S2E7 -Behind Every Breakthrough: The Science of Lab Services

Welcome everyone to the Park Innovation Flow podcast. Thanks for listening today. I'm your host Blair Corning, and with me today I have two chemists from the laboratory at South Platte Renew. I have Dan Radulovic and Sarah Potter with us today. So thanks for being here.

Yeah, thank you for having us.

Is it? Yeah, well, we'll get into the lab questions. I already had one though, I get excited about the lab. I started in the lab, and so the lab gets me pumped up. But why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves? You can go first, Dan, and give a little background on who you are, where you came from, how you got to where you are, that kind of thing.

Sure, yeah, so my name's Dan Ardulovich, and I didn't start out as a chemist. Started out as a police officer a whole long time ago, and just through career paths and everything like that, I ended up going back school getting a chemistry degree. I worked in a few different laboratory settings. I worked in a forensic laboratory up in North Dakota. I've worked in commercial laboratories that are contract laboratories. Basically, everybody sends their samples to them and they get analyzed there, so we never really know exactly what we're— what we've got in our jars.

Yeah.

Worked in some private industry jobs as well, doing some development on some water softening things. But yeah, and then I ended up here after I worked at Xcel for about 4 years.

And how long have you been at South Platte Renew?

A little over 4 years.

A little over 4 years?

Yep.

Cool. Sierra, how about you?

My name's Sierra Potter. I'm the laboratory administrator currently. I graduated with a degree in chemistry and didn't really know what I wanted to do. I'd done a little bit of research, so figured I would just apply everywhere. while I was going to school to get my MBA, and landed upon a place up north in Illinois doing wastewater and drinking water testing. Honestly fell in love. Didn't think that's the route I wanted to take, but happy that I found it. And then I started here right after Dan, actually. He's got like 2 weeks seniority on me.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, and I've been here just a little 4 years.

Cool. Well, we're happy to have you both. These two are the, 2 of the best in the business at what they do. So this will be a great podcast. Let me start out with the icebreaker question, and I, and I will tell the audience I teed you up with this so you didn't— so you could do some research if you needed to. But the icebreaker question is, what's the most ridiculous thing that you've Googled recently? So who wants to start? Sarah?

Yeah, I'll start. So I just went through my phone history.

Were you surprised at what you found?

Yeah, a lot of stuff I don't need to look up, but I do anyway. Um, but I was just visiting back home, uh, last week, and a Pitbull song came on, and I was like, oh, have you, uh, have you seen the Pitbull bald caps? And my mom's husband was like, what are you talking about? So my Google search was Pitbull bald caps. They're going for like a Guinness World Record of everyone going to his show with like a full bald cap, suits.

Oh.

Facial hair drawn on. So yeah, super random.

Interesting. Super random and interesting. All right. Yeah, I remember you were going home, and part of your trip included a student outreach at your alma mater. Tell us a little bit about how that went.

Yeah, it was awesome. It was so nice to be back. I was really surprised that so many of the professors I had were still there, but there was so many students just eager to find out more about wastewater. So I talked with Probably like 60 students, I would say. Kind of got to share a little bit about what I do and how I ended up in that career.

Cool. Yeah. Did you recruit? Did you get any recruits?

I had a lot of people asking about vacancies and internships. Yeah.

Good. All right, how about you, Dan? The most ridiculous thing you've Googled recently?

So, I found out I'm pretty boring, actually, and I didn't Google anything very exciting, but I do remember a few months ago I Googled, and I just— because I had found it before on YouTube, it was the Sir Mix-a-Lot at the, uh, with the Seattle Symphony. Oh, and it's, it's, it's pretty hilarious.

I'll have to Google that myself.

Yeah, we both went down the music route, I guess.

I guess so. All right, well, those are good ones. So what I wanna talk about first, and we can take this wherever it goes, but first I wanna talk about a PARCC project because as we've talked before, you know, everyone is involved in PARCC. PARCC is throughout the organization, which includes the lab. But Dan, you did an interesting PARCC project. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you did and what it is?

Sure, I took some inspiration from my deputy director and I developed a laboratory menu, which basically is just a list of like what the laboratory has to offer, with some information in it as well. And, you know, that's, it was basically just to kind of get the word out as far as like what we do. And for anybody like coming into the organization or that puts a trailer out at our park site, you know, it's a quick access to, these are the things that the laboratory that's on site can provide for you.

