The citizens of the City of Cape Town expect high water quality of domestic and industrial water supplies, unpolluted rivers, public amenities and the environment.

Currently the Quality Management System (QMS) covers three Laboratories at the Scientific Services viz. Water, Analytical and Biological Sciences Laboratories.

The laboratories with their comprehensive range of analysis, need to deliver quality results according to specified standard requirements. The laboratories will therefore have to ensure that the results are reliable, traceable and have the capacity to process samples in a short time. This will be achieved by the Quality Management System (QMS) for the Laboratories more specifically the SANAS ISO/IEC 17025 QMS, standard i.e. “General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories. Currently our Laboratory is SANAS ISO/IEC 17O25 accredited.

The ISO 17025 accreditation helps to maintain the overall quality standard in the laboratories through clearly documented policies, procedures and supported by: 

• the Laboratory Information System (LIMS) that is interfaced with instrumentation ensuring the integrity and traceability of Test Method data, as results are processed automatically 
  
• state of the art analytical instrumentation providing reliable and expected turnaround time of results to customers 
  
• data Loggers used for sampling ensuring the integrity of samples taken at sampling points 
  
• a centalised Sample Receiving Area (1, 2, 3) which enables the traceability of samples received for testing in our Laboratories