Part Two Kickoff And Context

Kim Swanson 0:02

Welcome to AASHTO Resource QA. We're taking time to discuss construction materials, testing, and inspection with people in the know, from exploring testing problems and solutions to laboratory best practices and quality management. We're covering topics important to you.

Brian Johnson 0:18

Hey, this is Brian Johnson from AASHTO Resource.

Kim Swanson 0:21

And I'm Kim Swanson, and this is part two of our series on uh the changes to AASHTO R18-26. Uh you can listen to part one that was already out. You can watch the whole recorded uh video, which is on our YouTube channel. But here we go with part two.

Document Control And Standards Access

Kim Swanson 0:43

So I know another section that had updated information on it and some changes were made were the document control section. So you can tell us a little bit more about what changes were made and and why.

Brian Johnson 0:55

Sure. Uh so standards are required to be uh available for use by the laboratory. And uh over the years we've seen a lot of people not do that. Like so they'll they they will only get the standards uh uh uh so much so that they can show that they are getting through the assessment. So like they'll get okay, well, you know, do you have this standard? Well, no, but let me scramble and see if somebody I know has it and can share it with me. You know, that's not good for quality of laboratory. They need to have a system in place uh where they get the standards updated regularly, they review them, their staff knows what the changes are uh when there are relevant changes. Uh this has been a huge gap, I would say, in laboratory quality for the laboratories that we have had in our program. Uh, not all of them, of course, but uh, you know, I'd say the majority of them have struggled with this. And part of this was based on the move from the old way of printing books. And every year, you know, sort of like when we used to get phone books, like every year the the book comes out, they order the book, it shows up, they can kind of see, oh, I wonder what changed. Um, and then they can train people on it. But when we got away from the physical books, people just kind of like lost control or containment of that process. And so, like some of the ASTMs will come out, you know, periodically. There might be two, three revisions a year for something if there were some mistakes made in a ballot or something. Uh, and then AASHTO still is the once-a-year update, so that's a little bit easier to keep track of. Um, but then they also didn't keep track of like, okay, we don't not only do we have a process, we don't even do it anymore. We don't even get the standards anymore. So uh now it's more clear. It says, you know, they have to maintain uh standards acquired through purchase or authorized licensing for use by testing personnel. Uh but wording is different than it used to be for this. And it's more enforceable and it's more clear what about what they need to do.

Kim Swanson 3:15

All right. Now moving on to the

Organization Transparency And Org Charts

Kim Swanson 3:17

next section. That was section 5.2. So section 5.3, organization. There seems to be a change in that too. Can you go over that?

Brian Johnson 3:25

The this section has gotten more clear about two things. Uh, one is that laboratories need to identify, you know, the any parent or child relationship they have with other companies. Uh, if they're a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary, which happens, uh, then they need to define that. Uh one of the objectives of that is we want to make sure that people are really clear about who the company is. Uh and this is something that we keep track of for accreditation purposes because we want to we want to make public that information as much as we can. Uh again, look, we've talked about this before. We work for the DOTs ultimately. You know, we're providing a service for DOTs, for other entities that use our accreditation program. And when they are hiring somebody, they need to know information about that uh to make sure that there is not some sort of um conflict of interest out there between either the QA and QC laboratories or make sure that all of the companies bidding on this project are subsidiaries of the same company that that presents a risk to them that they need to look at as far as like what kind of bids they're getting. So uh while they may not be digging into the QMS, it's a way for somebody to easily see what's going on with that. And and I will say that most of the with all the conglomeration that's been going on over the years with these testing firms, I will say that they are largely transparent about this. Like we haven't seen too many cases where they're trying to hide these relationships. So I don't think this is going to be hard for people to do. Um, so that's defined in there. And the other one is that the organizational chart is more limited to relevant technical staff. Uh, it used to just kind of say everybody who works in your company should be on the org chart, but we never really enforced that. We only really want to see the relevant people to the laboratory operations. And so now it just says that. So it's just kind of confirming what we've already done.

