Current description – Focus on Project Planning

Overview:                        

The ERTP Uniform Federal Policy for Quality Assurance Project Plans (UFP-QAPP) training course is an 8-hour course designed to gain participant buy-in regarding the need for QAPPs, change behaviors, and provide technical guidance regarding the review and use of the UFP-QAPP format for U.S. EPA environmental information (not just lab data!) gathering activities.  The course targets project decision makers – remedial project managers (RPM), on-scene coordinators (OSC), information end users, and quality assurance (QA) personnel – as well as technical staff who support planning and environmental information collection, processing, validation, and use.  This course focuses on aspects of the UFP-QAPP that project managers/decision makers need to focus on, but also provides an overview of those parts of a UFP-QAPP that are largely chemistry-related which chemists and other technical specialists would focus on.  The course teaches decision makers and technical support personnel what should go into UFP-QAPPs, i.e. how to manage and review them, NOT how to write them.  The course will involve three primary modes of teaching: lecture with audio-visual aides, exercises for course participants using example UFP-QAPP worksheets, and plenty of time for answering participant questions and open discussion.

Target Audience:            

EPA Project Managers, project planners, decision makers, information end users, chemists, lab procurement specialists, technical auditors, information validators, information assessors, and QA Managers; basically, anyone involved in any phase of environmental information (not just lab data) gathering, analysis, validation, interpretation, use, and decision making.

Course Objectives:

• Understand that you must have QAPPs for your environmental investigations and learn why you will want them
• Know that the heart of your project and of the QAPP is planning and developing the problem statement, objectives, and the decisions that you need to make
• Know that chemistry is in service of project planning and decision making – chemistry gets you the information you need to make your decisions!
• Gain understanding of elements of a UFP-QAPP that focus on:
  • Project planning
  • Defining the problem in the form of questions that support the decisions that need to be made
  • Setting objectives
  • Establishing decision-making criteria
  • Defining project action limits and analytical sensitivity needs
  • Defining field sampling activities and requirements
  • Defining the information usability assessment process for assessing whether the information gathered is of sufficient type, quantity, and quality to enable decision-making
• Learn:
  • To carefully consider who the information end users are and get their help in planning
  • What to look for in your UFP-QAPP to make sure that it will achieve the objectives of the investigation.
  • About the chemistry-related elements of a UFP-QAPP and what needs to be in them
  • That project managers do not need to know the chemistry content in detail, but that they should pass on those parts of the QAPP to their technical experts to review

IMPORTANT:  ERTP’s receipt of a Trainex course registration is a Registration Request, it is not a Guaranteed Enrollment in the Course. All ERTP training courses require applicant registration thru the Trainex system.  Last minute course arrivals without prior ERTP Trainex course registration approval is not permitted.  Before ERTP issues final approval to deliver any course and/or any EPA offices incurring expenses for the training event (including but not limited to EPA staff travel TA’s and/or ERTP training contractor expenses incurred), all EPA mandatory pre-approvals must all be met. The pre-approvals include (but are not limited to) the following:
Training location’s availability;
COVID status and/or other COVID Guidelines in effect for the location, as well as staff;

• Agency limitations, scrutiny, and approvals of ‘Conference Spending Requirements (known as the “5170”)’ for the specific training course(s) scheduled delivery timeframe;
• Weather (blizzard, hurricane, etc);
• Contractual number of available course training slots;
• EPA training location staff having priority registration over all other registrations; and/or
• Hosting site Training Coordinator approval.

In the event a course is subsequently postponed or canceled, or notification of registration cancellation is received, all EPA travel arrangements (airline/car rental/hotel) should be canceled in a timely manner. Registered students will receive a notification via email if/when a course is postponed and/or cancelled.

Notice:For in-person course deliveries, confirmed course registered participants must abide by all facility physical access requirements for the location (examples: check-in at the security gate, Federal ID, Government PIV/CAC cards, photo id’s, etc.).  If applicable for the course or location, restrictions may apply to non-citizens and acceptable identification may be required for facility entry.  Unless otherwise specified, ERTP TRAINING IS GENERALLY NOT OPEN TO INTERNATIONAL ATTENDEES, ACADEMIA, CONTRACTORS, CONSULTANTS OR OTHER PRIVATE ENTITIES.