Professionals across EPA, states, and tribes are collaborating to improve the process of developing, reviewing, and approving Quality Assurance Project Plans (QAPPs) for state and tribal grants. This initiative has experienced early success with the acceleration of the QAPP approval process; on average, regions are approving 92 percent of QAPPs within 60 days of receipt from grantees.
QAPPs are documents submitted by grantees to EPA that detail the quality assurance, quality control, and other technical activities necessary to ensure that projects will satisfy established performance criteria. This project grew out of a lean event that focused on the need to streamline, make more transparent, and ensure consistency in the QAPP process for EPA, states, and tribes. Workgroups were established to:
- Implement a Mission Measure: EPA established a mission measure requiring regions to review and approve QAPPs within 60 days of receipt from grantees.
- Assess and Expand Training and Resources: Partners conducted an inventory of available QAPP resources along with a gap analysis of training and resource needs.
- Improve Communications: EPA encouraged direct communications between QA staff and grantees via a memorandum and developed a reference document for grantee use during scoping meetings.
- Standardize Terms and Conditions: Partners are continuing work to standardize both national and programmatic terms and conditions.
For more information or to participate in streamlining efforts, contact Katherine Chalfant, Acting Director of EPA’s Enterprise Quality Management Division.