Kim Swanson 5:34

Also

Staffing Records Without Confusion

Kim Swanson 5:35

in section five, we go to section 5.4, staffing. I think you talked a little bit about position descriptions a little bit uh earlier, but why don't you go ahead and uh describe some of the changes that were made and maybe some of the benefits or why the rationale behind them?

Brian Johnson 5:52

The two big ones are the position descriptions. Uh, now say required skills, education, and experience where relevant. So they can kind of customize those the way they want. The other one is we used to have this weird thing called a biographical sketch uh that everyone was confused by. You would get pictures of people, you would get narratives about their life, like they're writing their autobiography. Uh, you would get all uh, you know, you would also get like resumes like they're applying for a job.

Unknown 6:23

Yeah.

Brian Johnson 6:24

Uh so that that term has been removed, and now it just says that they they basically have to document this somewhere. So it's still education, work experience, certification, and licensures where you know where relevant. Um but it can exist in any form they want. It doesn't have to be in something called a biographical sketch that people don't know what that term means. Yeah. Uh and we think this will help people not be confused. It's really the same requirement. If you're uh if you're already accredited, you don't have to change anything unless you want. But um we're just trying to get rid of that term because no one really liked it that much.

Kim Swanson 7:04

The next

Training And Competency Clarified

Kim Swanson 7:05

uh update in section five, uh 5.5, uh is technical training and competent competency. Um, what were some of the changes there?

Brian Johnson 7:17

This was pretty pretty minor. Um the first one. And this goes for training and competency evaluation. Nothing has changed as far as the technicians have to be trained or evaluated on everything that they perform normally, right? Um the only difference is that the person doing the training or competency evaluation has to be familiar with the activity. Now, again, this is one of those things that does not change what most people are doing. It just provides clarification if you've never done it before. Because we do get new labs that say, How am I gonna do this? Who, you know, who can do this? And it's like, well, somebody just has to be familiar, you know. And then the question, how familiar do they have to be?

Unknown 7:59

Yeah.

Brian Johnson 7:59

Well, that's up for you to decide. Like, we're not gonna decide that for you. Uh, because that that language is extremely vague, and it's just to be helpful.

Calibration Training To Stop Falsification

Brian Johnson 8:10

But now the other thing that is a bigger change, yes, and this was the one that came with much discussion and compromise, is a requirement for anybody who performs standardizations, calibrations, checks, or maintenance in the laboratory has to be trained on how they do those activities. That seems like a very uh sensible thing to do, right? Like instead of just saying, hey, go uh standardize that piece of equipment or go check that equipment, uh, and then they have to guess what that means and what they have to do. You actually say, here's how you do it, and I'm gonna show you how to do it, and this is how the you know you document it on this form. Uh why this is important is because this is one of the most falsified types of equipment or types of records that we see in the entire QMS. The two big ones are training incompetency and equipment records. So one way to help avoid uh what most is most commonly referred to as pencil whipping the records uh or just falsifying, you know, making up numbers and putting them on a sheet, uh, is to teach the person how to do it properly. Uh and that is that is the extent of this requirement. There are no records required for this to show training. Yes, your eyebrows are raised because that is unusual to have a requirement that specifically says that records are not required. That was the compromise that was made in this in this ballot, is that if we were going to be able to put this in here, we had to say no records were required because there were some um implications in the minds of some of the people who are voting on this that to provide a training record equates to developing a certification program. Uh I have never experienced this, but I will take their word for it that that is what happens because I it's not it's not hard for me to believe that somebody could take a simple concept and and complicate it in that setting. Uh but it was really it's it's as simple as just showing somebody how to do that.

Kim Swanson 10:37

So is there a per like uh is it required that a procedure is in the QMS about doing that?

