Our Trainings take place on site, online or at our laboratory training room at Hagen Campus in Cologne (Germany). We have different target audiences at our trainings.

For many years we have been offering training courses for water and laboratory technicians to test water quality. The workshops and training courses offered are individually adapted and have a special focus on ensuring best practice in the use of equipment and quality assurance from the moment of sampling to data storage of test results.

Running a water laboratory under limited conditions is a challenge. Could you imagine to even run it as a successful business model ?! In more than 12 years of practical experience we have identified 10 critical success factors for operating successful water laboratories as business models in areas of limited infrastructure !! We are glad to share our knowledge with international laboratory managers.

Hands on! Mastering your own equipment is very important. In this course the participants perform water quality testing in practice and receive a solid theoretical and practical knowledge on water quality and water quality testing with regard to the parameters tested.

Data obtained from laboratory analysis are often used for making decisions. These decisions could be:

• of considerable economic significance
• used for improving the environment and community health and safety
• related to regular and legal matters

Before going into the development of a Quality Management System, this course aims to communicate and ensure key Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) actions along the process of sampling, testing and data handling.

Running a water laboratory under limited conditions is a challenge. Major challenges one often encounters are:

• Limited financial resources / short budget lines
• Unavailability and high costs for consumables and replacement parts
• Inexperience regarding the right choice of testing equipment
• Inexperience regarding suitable working processes in areas of limited infrastructure
• Entities disregard the development of a quality management system and develop wrong habits instead
• Lack of qualified workforce resources
• Tendency to overdo things ending up in excessive micromanagement and frustration
• Limited communication systems
• Unfavorable climatic condition
• Long distances and poor infrastructure (e.g. road conditions, power outages)

This course addresses especially the laboratory managers and other decision makers. The participants get to know and will discuss 12 critical success factors for running a laboratory under limited conditions - making the laboratory a stable entity capable of sustaining good quality services and being financially viable. The participants will start to develop critical tools, documents and a framework for upcoming tasks.

Conducting a representative water quality baseline study in a specific project area can be of interest to national and international organizations such as NGOs which are involved in the water sector. To be able to demonstrate the competence of generating trustworthy and statistically relevant data can mean a significant source of income which supports the laboratory on the way towards financial viability.

In this course the participants will learn about and develop the different steps of conducting a baseline study. Furthermore they will use the appropriate methodologies, tools and documents and do it practically.