Cool, so vendor or a pilot trailer comes up, They want to know, what can you help us with analytical testing-wise? And you hand them the menu, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah. What is it? Maybe show it to the viewers on YouTube.

So yeah, we got that. It's intentionally short. So yeah, we have the appetizers, which is the meter tests. We then have the mains, which are the physical tests. the chef's specials, which are instrument tests, and also the soups that are biological tests. And possibly the most important part of it is actually on the back.

What does that say?

It's basically to contact the laboratory for any, any of your, your needs, because we also have, have several places that we actually send out other samples to for, you know, things like PFAS that we don't do on site, that we can— that we have relationships with other laboratories to just to put in contact if you need those type of specialized services. And also it will help us know what's coming into our laboratory because it's nice to know what our workload is gonna be based on what's coming in.

So do you lab chemists consider yourself sommeliers now in addition to analytical chemists?

I'm just a server. Just a server? I'm getting there.

All right, good. I don't know why, Soups just throws me for a loop, but.

Yeah.

I like the soups.

The E. coli test is under soups, which is—

Hey, that's what it is. Big biological soup.

It's accurate.

Yeah. Well, that's cool. What, did you run into any challenges or take us through any challenges you might have encountered?

Yeah, I think the biggest challenge for me, I'm a very analytical person and I like a lot of information.

That's probably why you're in the lab. Yeah, big surprise.

was paring down what should be on this. It landed basically on kind of the name of the test and what our, like, capability— what, how low we can see for the most part.

Yeah.

I know, like, my first few iterations had probably 2 or 3 more pieces of information, like hold times, things like that. Just, you know, just for purely— it's probably because I'd seen it in the past and other— at other laboratories and things like that. Like, you see the big poster on the wall of, you know, You know, here's, here's what we do. Here's, here's the, here's the limits. Here's the hold time. Here's the preservation you need. Here's what you, here's what you need to do with it. So.

Well, cool. Yeah, I'm sure that I like the, I like the approach. I like the approachability of it. It's got some fun. It's not just, you know, a boring chart.

It's got fun.

It's got soups. It's got everything. And I could see the The value, because, uh, yeah, with the pilot trailers ramping up and the projects we got going, I'm sure, uh, most of that involves research. So they need tests, they need a lot of analytical stuff done.

Interestingly enough, when I got done with this, um, like shortly after I finished it, um, one of the operators— I just, I happened to be in the operations area, and one of the operators asked me, hey, do you have a, you have a thing that has all the tests with like hold times on it? I was like, believe it or not, yes I do. Yeah. So I think it was mainly for like studying for exams.

Yeah, I think like that.

So I was able to forward that over, one of the rough drafts, one of the old drafts. I just sent it to them so they, they could have that information.

So nice. All right, well, uh, um, last question on the menu here. What did you learn? Did you learn anything along the way creating it?

Um, I mean, obviously I'm supposed to know most of the stuff that's in here.

Uh-huh.

So, um, so it's critical. It was a good pressure, particularly going through like some of the hold times and things like that. Just some of the stuff that maybe didn't make it in here. But even, even at that, it's like just realizing like how many tests we do. It's, it's quite a bit.

Yeah.

Um, it's a, it's a very full-service laboratory. It's not, you know, we aren't just doing, you know, a few things here or there. We've got, you know, a lot of really good instrumentation. We have, um, um, just a lot of good a lot of good people that work in it, so we make sure that we're doing things the right way. And, you know, I also learned a lot about using Microsoft Publisher because I'd never used it before.

Oh, yeah, that's not a normal lab tool, I suppose.

No, it's not.

I think that was the biggest challenge.

At least you didn't try it in like Word or Acrobat or something. Well, cool. Thanks for sharing it with us. That is a A cool tie-in to PARC, and I think very helpful with the whole program. Let's talk about, let's talk about some of the testing, some of the capabilities in the lab that PARC participants or researchers might want to use. Maybe, Sarah, can you touch on what kind of tests you do and what kind of instruments you do that on?

