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1.4 What Is Proficiency Testing

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1.4 What Is Proficiency Testing

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Nebiyu
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Civil Engineering:

Proficiency Testing Schemes for Materials Testing


on Rural Roads
[1.4]

What is Proficiency Testing?

The total length of roads across the World is about 64 million km. The majority of these roads are of poor
quality and need rebuilding or require ongoing maintenance. Most of the poor quality roads are in
developing countries.

It is vital they are upgraded to enable them to be used all year round, carry more traffic and provide
adequate social and commercial connectivity. In many instances these roads are a sole lifeline for
communities for their current wellbeing and both future needs and development.

In order to address these requirements, the World Bank and many other organisations in developed
countries have spent billions of dollars on improving the road network. Whilst many improvements have
been made, there is an ongoing need to improve the quality of materials testing in developing countries to
better enable them to deal with issues of improved use of existing materials, shortages of good quality
materials, the effects of climate change and the ongoing need to reduce expenditure.

The testing facilities for roads and materials must be of a high standard. The results will ensure
determination of consistently accurate properties of materials, which enable improvements
in design and maintenance of rural roads. Improved performance of the laboratories may be achieved
though suitable proficiency testing schemes and accreditation.

Proficiency Testing

Laboratories, their customers and other organisations, including regulators and laboratory accreditation
bodies, need to be assured of the consistent performance of their laboratories so that there is confidence
in tests results and analyses provided by the laboratories. One way of providing such assurance is
through an accreditation process known as proficiency testing (PT).

PT schemes are run by independent organisations and provide participating laboratories with samples of
materials (e.g. a soil) for analysis. Laboratories perform the analysis of the test samples using their
standard procedures and send the results back to the scheme organisers. The laboratories are
subsequently provided with a report detailing how closely their results agree with accepted values. This
enables the laboratories to improve their performance (if required) and also certification may be provided
by the scheme organisers to those laboratories whose performance is above a desired threshold.
A number of international organisations have developed standards for PT. These include the American
Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), the British Standards Institution (BSI), European
Standardization Organizations and the International Standards Organisation (ISO).

According to the BSI’s standard “Conformity assessment — General requirements for proficiency
testing” (BS EN ISO 17043 2010), PT involves the use of inter-laboratory comparisons to determine
laboratory performance and includes the following activities:

• Evaluation of the performance of laboratories for specific tests or measurements and monitoring
laboratories’ continuing performance;
• Identification of problems in laboratories and initiation of actions for improvement which, for example,
may be related to inadequate test or measurement procedures, effectiveness of staff training and
supervision, or calibration of equipment;
• Establishment of the effectiveness and comparability of test or measurement methods;
• Provision of additional confidence to laboratory customers;
• Identification of inter-laboratory differences;
• Education of participating laboratories based on the outcomes of such comparisons;
• Validation of uncertainty claims.

Most of the requirements in BS EN ISO 17043 relate to management, planning and design, personnel,
assuring quality, confidentiality, and other aspects, as appropriate to the relevant area. Proficiency testing
can thus be included in a quality assurance system.

It should be apparent by now that in order to compare testing performance of laboratories, they all must
be assessed relative to the same base line. In other words, their performance must be measured against
a predetermined criterion. Tests are undertaken in laboratories in accordance to the same standard
specifications (methodology) on the same material subjected to the same conditions. Importantly
proficiency testing should be based on routine tests. So, the key concern of proficiency testing is to
ensure that results produced during routine tests are accurate.

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