Lab Equipment to Benefit from Quality Standards

In recent years complains about the decline in the quality and service life of laboratory equipment has been increasing. One reason for this is most certainly the procedure used to awards contracts, where the most favourably priced providers are given more consideration in the awarding of contracts. This means that manufacturers who offer high quality at fair prices have a significantly reduced chance of being awarded the contract. The people who lose out in the end here are the people who use the equipment in the laboratory. Despite being made to use poor equipment to accomplish high demands, they are battling against a lack of quality, the repairs brought on by this, the restricted usability and the risk of potential work accidents.

A both fair as well as long-term more efficient solution for the operators would be to take into account assessment criteria; this is a standard process for EU tenders: alongside the price, also quality, follow-on costs, functionality and design are included in the allocation of contract. Already during the planning stages of a laboratory there is the opportunity to present the weaknesses so that high-quality and safe products can be offered and taken into consideration. The valid European standards have proven useful here in the past. Using respective tender texts and references to these standards it is possible, already in the run-up, to separate the wheat from the chaff. In the case of investment decisions, it is also practical to integrate the operating costs across the entire service life of laboratory equipment alongside the one-off investment costs.