Yeah, so we do quite a bit, like Dan already said. We can do inorganics. We do biological testing. So we run an ion chromatography instrument. We also have flow injection analysis. And so we can see— that one allows us to see really low levels, which is nice. We run metals, E. coli, biological oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand. TOC, TN. List just kind of goes on and on and on. But I would say our biggest instruments are our metals instrument and our TOC analyzer.

The DCA.

DCA, yes. We have a discrete analyzer as well. And all of them are named. Oh yeah?

Yeah. What are some of their names?

Our ICP-MS, our metals instrument, is named Billy.

All right.

Yeah, yeah.

The flow injection analyzer is a Flow, just like—

Oh, that's good.

It has the gal from Progressive on it.

Yeah. Okay, all right.

Yeah, so we started putting like little cutouts of the picture of the instrument, so.

Is this an SPR-specific thing, or have you seen this in other labs in naming instruments?

I've seen it at other labs.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, yeah.

I have not. Yeah, yeah.

I don't think everyone has every single instrument named.

Yeah.

And we even have like our incubators, all of that.

Cool. Yeah, all right, well, take us through some of the projects you guys have done analyst or analytical testing for, and what kind of things did they request?

So right now we're working on the AAA pilot, so we're getting samples once a month. We're running a whole lot of analyses, everything from total suspended solids to ion chromatography. We're looking for nutrients, a little bit of COD, and then also BOD. So kind of a whole smorgasbord, if you will.

Yeah, cool.

And then we've also done PDNA, which kind of had a lot of the same analyses. And then we're doing crew carbon right now as well. That involves sending some of our already analyzed samples out to the people with crew. But we're also doing solids in-house for that.

All right.

Yeah.

Laws?

Yeah. Yeah. That's a throwback. Yeah, that's a throwback.

A lot of COD on— it was that project was we were investigating using waste from the distilling process to, uh, as a carbon source for, for all of our bacteria here. And that was a lot of COD. At least it didn't smell bad. I mean, it smelled like, you know, brewing and whiskey.

Yeah, that's different for the, uh, well, cool. Uh, what else did I want to talk about? How was the, uh, How are the lab people, how do they feel about PARCC? How do they feel about the increase in testing and working on the PARCC projects? I don't know the lab people, I have 2 of them. How do you guys feel? That's what I should ask.

Sometimes it can be a lot, but usually it's just one day out of the month that we're getting all these samples in. And the nice thing is we're doing most of those analyses already, so it's just extra samples to throw onto your run. Yeah. So really it's, it's not a ton of extra work, which is nice. But I've heard that there's going to be lots of projects. Yeah. So we'll see how we feel once those all start to get going.

Yeah. I'll check back in a few months.

Yeah.

Look all tired. Yeah. Worn down.

I'll have my dark circles.

Dan, what about you? What do you think about being a part of these park research projects and pilot trailer studies?

Yeah, I enjoy it because it just, it Believe it or not, we do kind of the same thing over and over all the time, and it breaks that monotony up. And also, um, it's fun to see it when you actually start seeing some changes happen. I know with the Crew Carbon, we were really trying to pay attention to a few, few different numbers and, and just make sure that we're, we're where we need to be with them. But you can, you can see things change a little bit, um, just on the number side.

Yeah.

And yeah, just I mean, it's fun to see stuff like that to me, to do it enough to actually know what I'm looking at. If you run the tests enough, you start understanding where we need to be with certain things, and watching things change for the better is pretty cool. Yeah.

Well, cool. How does the— okay, so say I'm a a pilot trailer and I want, you know, I get your menu, I pick my hors d'oeuvres and my appetizers and all that, and then you guys test it. How do you get the— where's the data go and how does it get to the end user?

Yeah, so it really just depends how they want to receive their data. We're putting everything into our LIMS, so our laboratory information management system. So all of our data lives in there. And we can easily just pull data into Excel sheets. That's how most people tend to want that data. I also can send over PDFs of all the data, full reports. So it's up to the end user how they want to receive that.

So you just put it in storage and then figure out what they want?

Yep. Yeah.

All right. Do you have a— how do you know what's coming? Do you work with them before the project or during the project, or how does that whole process go?

