Participation Plan

The Participation Plan states what the laboratory intends to do in proficiency testing across an accreditation cycle (ISO/IEC 17025 §7.7.2, ILAC-P9 §5(3), EA-4/18). Proficiency Testing records what actually happened. The Scope Coverage dialog compares the two, and that is precisely the question an accreditation body asks.

Found under: Quality Control → Participation Plan.

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Record Actions

Clicking the icon on each row shows:

Edit — Open the edit form
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Plan fields

Field	Description
Plan No.	Leave blank for automatic numbering
Title	How the plan is referred to — required
Cycle Start / End	The span it covers — required; EA-4/18 expects at least one accreditation cycle
Status	Draft, Active or Superseded
Superseded By	Points at the plan that replaced it
Participation Strategy	How the level was set against the other §7.7.1 measures
Review Notes	What the annual review concluded

A new plan opens with a four-year cycle. That is a sensible starting point, not a rule — change it.

Areas of technical competence

A plan is not enough as a title: it needs areas. An area is a measurement process, a characteristic and a product — for example "arsenic in soil by ICP-MS". Leave the characteristic or product blank to cover a whole method.

Per area you set how many rounds are planned each year, whether all authorised analysts must take part, and the justification for the level.

🔴 Zero planned rounds is only allowed with a documented alternative approach. Where no suitable scheme exists, ILAC-P9 §5(7) requires you to write down what the laboratory does instead. Without that text the entry is refused.

Scope coverage

From the row action menu, Coverage compares expected rounds against those achieved, per area, and flags gaps:

Gap	What it means
Zero rounds with no alternative	The area is neither covered nor explained
No participation in the cycle	Rounds were planned but none took place
Fewer rounds than planned	Short of the plan
Not all analysts participated	The area required it but not everyone was covered
Unsatisfactory round	There is a failed round in the cycle
Borderline round	z near 2 or En near 1 — the stated uncertainty may be understated
Round with no recorded evaluation	30 days passed with no evaluation recorded
Provider accreditation unevidenced	The provider is not evidenced against ISO/IEC 17043
Comparison without validity evidence	An interlaboratory comparison with no ISO/IEC 17043 application
Covered only by comparisons	The area rests solely on comparisons with no documented alternative

Expected rounds are rounded down: 3.6 rounds means 3 are owed within the cycle.

Connects to

Points at — this page does not stand without these:

Users

If this is missing

🔴 With no active plan, the scope-coverage check opens by saying ILAC-P9 §5(3) requires one

before accreditation. That is not a system warning; that is the finding.

A plan with no items is active and empty: it covers nothing, and coverage reports it as a total

gap rather than a partial one.

An item at zero rounds per year needs a documented alternative approach; without one, that

scope area counts as uncovered.

A plan never reviewed within its cycle breaches EA-4/18 even when its content is right.

Notes

Active freezes the plan. The title and cycle dates can no longer change; a change means a new plan and a supersession. The review fields stay editable, as EA-4/18 expects.
Review on the row action menu stamps the annual review with today's date; it does not open an editor.
With no active plan, Coverage says so plainly: ILAC-P9 §5(3) requires one before accreditation.
See also: Proficiency Testing.