Should your Water Management Plan (WMP) Program Team decide to utilize environmental water sampling to validate the effectiveness of the WMP, ANSI/ASHRAE 188-2018 advises that these tests should be performed by a laboratory accredited to a nationally or internationally recognized standard (e.g., ISO/IEC 17025:2017), with Legionellaa included in the laboratory’s scope of accreditation.
Before environmental sampling is undertaken, a Sampling Plan should be formulated. This plan should list the devices and Points of Use (POUs) to be sampled, at what frequency sampling will be performed, what the acceptable control limits will be, and what the response protocol will be for any sample result(s) falling outside of the previously-established control limits.