Um, so we definitely have a lot of meetings, and the nice thing is now that Dan made that menu, we can proactively show them exactly what we can offer in the laboratory ahead of time. And then once we have that all figured out, we'll get together with them again, set up like a frequency of the testing, whether they need it 3 times a week, once a month, 2 times out of the year, whatever it might be. And we have this nice little project sheet that We'll work together to fill out. And then from there, once that's all figured out, tend to have like a meeting with the laboratory staff, make sure everyone's on the same page, they know they're gonna get 20 extra samples next week, stuff like that. And then if the project's ongoing, like which most of the pilots right now are gonna be ongoing for a while, we'll have like regular meetings, data submissions, whatever they need.

Cool. Yeah, it sounds like it's, uh, you do a lot more than just running tests on instruments or, you know, with water. It's meeting with people, it's coordinating, it's project management.

Yeah.

All that kind of stuff. Cool. Well, I had another question, and I want to get to a project that I thought was very innovative that you did, and it ties into this question, which I'll ask Dan, is how do you, how do you make sure the data coming out of the lab is good? How do people know what you send them is good data? I know it, but how do they know it?

Yeah, so we, uh, um, we have a pretty extensive QA program. I've worked at a few different laboratories in my, in my time, and it's definitely on par with all of those, if not exceeding it in a few areas. Um, there's a, there's a system where we, we review all the data. by a second analyst. It's then reviewed by the manager before it even goes out. We have several different samples that we're running that we know what the answer should be, and if it's not within the tolerance of what those tests tell us it should be, then we basically have to figure out what's going on with our instrument or test or whatever, and then start over for the most part. So, we're making sure that everything is coming out correctly.

Mm-hmm.

I just, I would, I would feel really horrible if, you know, a piece of data sneaks through that someone makes a decision on. Yeah, that, you know, ends up being the wrong thing.

Yeah, this is important stuff. I mean, it's either important to a researcher, or it's important to the CDPHE on whether we're meeting our permit protecting the river, or it's important to lab or plant operators who are Turning dials based on what you give them. So, yeah. All right, well, kind of related to that, I know, uh, Sierra, why don't you talk about the program you developed to kind of ensure, uh, quality in the lab?

Yeah, so, um, just a little over a year ago, we held our very first internal audit in the laboratory. So coming from my last job, it was drinking water and wastewater, and we had the very thorough EPA EPA, Department of Public Health audits on a regular basis. So coming from that, I wanted to make sure we had something implemented in the laboratory now to just make sure that we are doing what we need to do and that we're holding ourselves to those standards, even though we might not be audited all the time or to that extent.

Yeah. So what did that entail? What is a— what did you call it? Internal audit, what does that look like?

Yeah, so once a year, what we're trying to do is have an outside— inside source, so someone outside of the laboratory directly. So we've used Data and Regulatory for this. Figured that was like the perfect fit. So they've come in and just looked at a checklist that I had built, and it kind of checks on different things. So anything from quality assurance, quality control, to Preservation checks, looking at our chemical inventory, just a variety of things to encompass everything that we do in the lab.

Yeah, safety too, I think.

Yes.

Oh yeah, that, that definitely had a ton of items in the checklist as well. So having another set of eyes that's not seeing those things every single day is super helpful in helping us improve over time.

Yeah, yeah. And then I think you not only built it for the lab, but you took it out on the road and showed others, because I saw a presentation you did at the Rocky Mountain Water Quality Analysts Association. How has it been received? Are people gonna follow suit, or?

Yeah, I've actually had about 4 different people reach out for just like information on how we set up our audit, and how we like, how I came up with all of those items in the checklist. So I've been able to share that with a few people. I know the City of Boulder right now is working on doing like a whole QA/QC overhaul. So, they're taking a look at possibly implementing internal audits as well. So, I think it was really cool that it was well received and that people are actually interested in doing that.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. You solved the problem here and then took it one step further and helped other people solve their problems.

I think there was even talk after that presentation of like even the RMWQAA maybe like having a group of people that would come in from like that weren't even part of your organization and coming in and taking a look at your laboratory, things like that. I know it was discussed, but yeah, I don't think it's been actioned yet. But that would be a, that would be, that would be a pretty cool thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, a group of people that are from several different, you know, facilities and then, you know, you go and take a look at somebody else's stuff just to see. That way you get a kind of wide range of opinions.

Yeah. So you also get to go see what everyone else is up to.

