Accreditation
What our JANAAC accreditation covers, and what it does not
Accreditation is not a badge a lab buys. To hold it, an assessor from JANAAC comes to the bench, watches each method run, checks the calibration of every instrument and the competence of every analyst, and puts named tests inside a scope they re-audit on site every year. A result inside that scope is one a regulator, a buyer or a court will take without sending it somewhere else to be repeated.
The scope is a list, and this is it. Everything below is inside the accredited scope. Anything not on this list, we can still test — but the certificate will not carry the mark, and we will tell you so before you send the sample rather than after you have the result.
Inside the scope
- ✓Potable water, full microbiological ISO 9308-1 / ISO 7899-2
- ✓Potable water, chemical suite APHA 4500 / 3120 B
- ✓Food, standard plate count and pathogens ISO 4833-1 / ISO 6579 / ISO 11290
- ✓Food, nutritional panel for a label AOAC Official Methods
- ✓Concrete cube, compressive strength BS EN 12390-3
- ✓Aggregate grading and soundness ASTM C136 / C88
- ✓Soil, compaction and CBR ASTM D698 / D1883
- ✓Wastewater, effluent discharge suite APHA 5210 / 5220 / 2540 / 4500
Who signs
The authorised signatories
An accredited certificate is only valid over the name of a signatory the accreditation body has approved for that method. These are ours.
Dr. Camille Whyte
Laboratory director & quality manager
Runs the lab and owns its quality system, which is the part an assessor actually audits. A chemist by training, twenty years on the bench before the office, and the person who decides when a result is not good enough to sign.
✓Authorised signatoryAndre Bignall
Head of food and water microbiology
Runs the micro bench and signs its certificates. Spent six years in a bottling plant's own lab, which is why he is unforgiving about how a sample is kept between the tap and the door.
✓Authorised signatorySuzette Chin
Chemistry and materials
The chemistry suite and the whole materials side — concrete, aggregate, soil — are hers. A civil-engineering background, so she reads a cube result the way the engineer who ordered it will.
✓Authorised signatory