Multiple MCERTS Awards at WWEM

During a glittering MCERTS awards ceremony at WWEM 2012, HACH LANGE (UK) was presented with no less than four certificates, demonstrating a massive commitment to the scheme which evaluates the performance of monitoring instruments against stringent MCERTS specifications. Key to HACH LANGE’s success was the effort from their teams across UK, Germany and America.

MCERTS is the Environment Agency’s monitoring certification scheme and the certificates were presented by the Agency’s Head of Monitoring and Analytical Services, Malcolm Lythgo, who congratulated HACH LANGE on this achievement adding: “We appreciate that submitting instruments for MCERTS evaluation is a significant investment in both time and money. But customers do appreciate the additional reassurance of the quality of data from products having MCERTS, as well as meeting the Agency’s permit requirement for all new and replacement equipment to have MCERTS, where available.”

Following receipt of these certificates HACH LANGE now possesses a comprehensive suite of MCERTS certificates covering: automatic samplers; online process monitoring sensors and controllers including pH, turbidity and dissolved oxygen; the BioTector online TOC analyser; and portable water quality monitoring instruments for conductivity and pH.

In the past, the Environment Agency conducted a large amount of industrial environmental monitoring, but in recent years this responsibility has shifted to the process operators themselves and the MCERTS scheme is helping to ensure that the quality of monitoring remains high. Nevertheless, Matthew Dillon, UK & Ireland Sales Director at HACH LANGE, says “As a manufacturer we invest heavily in the development of instruments and analysers that are robust, reliable, accurate and simple to use. However, it is extremely important that the recommended maintenance and calibration procedures are followed assiduously (our service team can help with that, if necessary) because failure to do so would threaten the quality of data and would not be acceptable to the Agency.”

To further support the quality of monitoring, HACH LANGE regularly runs training workshops and can provide personal competence training for key staff so that users are able to obtain optimal performance from their HACH LANGE instruments.

From a strategic perspective Matthew Dillon says “One of our key goals is to ensure that customers are able to generate the highest quality data and we see the MCERTS scheme as an important contributor to that goal. More HACH LANGE products will receive MCERTS in the near future and I would like to acknowledge the work of Dr Patsy Rigby from our technical team in helping to make this process such a success.”