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Meet the staff – Issy Purwanto, sample receiving

This is the first in a series of articles intended to introduce our staff to you while demystifying the process of sample analysis at the laboratory. The articles will track your samples through the lab, and you will meet the staff involved at each step.

When your samples arrive in our Thornleigh lab by courier or post, they have to be entered into our system. Meet Issy Purwanto.

Issy (short for Iswahyu) was born in East Java. He has lived in Australia since 1984, when he married an Australian lass. When he's not at work he's fishing or cooking up Indonesian food.

Issy unpacks the samples and enters the details of the sender, the problem to be investigated and the tests to be performed into the in-house computer system. Many clients know exactly what tests they want done; those who are unsure speak to one of our consultants, who help them decide on the optimum balance between useful information and cost. (For more details on what information to send us and what sample size we need, go to our Web page and click on Guidelines.)

If you need an indicative price, Issy can tell you. If you need a full quotation, one of our consultants will tailor one to your needs.

Issy then prints out labels for all of your samples so they can be tracked through the lab. If we don’t have the equipment or resources to do a particular test, Issy will send part of your sample out to a specialist lab. When it comes back, he re-enters it into our system, and Katie Shultz, our QC officer, records the results.

After the samples are logged ...

After Issy has entered your samples, he hands them on to Jesse Fenn, Andrew Sheldon, Josh Shaw and Harry Leake for preparation before testing. Then it’s on to Ian King and Daniela Trpcevska for running the tests and collecting and collating the results, under the watchful eye of our lab manager, Luzmilla Abercrombie. The results then go to the consultants for writing the reports and recommendations: Gabriella Navarrete and Paul Looby (horticulture, composts), Shane Harvey and Cameron Graves (turf and sports fields) or Daniel Saunders, Ryan Jacka and Meredith Bormann (soil, environmental and water testing). Finally Murray Fraser or Simon Leake signs off on the report, which is sent back to you.

In the next article, we’ll see what happens in the prep lab.

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