In the fall of 1979 the company offered a new quality control service program to all laboratories involved in coal testing throughout the world. In essence, the program provided fresh coal samples collected from various locations which had been carefully prepared to strictly adhere to protocols ensuring representativeness across all samples. This allowed any lab to insure that their procedures generated the same results as other labs by comparison of quality control determinations against the universe of all labs results.
The program permitted clients to choose and run, in duplicate, as many routine coal parameters as desired and weekly thereafter Std Labs issued a report which contained the appropriate statistics including mean, number of determinations, range and histograms, etc.
This program was initially under the direction of Dick Kelly and in 1980 Kathy Sloan was named Program Administrator.
Over the years a variety of new test parameters were added to the program such as ultimates, dilatation and plasticity.
The program grew over the years to include coal producer labs, US Government labs, research labs and foreign labs. At its peak over 100 labs participated in this well accepted program.
In 1980 Std Labs established a Water QC Program to provide standard water reference samples to its labs for routine water in house determinations. This bi-weekly program was administered by Ray Guffey, the head of Std’s Environmental Division and later by Mick Samples, Special Projects Manager.
In 1981 the SLRR Program initiated a new service entitled the Standard Laboratories Standard Sample Program. In this new program the excess SLRR samples were offered for sale to the industry as standard reference materials.
Eventually, the overall program was absorbed into the Technical Services Division under Lee Rigsby after Dick Kelly left the company for other opportunities. When Lee formed his own company, Vanguard Solutions, Std Labs sold him the programs which he still continues to run although Std Labs eventually left his program and formed, Quality Assurance Resources (QAR).