Late one night, about 40 years ago, the Secret Service telephoned a senior chemist of Laucks Testing Laboratories, Inc. in Seattle. A few minutes later, a police cruiser arrived and sped him to a large downtown hotel, where, in a small room, a full dinner had been spread out on a white-clothed table. Instead of eating, the chemist spent all night, analyzing everything on that table, right down to the silverware, checking for every known poison.

Finally, as the sun rose, the chemist stood up, stretched and told the watchful agents: “That’s it. Everything’s okay.”

That night, Vice President Richard Nixon ate the same food at a state dinner in the hotel.

Stories like these are part of the folklore of Laucks Lab. Opened in 1908 to assay the gold being found in the Yukon-gold fields of Northwest Canada, it began what has been a steady pattern of growth when World War I started a few years later, and Oriental produce bound for Europe was diverted from the Suez Canal to Western-U.S. ports. Laucks’ scientists tested and certified raw and finished products for bacteriological or chemical contamination. In more recent years, the lab has taken on an important environmental role, by such activities as industrial waste studies or a recently-completed two-year study of the sediments dredged from Hong Kong harbor as a result of airport construction.

Laucks’ analyses are usually quantitative: exactly how many parts of mercury per million are in the tissues of a halibut? How much toxic metals could be leached from waste material in a landfill? Moreover, according to Mike Nelson, technical director, these tests are almost always undertaken in conjunction with some allowable limits by government regulation—which means the analysis must be prepared with an eye to possible admission in court.

“Very little of our work actually ends up in court, but practically all of it is litigious in nature,” Mr. Nelson said. “We have to verify on a regular basis that our method and performance meet certain criteria; and we have to keep records and documentation for auditors that prove we are doing this. If we can’t defend our results—prove that the numbers we reported are in fact an accurate representation from the sample we’re given—we’re in big trouble. We’re quite defensive in that area so we keep lots of documents. We put lots of things in our files. Attorneys are very comfortable with pieces of paper.”

To ease the paper glut, the lab about a year ago installed a powerful document-imaging system, developed by Laserfiche Document Imaging, Inc. of Long Beach, California. With Laserfiche, Laucks created a tracking system, under which a tracking number is assigned to a particular case; then all of the documents related to that case are run through a scanner—one sheet of paper per second or less—and electronic photocopies are stored permanently, for instant retrieval on up to five PC monitors, whenever the tracking number is tapped into the keyboard. One sheet of paper is retained, for legal purposes, in place of multiple copies formerly required.

“We have several projects where we’re doing that now,” Mr. Nelson said. “It’s actually been very helpful. As the time goes along, I’m sure it will provide an important saver of storage space for us. We’re moving along, one step at a time.”

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Tags: commercial, lab

Posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2001 at 3:56 pm under Customer Stories, Other Industries. You can comment on this post.