Perry Johnson Laboratory Accreditation, Inc.
Perry Johnson Laboratory Accreditation, Inc.
Compliant vs. Defensible: Building Laboratory Results That Hold Up, Especially When There’s No Standard Method

Compliant vs. Defensible: Building Laboratory Results That Hold Up, Especially When There’s No Standard Method

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What This Webinar Covers:

Every accredited laboratory can produce a result that is compliant. Far fewer can produce one that is defensible.

In this recorded session, Perry Johnson Laboratory Accreditation (PJLA) hosts a dynamic interview featuring Ron Brooks, M.S., Founder and Principal Consultant, RRB LLC (Ron Brooks Consulting), and Dr. George J. Anastasopoulos, Technical and International Business Development Manager, PJLA, Inc.

This candid discussion unpacks the gap between passing an assessment and producing results that survive real-world scrutiny. Drawing on more than 15 years building and running accredited analytical, clinical, and cannabis laboratories, and on his work as an expert witness in certificate of analysis fraud cases, Ron Brooks explains why an assessment tests whether a lab is compliant, while reality tests whether it is defensible. He breaks down the four things that most often cause a result to fall apart under challenge, why method validation and measurement of uncertainty are the load-bearing walls of a defensible result, and how laboratories authoring their own methods for cannabis, PFAS, peptides, and other emerging matrices can make new science stand up. Dr. Anastasopoulos adds the accreditation body’s perspective, including how regulators around the world layer additional requirements on top of accreditation.

Topics covered:

  • Compliant versus defensible: why accreditation is necessary but not sufficient, and why passing an assessment is the beginning, not the finish line.
  • The four things that break a result under challenge: thin validation, missing or boilerplate uncertainty, records that can’t reconstruct what happened, and scope overreach.
  • Why an SOP is a recipe and validation is the evidence that the recipe works, including whether following a customer protocol on qualified equipment counts as a validated method.
  • Measurement of uncertainty as a tool for defensibility and pass/fail decisions, not a paperwork exercise, and why testing labs can’t skip it.
  • Validating lab-developed and non-standard methods under ISO/IEC 17025: defining fitness for purpose, validating in the real matrix, building an uncertainty budget from the ground up, and scoping honestly.
  • How corrective actions can create more problems than they solve, and how to separate containment from true root cause analysis and effectiveness checks.
  • The one change to make before your next assessment: build for the challenger, not the assessor.

Discover how method validation, measurement of uncertainty, traceable records, and honest scope turn a compliant result into a defensible one, and how to use the accreditation assessment as an opportunity to find weaknesses before a client, regulator, or opposing expert does.

Presented By:

Dr. George Anastasopoulos - Technical and International Business Development Manager of PJLADr. George Anastasopoulos
Technical and International Business Development Manager of PJLA

Ron Brooks, M.S.
Founder and Principal Consultant, RRB LLC (Ron Brooks Consulting)
ronbrooksconsulting.com