Independent Laboratories Host Spring Meetings
The Canadian Council of Independent Laboratories (CCIL) will be hosting its Spring Division Meetings and Annual General Meeting at the Sheraton Toronto Airport Hotel on April 25, 2016. CCIL represents the independent, private-sector testing laboratories in Canada. Currently it has about 60 member firms, operating over 330 laboratory facilities across the country. Traditionally, CCIL has had two main Divisions, namely, Geotechnical/Construction Materials and Environmental/Life Sciences. However, the April 25 meetings will see a third Division, representing laboratories in the field of Conformity Assessment. These laboratories provide diverse testing and quality verification for the Manufacturing Sector.
A unique feature of CCIL is that it also operates laboratory certification programs for Aggregates, Asphalt, Concrete and Petrographic. These certifications are not only provided for member laboratories but also for government, contractor and supplier laboratories. One of the real success stories has been the Asphalt Laboratory Certification program which currently operates in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan, and Yukon Territory. Certification under this program requires laboratory technician certification as well as participation in an annual laboratory proficiency exercise. This is where each laboratory is provided with blind samples that they test and submit the results to CCIL. They must obtain results within a defined tolerance to maintain their certification. This program has raised the standard and uniformity of asphalt testing in Canada. It has also led to a dramatic improvement in inter-laboratory test correlations with the benefit of reducing construction disputes between contractors and owners over divergent test data from different laboratories.
CCIL also certifies concrete testing technicians and laboratories under the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) Standard A283-06, Qualification Code for Concrete Testing Laboratories. Currently CCIL certifies 311 concrete testing laboratories responsible for monitoring the quality of private and public sector construction projects across Canada.
The lunch time guest speaker at the April 25 AGM will be Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron, Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).