertake a development of such guide in addition to The IUPAC International Harmonised Protocol for the Proficiency Testing of (Chemical) Analytical Laboratories (see project 2001-009-1-500) in light of necessity of quality assurance in chemical analytical laboratories in the fields for which widely used international proficiency testing schemes might not be applicable.

The project just started, and the first task group meeting was held in March 2006.

 The principles have been discussed at the International Workshop "Combining and Reporting Analytical Results. The Role of (metrological) Traceability and (measurement) Uncertainty for Comparing Analytical Results", Rome, Italy, 2006; at the International Congress of Analytical Sciences, Moscow, Russia, 2006; and at the 3rd International Conference on Metrology. Trends and applications in Calibration and Testing Laboratories, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2006.

The project was reported also at the 21st CITAC Members Meeting, Moscow, Russia, 2006, where the decision accepted was to support the guide development by involving more CITAC members in the discussion.

A position paper on the topic "Implementation of proficiency testing schemes for a limited number of participants" has been published in ACQUAL 2007 [doi:10.1007/s00769-006-0247-0]. An additional paper "Comparability and compatibility of proficiency testing results in schemes with a limited number of participants" is also published in ACQUAL [doi:10.1007/s00769-007-0309-y].

> July 2007 report update (pdf file - 11KB)

<project announcement published in Chem. Int. Sep-Oct 2006>