Brian Johnson 10:45

Uh no, no. This is a very a very uh simple requirement. This is we are we are trying to solve a problem without having an administrative uh requirement accompanying it. So it's a little it is a little unusual uh the way it's worded. And I but I will it's I think it's worth it because yeah it is such a problem.

Kim Swanson 11:16

I mean it I know this has been a a passion area for you for a while, I know. Um so I'm glad you I'm glad you have some uh something now in in the standard that helps clarify that for people. So we'll see how this evolves over time as well.

Brian Johnson 11:35

Yes, yeah, this was definitely uh a bucket list item for me. Uh which is which is sad. Most people have bucket lists like I want to go to you know some exotic location. Like no, but it was I want to get this requirement in R18.

Kim Swanson 11:54

I mean, to each their own, Brian, to each their own. Um, we did talk a little bit earlier about customer complaints as it relates to the terminology uh section, but in section 5.7, there was more clarification around that.

Customer Complaints And Validity

Brian Johnson 12:13

That's right. Yeah, so now customer complaints has its own special section. It used to be just kind of embedded in, you know, during a, I think it was during a management review they had to discuss customer complaints. Um, but now they have to have a procedure on uh when used when responding to uh documented customer complaints, uh the records and resulting actions taken uh to address the complaints. This is uh the special phrase in here that are determined to be valid by the laboratory shall be maintained. So people say all kinds of things, right? And this customer complaint requirement allows the laboratory to determine if those are valid and if they need to have corrective action associated with them. Uh, and I I think most people that deal with customer complaints kind of go through that process uh one way or another to determine like, okay, is this a credible complaint and do we need to take corrective action or is this just noise?

Kim Swanson 13:18

Section 5.8.

Internal Audits Requirements Get Specific

Kim Swanson 13:20

That had some changes as well.

Brian Johnson 13:23

So internal audits and and management reviews have always been confusing areas. So we tried to really differentiate the two this time. Uh so internal audits have a lot of details now about like what exactly needs to be included in the internal audit. Um when it's done, that's still 12 months. Uh and you still have to evaluate your quality management system for compliance with the requirements. And then you kind of do uh an audit of the implementation. So this is something that larger companies that have multiple offices can do. They can do that audit of their general policies and procedures one time and do the implementation audits at all the locations. Uh, if you're a single laboratory, uh you kind of do them both at the same time. Um, but but one of the things that has changed in this section, other than the details, are that the person performing the audit has to be trained. So this is very similar to that training we just talked about uh in the other section. It used to say the auditor needs to be trained and independent of the activity being audited where possible. Well, over the years, we've learned that where possible is just about everywhere.

Kim Swanson 14:41

You mentioned that there's always confusion between internal audits and management reviews. So in section 5.9,

Management Review With Top Management

Kim Swanson 14:48

the management review section, what has changed there and and why?

Brian Johnson 14:54

Well, the definition, the first line of it has changed a lot. And now it says the quality manager shall meet with top management. So that that tells you right away that it's not an audit. Uh, and then it goes to define what needs to be covered in that. Um they have to have a policy on how this is conducted. That's kind of a new thing. And then there are a bunch of requirements about what needs to be documented in it. So it should be much more clear to people if they read it uh that it's not the internal audit. But before it was like, I understand why people were confused by it because it seemed like the language used in both of those sections were there was some overlap. Yeah. I mean, it was hard to tell when one ends and the other one begins, or or if it should be one process. Yeah. Uh so now it's a little bit more differentiated, like it should have been.

Part Three Tease And How To Reach Us

Kim Swanson 15:46

Thanks for listening to part two. We will come back uh in a couple days or next week, who knows, with part three to finish up the series. Thanks for listening to AASHTO Resource QA. If you'd like to be a guest or just submit a question, send us an email at podcast at ashto resource.org. Or call Brian at two four oh four three six four eight two oh. For other news and related content, check out AASHTOe Resources social media accounts or go to ashto resource.org.