Quality Assurance Project Plan

The purpose of a Quality Assurance Project Plan is to ensure that the mini-grant is useful to your community. It's the job of your community's Science Advisor and the rest of the Mini-Grant team to come up with a Quality Assurance Project Plan for your community to review. It's also our job to take this plan to EPA for review.

We will work with you and your science advisor to use your question or alternative action to develop a project plan. Our suggestion is that we use the decisions you have already made in earlier steps in planning to prepare a draft project plan. We'll then bring it to you for revisions. The final Quality Assurance Project Plan should reflect what you want to do.

This section of the website is mainly for your Science Advisor to use to develop a Quality Assurance Project Plan. But, if you have the patience to look through the many parts of the plan, we think you will learn a lot about what goes into testing for contaminants. If you wish to, skip it for now and continue with "Making it Work".

Parts of a Quality Assurance Project Plan.

The outline below is all linked to the parts of a Quality Assurance Project Plan. We have prepared materials that we hope will help to develop a Quality Assurance Project Plan for your community.

You can go to each part of the Quality Assurance Project Plan materials directly from the outline below, or you can step through them one at a time. If you click on the outline heading, a new window will open up. Just close the window to come back to the outline.

1.0 PROJECT MANAGEMENT 

1.1 Title and Approval Page 
1.2 Table of Contents 
1.3 Distribution List 
1.4 Project/Task Organization
1.5 Problem Definition/Background 
1.6 Project/Task Description and Schedule 
1.7    Quality Objectives and Criteria for Measurement Data 
1.8 Special Training Requirements/Certification 
1.9 Documentation and Records

2.0 MEASUREMENT / DATA ACQUISITION 

2.1 Sampling Process Design (Experimental Design)
2.2 Sampling Methods Requirements 
2.3 Sample Handling and Custody Requirements 
2.4 Analytical Methods Requirements 
2.5 Quality Control Requirements 
2.6 Instrument/Equipment Testing, Inspection, and Maintenance Requirements 
2.7 Instrument Calibration and Frequency 
2.8 Inspection/Acceptance Requirements for Supplies and Consumables 
2.9 Data Acquisition Requirements (Non-direct Measurements) 
2.10 Data Management

3.0 ASSESSMENT / OVERSIGHT 
3.1 Assessments and Response Actions
3.2 Reports to Management

4.0 DATA VALIDATION AND USABILITY 
4.1 Data Review, Validation, and Verification Requirements 
4.2 Validation and Verification Methods 
4.3 Reconciliation with User Requirements

Downloading a Quality Assurance Project Plan Template

The answers your community came up with about concerns, causes, questions, choosing a research strategy, thinking ahead about testing levels, and community involvement are enough for us to put together a draft project plan for your community's project. 

Many parts of each community's project plan can build from a shared set of approaches. We start each section of the plan by describing these shared approaches. Then, in each section, we have a link to the things in each community's plan that make it unique. 

When you look at the parts of the project plan (like "Analytical Data Validation") it may seem like your answers aren't there. Actually, though, your answers to the planning questions are what determine the procedures used in testing.

Guidelines for Developing a Quality Assurance Project Plan

See:  EPA Region 10 Quality Assurance Homepage  

Sample Quality Assurance Project Plans

If you are finished looking at parts of a Quality Assurance Project Plan, please to "Making it Work".