In November 2016 ALS Group completed the acquisition of ALcontrol's UK laboratories for Food, Water and Environmental testing and we are now providing our customers and colleagues with an update of the integration process and make you all aware of the work undertaken so far and the developments and service enhancements that you will see over the coming six months.

Following the acquisition, ALS undertook a full business and operational review, during this time we have identified numerous opportunities for improving customer services, logistics and analytical techniques, a summary of which can be found below:

Laboratory Updates

ALS Coventry will be transferring the majority of its soils analysis to ALS Hawarden over the next six months. The first phase of this transfer has taken place with Asbestos Quantification being subcontracted to ALS Hawarden from January 2017. The Hawarden laboratory will become the ALS Centre of Excellence for soils analysis in the UK and Ireland and thus enabling the Coventry laboratory to focus on Microbiology, Waste Water, Utility and Waste Management samples. The Coventry laboratory will still be offering Asbestos Identification, HMRC LOI and WAC analysis routinely. Additionally, Agricultural soils and sludges will still be analysed at the Wakefield laboratory. 

ALS Group have taken the decision to close the Dunstable Water Testing laboratory in Spring/Summer 2017. There will be a transition period whereby the team will continue to be on hand to register samples for an extended period of time.  We will still continue to offer sample collections from this region and a new drop-off facility will be implemented in the coming weeks to support customers in this area. In the short term these samples will be analysed in ALS Rotherham before ultimately being transferred to our centre of excellence for Microbiology in ALS Coventry.

The laboratory in Bellshill, Scotland will be re-located to a new purpose designed facility within a 5 mile radius of the current laboratory. During the short period that the Bellshill laboratory is closed and the new laboratory is undergoing validation work we will transfer the samples to Rotherham for analysis.

The Rotherham laboratory will become a food testing laboratory by the end of October 2017. This site will remain a viable drop-off location for customers and the samples will be transported to our Coventry laboratory for analysis using our overnight courier system. The first phase of this will be the transfer of Taste & Odour analysis and Cryptosporidium testing to our Wakefield laboratory on the 3^rd April 2017.

The next phase of the integration will be to start transferring customers to their new analytical laboratory over the next three to six months, a summary of these transfers can be found below:

IT Integration, @mis & AMIS

@mis and AMIS are being integrated into the ALS Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) to enable customers to utilise @mis when their work transfers to ALS Coventry or ALS Wakefield. 

Additionally, the IT team have started work on developing the custom formats that former ALcontrol customers expect. When completed these developments will allow customers to choose from a range of breach reports for Primary Concentration Values (PCV Limits) Positive Micro Notifications and Positive Legionella samples as well as an updated list of new report formats.

Logistics

The business continues to investigate the integration of one logistics solution to meet all customer needs. Currently, if your analysis is conducted by ALS Coventry or ALS Wakefield then your drop-off solutions and logistics options can be found here.

Should your business utilise the Rotherham, Bellshill, Dunstable or Newton Abbot Laboratories then the current drop-off options available to you can be found here.

Over the next six months the portfolio of drop-offs will be integrated to offer our customers one of the best geographic coverages of any laboratory in the United Kingdom.

Quality & Accreditation

As part of the transfer of work between ALS laboratories, ALS Wakefield and ALS Coventry are both undertaking some extensions to our accreditation scope status to ensure that we continue to comply with Sample Matrix Accreditation. Some of the planned additions to our accreditation portfolio include Legionella by PCR, process water metals and dialysis waters. 

As we work though the accreditation process we will update our customers on any significant changes to our accreditation portfolio. 

For more information on the acquisition & integration please contact us. For any other analytical enquiry, please request a quote or call us on 02476 421 213.