By Vvon Engineering Team | Published | Updated
Calibration intervals you set yourself, the consumables list that has to be written at handover, which spares to hold and which to leave abroad, and when an annual maintenance contract is worth paying for.
Scientific & laboratory RFQ checklist (TXT)
Laboratory continuity depends on assigned responsibility for operation, teaching, consumables and external support. Establish those responsibilities before a supply project closes, so a missing part or a staff change does not quietly remove an experiment from the timetable.
Write these into a document at handover, with names rather than designations, and review it every year.
Train two people for the technician role, not one. The one you train will be promoted, transferred or will leave, and a laboratory whose only competent operator has gone stops within a term. Insist that training happens on site with the installed equipment after commissioning, and ask for it to be repeated at around six months, when the staff have real questions.
Decide which equipment requires calibration, verification or functional checks from its use, method requirements and the consequence of an incorrect result. Even a demonstration unit may contain safety-critical sensors; producing a number is not the only reason a check may be necessary.
Document intervals using applicable requirements, manufacturer advice, use, environment and performance history. ILAC guidance, including G24 on recalibration intervals, is a useful reference for building that justification. A supplier recommendation can inform the decision without replacing the laboratory’s assessment.
Between calibrations, do intermediate checks and record them: a proving ring or known mass on a testing machine, a certified reference block on a hardness tester, a buffer solution on a pH meter, an ice point on a thermocouple channel. These checks cost minutes and they catch a drifting instrument long before the annual certificate does.
The annual consumables list has to be written at handover, by the commissioning engineer, with part numbers and quantities based on the class size the department actually teaches. If it is not written then, it gets written two years later by somebody guessing, and the guess is always low.
Choose spare stock from failure consequence, lead time, shelf life, cost and compatibility. Frequently consumed inexpensive parts may be worth holding, while a critical expensive assembly may justify a manufacturer exchange arrangement or an agreed spare. Ask for an itemised recommendation rather than applying a rule that expensive parts should never be stocked.
Sometimes, and the answer depends on three things: whether the equipment is computer controlled, whether its failure stops a course, and whether the department has a competent technician of its own.
Compare an AMC with the department’s own maintenance capability and the consequences of downtime. Review preventive work, call-outs, exclusions and parts arrangements for the actual asset list before deciding whether the contract is economical.
Where you do take one, insist that the document says five things plainly: how many preventive visits per year and in which months; the response time for a breakdown call, stated in working days; exactly what is included and what is charged separately, particularly calibration, consumables and travel; whether software updates and licence renewals are covered; and what happens when a part is not available in Bangladesh, including who bears the shipping and clearance cost and how long the supplier commits to. A contract that is silent on that last point is silent on the only thing that ever really goes wrong.
None of this survives without a budget line. A department with no recurring maintenance and consumables code has no way to spend money on a laboratory even when it wants to, and the equipment degrades in a way that looks like neglect but is actually an accounting problem. Establish the code in the same year the equipment is bought, while the project still has attention.
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