Exactly.

Exactly. Cool. Well, it's close it out here with this final question. Well, actually, the final thing will be the end-of-show quiz, but before we get there, I wanna ask each of you what's your favorite lab analysis is. Do you have favorites? Are they like children where you can't have a favorite? What's your favorite test, Dan or Ciro? Whoever wants to go.

I'll go first. I probably like the IC the best. It's what I worked on the most. Um, before I came here.

And what is— what does that stand for?

Ion chromatography. So it's basically— it's, for lack of a better term, it just separates the stuff out inside of a mixture and then tells you what it is. Um, it's all like the negatively charged anions, so chloride, sulfide, nitrate, nitrite.

How does it, uh, separate out the ions?

Uh, the, uh— so the column does that for you. Basically, it's got a substance on it that the negatively charged stuff is going to want to stick to. And based off of how, how much it likes to stick to that is, is how long it takes for it to come out of the—

Okay.

Out of the column. So the more it likes to stick to it, the longer it's going to be in there. So it'll be toward the end of your run, whereas opposed to something like fluoride or something like that that comes out right at the beginning. It like, it doesn't want to be in the column at all. It's like, nope, I want out. I'm out first.

I see. Clever, clever, clever.

All right, how about, uh, how about you, Siri? You got a favorite?

Yes, um, I love BOD. So BOD, biochemical oxygen demand. It is the most ridiculous test, I think. It's put a couple different things in bottles, put it in the dark for 5 days, and then read it back. Okay, but it's just, it's It's an analysis that helps operators make decisions. It's an analysis that pretty much every plant runs. So, and I like not having to deal with an instrument sometimes. So I'm in control of that analysis without any instruments.

Well, don't you do that on a—

I would argue with you on that, whether you're in control of it or not.

Don't you do it with a robot?

We do.

Okay.

Well, yeah, I was like, I guess that, but there's no— I don't know.

There's no instrumentation to go with it?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

And it can be done manually if need be, if the instrument acts up, so.

And it's like a test of what?

So we're just looking for the amount of dissolved oxygen depletion over time in those samples.

Okay. So kind of how strong the stuff is, huh? Cool. All right, well, thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing your stories with us today. And the menu is great. The lab audit's great. You guys are great. I'm glad we got you in the lab. Anyone who can describe IC to, you know, people and be able to understand it, that's who we need in the lab. Are you ready for the end-of-show quiz?

Sure.

Okay, I'm gonna give you—

I wasn't aware there was a quiz.

Yeah, yeah, well, there is. I'm gonna give you 3 choices of categories. One's Mr., Famous Founders, or Partners. Which, uh, which category would you like to tackle?

Mr.

Mr. I've been hoping someone would pick Mr.

The answer is always T.

All right, there's 4 questions. Uh, see if you can Sweep all 4. Here we go. Name the brand of bath products kids love. Remember, the category is Mr.

Oh, is it Mr. Clean?

No. Mr. Bubbles.

Is that your final answer? Yep. Mr. Bubble is correct. All right. Uh, okay, name the terribly nearsighted cartoon character who was featured in ads for General Electric?

Oh, I know it. Boy, that's old.

Yeah, I know.

I was like, I got to know this.

You were watching, uh, who are those little— I don't know.

I think it's Mr. Whipple, but I'm not sure.

Oh, it is not. It is Mr. Magoo.

Mr. Magoo?

You remember Mr. Magoo? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a cartoon character. Name the cherry spice cola that is a rival of Dr Pepper.

Mr Pibb.

Mr Pibb is correct.

Glad I got one on there.

All right, you got 2 out of 2 so far. You can get 3 with this one. Name the popular preschool toy with attachable ears, eyes, nose, and mouths.

Mr Potato Head.

Mr Potato Head, right on. Okay, you've got 3 for 4. That's a good showing.

How is Mr. T not an answer?

Or Mr Clean. That should have been— I thought that would come up later, but It didn't. But all right, good work, and thanks for being here on the Innovation Flow Podcast. Thanks to our viewers and listeners for watching and tuning in. If you like the show, tell a friend, tell your neighbor. We'll get some listeners that way. And give us a thumbs up or a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening on. And we'll see you next time on the Innovation Flow Podcast.

Thank you.