Confience’s Sample Master® LIMS Solves Several Challenges for the City and County of Broomfield, Colorado
Collaboration between two laboratories has resulted in increased lab productivity and data quality.
The City and County of Broomfield, Colorado is a northwest suburb of Denver with an estimated population of 75,000 residents. Since the 1990s, Broomfield and other area suburbs have seen significant economic growth and a similar increase in new residential and commercial development. Several high -tech and R&D firms have opened national or regional offices recently, drawing new residents to the area. The Environmental Laboratory’s mission is to maintain a safe drinking water supply and meet quality requirements set forth by the US EPA and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). The Wastewater Laboratory is focused on testing that supports the wastewater reclamation facility(including wastewater discharged into Big Dry Creek) to meet the requirements of federal discharge standards.
Their Challenge
The Environmental Laboratory is staffed by a laboratory supervisor and 6 full-time / 1 seasonal employees. The Wastewater Laboratory is staffed by a laboratory supervisor and 3 full-time / 1 part-time employees. In 1999, the Environmental and Wastewater laboratories implemented a commercially available LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) that was in place for 15 years. During that time, the LIMS performed adequately, although the laboratory realized the staff needed additional capabilities.
These included the following:
- Sample results were manually typed into the LIMS, and this meant occasional transcription errors.
- Due to limitations of the LIMS, samples had to be logged in twice. First, in the water laboratory, where a Chain of Custody was handwritten. Then, the same sample was logged in at the wastewater laboratory.
- Results from instruments were manually keyed into the LIMS. This process was slow and another source of potential transcription errors.
- The LIMS could not keep track of important data for sample preparation. A common scenario was preparing a potentially dissolved sample. The analyst would preserve it with acid and wait 96 hours to filter it as part of the prep process. Tracking this process in the LIMS was not possible, so it had to be documented manually.
- Reporting in the LIMS was limited. Both labs exported data to Microsoft Excel and then generated basic reports.
- The labs required more robust QA/QC capabilities in the LIMS that were easy to use. They exported data to Excel and created graphs and control charts.
- The LIMS provider offered limited support and updates.
- As the workload for both labs increased, there was growing concern that they needed a data management solution that could scale as the volume of testing grew.
Dawn Cowell | Laboratory Supervisor
City and County of Broomfield (CO) Environmental Services
Our Solution
In 2014, both laboratories agreed that they needed to evaluate alternative LIMS options to address the shortcomings in their current LIMS as well as move to a solution that could provide additional capabilities they would need in the future. A LIMS evaluation team was made up of three employees from each laboratory led by the Environmental Services Superintendent.
There were several LIMS vendors who submitted proposals. The evaluation team pared the list of proposals down to a manageable number and then scored the proposals based on a list of their functional requirements. In the end, the City and County of Broomfield selected Confience’s Sample Master LIMS based on the following factors:
- Configurability – The LIMS evaluation team appreciated the flexible configurability of Sample Master. This included the ability to quickly change labels and captions on any screen. It is also simple to configure the LIMS to the workflows and business rules of the laboratory.
- Ability for both labs to collaborate – The ability for Sample Master LIMS to allow either the water or wastewater laboratory to log in a sample and have it available for the other lab in the LIMS database without logging in the sample again ended a data management headache and made collaboration between the labs a reality.
- Complete lab automation = Higher lab productivity and data quality – In addition to implementing a new, modern LIMS in Sample Master, both laboratories also had Confience interface their instruments to the LIMS. Confience also recommended positive ID, with the installation and use of barcode labels and hand-held scanners – a huge time saver as samples make their way around the lab.
- Improved reporting –The LIMS includes a rich inventory of standard reports that can be modified as well as the ability to create new reports as needed.
- Experience – Confience has been a leader in LIMS for nearly 30 years and the City and County of Broomfield was confident in knowing that Confience was extremely comfortable in deploying their LIMS in the environmental and water/wastewater sectors. Sample Master LIMS has also been upgraded to include new functionality for customers in these industries.
Since going live with Sample Master, both laboratories at the City and County of Broomfield, CO have been happy with the LIMS. Confience provides both laboratories with excellent technical support and maintains a regular schedule of training options.
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