a. Management responsibilities: Management must recognize the need for quality assurance, commit monetary and personnel resources, assume a leadership role, and involve staff in development and operation of the QA program. Management should meet with the laboratory supervisor and staff to develop and maintain a comprehensive program and establish specific responsibility for management, supervisors, and analysts.
b. Quality assurance officer: In large laboratories, a QA officer has the authority and responsibility for application of the QA program. Ideally, this person should have a line position reporting directly to upper management, not a line position. The QA officer should have a technical education, be acquainted with all aspects of laboratory work, and be familiar with statistical techniques for data evaluation. The QA officer is responsible for initiating the program, convincing staff of its value, and providing necessary information and training to the staff .Once the QA program is functioning, the coordinator conducts frequent(weekly to monthly) reviews with the laboratory supervisor and staff to determine the current status and accomplishments of the program and to identify and resolve problems. The QA officer also repots periodically to management to secure backing in actions necessary to correct problems that threaten data quality
c. Staff: Laboratory and field staffs participate with management in planning the QA program, implementing the QC program in their daily tasks of collecting samples, conducting analyses , performing quality control checks, and calculating and reporting results. Because the staffs are the first to see potential problems, they should identify them and work with the supervisor to correct and avoid them. It is critical to the success of the QA program that staff understand and actively support it.