VIMS
Center for Coastal Resources Management

Quality Assurance / Quality Control

The Center for Coastal Resources Management conducts applied research and serves as a scientific advisor to federal, state and local agencies, and the general public. The Center recognizes the importance of how work processes are implemented to ensure that data collected are of the needed and expected quality for their desired use. In order to provide accurate information to user groups, the CCRM is dedicated to an aggressive, proactive Quality Assurance and Quality Control program. A myriad of activities occur within the Center, including direct support of laboratory and field investigations, support and training of graduate students and interns, training of resource agency personnel and the public, direct support of state agencies and local governments, and sponsorship of lectures, seminars, conferences and visiting scientists. Research activities include both field and laboratory measurements and the development and validation of ecological models. The general goal of the CCRM Quality System is to ensure accurate, reproducible, and unbiased data.

Operational Procedures The Center recognizes the need for specific plans for individual data collection operations to ensure that data or information collected are of the needed and expected quality for their desired use. As a Center, the quality assurance operation procedures differ from that of an individual research contract. Each principal investigator is responsible for submitting a project-specific quality assurance plan to the relevant Program Quality Assurance Manager and the Center Quality Assurance Manager. The principal investigators will use the underlying principles described in this document as a framework for the specific quality assurance and quality control plans for each project. These plans should detail:

  • The specific objectives of the project, including the hypothesis to be tested.
  • The data quality objective for the variables to be measured.
  • The specific sampling and analytical protocols required to meet the data quality objective.
  • The individual responsible for quality assurance for the project.

All noncompliance or deviation from the approved quality assurance plan will be reported to the Program Quality Assurance Manager and the Center Quality Assurance Manager.