ABSTRACT
When things go wrong in a laboratory one does not have to wait long to hear they were not following procedures, there was no dened procedure, or we need training for that procedure to assure competence. Laboratories have progressed from no accreditation to compliance with the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/ LAB) formed in 1982 by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD), now called the legacy program, and presently are transitioning to operate in accordance with the ISO/IEC 17025: 2005 International Standard requirements. At the heart of these programs are written policies and procedures that are thoroughly discussed in Chapter 5: ISO/IEC 17025: 2005. It is also possible to perform a procedure with excellent outcomes and use no written procedure. Although this is not preferred or common, there may be several steps of a procedure that have never been put in writing. Many laboratories’ procedures are a collection of ASCLD/LAB procedures that have been modied to t the ISO/IEC 17025 standard. Some laboratories have also benchmarked with other laboratories for best practices and modied others’ procedures to t the processes in their laboratory. All these methods are acceptable and they work. ere is also a distinctive dierence between administrative support procedures and scientic procedures, which we discuss later in the text. Last, well-written procedures provide the foundation for the training lesson plan. Training lesson plan learning objectives, curricula materials, assessment, and competency measures all develop from the well-written procedures.
