Services related to water pollution

Tender description

Public Health England (PHE) awarded a contract for the Automated Diluters to Don Whitley Scientific Ltd. The requirement is for the Food, Water and Environmental Microbiology Services (FWEMS), which are spread across 3 laboratory sites: Porton at PHE Porton Down, York at the National Agri-Food Innovation Campus (NAFIC), and London at PHE Colindale. The Food, Water and Environmental Microbiology Services (FWEMS) laboratories rely on now obsolete bioMerieux Dilumats, which are automated dilution systems. Each laboratory operates a number of units across their operations. ISO/CEN standard methodologies and EU Regulation require 25 grams of a food product be used for microbiological testing. This sub-sample is diluted 1:10 to allow homogenisation of the sample and enable enrichment testing for pathogens and direct testing on agar plates for specific bacterial species. Approximately 3 000 food samples are tested per month by the PHE Food, Water and Environmental Microbiology Services. The automated system removes risk of weighing and dispenser error if this was a manual method and it removes the risk of cross contamination and of injury from manual handling of large volumes of bottled media. This supports the requirement for the laboratories to be accredited by UKAS to ISO 17025, which is reliant on the accuracy of testing being controlled. The awarded contract covers the provision of new Dilumats manufactured by bioMerieux, which meet all mandatory requirements.