William Ray

Owner/President of William Ray Consulting, LLC

Education:

Bachelor’s in Chemistry from UC Irvine
Master’s in Chemistry from Cal Poly Pomona

In describing his work experience, one could state years of employment in the environmental testing field, but the most descriptive would be to say that his career spanned 10 editions of Standard Method. His first position was with the well-known testing laboratory Pomeroy, Johnston, and Bailey (later known as Jacob’s Laboratories). This taught him not only the basics of environmental chemical, bacterial, and radiochemical analyses, but the necessity of getting things in writing.

After 18 years of bench experience he moved to CA ELAP where he wrote the first set of regulations, conducted audits and investigations some of which led him to the court room. His experiences in investigations led him to research legal issues relative to laboratory data.

His last position leading up to retirement from State service was with the State Water Resources Control Board as the manager of the Boards’ Quality Assurance Program. Not only did he gain much knowledge of quality systems, which he merged with his knowledge of statistical analyses gained as a radiochemist, but learned that the incorporation of a quality system is more an issue of desire by management than procedures.

Bill is the Owner/President of William Ray Consulting, LLC, a recently formed consulting firm specializing in technical and compliance assistance to the environmental laboratory community. His accomplishments include the revitalization of a lab's LIMS system, development of an Excel-based worksheet for BOD analyses that includes the creation and maintenance of control charts and exclusion of analyses not meeting method criteria, and SOPs incorporating the 12 QC elements. His first publication, in the August/September 2009 edition of WEF Laboratory Solutions, is titled “Legally Defensible, how well will your data hold up”. Others include discussion on the over-use of the estimated data or “J” flag, on the issues created by the September, 2010 proposed Methods Update Rule, and on the issues created by the final version of the Methods Update Rule, specifically for 40CFR Part 136.7 – Minimum QA. He continues to provide training and has done so on topics ranging from instructing wastewater treatment plant operators on how to take a field pH measurement to demystifying certification regulations.

Contact Information: ; 925-300-3350