People are the chemistry: Anneliese Owen

Environmental NEWS - Fall 2011

At Lancaster Laboratories, we believe that our people provide our strength. Their dedication to quality, professional competence and hard work is the key element in the company’s success. In this regular feature, we introduce you to some of the people who have helped make Lancaster Laboratories an industry leader.

Anneliese Owen

With Lancaster Laboratories for one half of the company’s 50-year existence, Anneliese Owen has seen tremendous growth in the company as well as her career. When she began her career in 1986, the Lab employed 180 people and the facility was 50,000 square feet as compared to today’s 850 employees housed in a 225,000 complex. Currently a manager for Environmental Sample Administration, Anneliese brings a wealth of knowledge from many areas of the business, having worked in data deliverables, client services and business development. Clients can have faith in knowing their samples are in good hands as every day Anneliese and her team ensure each and every container gets to where it needs to go in order to meet turnaround-time and holding time requirements and allow the technical centers ample time to schedule their analytical work.

The Environmental Sample Administration team has more than 150 years of combined experience at the lab, ranging from 26 to at least 3 years of service. Often her work on clients’ samples begins long before they arrive as her team works closely with client services and the technical centers troubleshooting for any potential challenges and resolving issues preemptively. “I like to ensure a seamless start to the analytical process,” says Anneliese. “Given a project’s many technical and scheduling requirements, a little planning goes a long way towards making it successful for both the client and the lab. That is why we encourage clients to e-mail their COCs to the lab when they are shipping so that we can address any questions and clarify any ambiguity to the analytical requests before the samples arrive.”

Given all of your responsibilities, how would you describe a typical workday?

We are triaging incoming coolers from commercial couriers in order to identify and prioritize rush and short hold-time analyses and also coordinate multiple cooler groups. We assist with the entry of priority samples and answer questions from technical centers, entry staff and client services groups about what samples have arrived and resolve any discrepancies with submittal groups. We also spend time balancing workload with staffing levels since everything that arrives each day must get entered that same day. At times I’m looking for additional help in unpacking or with labeling samples, and then other times, I’m looking for my staff to assist in other areas that may be working with a higher backlog of samples.

How would you characterize your leadership style?

I’m definitely an involved, hands-on leader. I don’t want my entry and interpretation skills to get rusty so I am right in there to help with rush and priority sample entry in the mornings. I also enjoy prioritizing the samples in the morning so that I know what arrived each day and can answer the calls efficiently from client services or management staff, who inquire about certain submittal groups each day. But on the other hand, I have a very experienced staff who do not need anyone telling them what do to each minute. They understand the prioritization of tasks and very efficiently share the workload and pitch in to help one another get through the sample volume. My office is only a few steps away if they have questions or want to run something by me.

You’ve been here for 25 years and seen countless changes. Is there anything that hasn’t changed during your tenure?

That would be the can-do attitude of the staff. Our workload fluctuates from day to day but no one gets ruffled; everyone just pitches in and efficiently unpacks, enters and labels the incoming samples each day no matter what the volume.

What is the thrust of your group’s work as it relates to clients?

We are the first step in the entire analytical process, and therefore, I think the most critical. The entire success of a project, no matter how large or small, depends on identifying discrepancies between the client’s submittal paperwork and the actual samples before the analytical work begins. If we do not have the correct samples or properly identify them, the client’s report could be worthless. What is really rewarding is with such an experienced staff, we are often able to recognize inconsistencies in submittal paperwork simply because we have been performing certain projects for so many years. We will flag analytical requests that look incomplete or inaccurate and have client services contact the client for clarification. The clients really appreciate when we are able to catch an error before a hold time is missed.