Spektrokhim: automating interlaboratory proficiency testing — precision to five decimal places

Picture hundreds of independent labs across the country testing the same petroleum samples in parallel — crude oil, fuel oil, bitumen. Each lab emails results in its own file. One administrator copies every number into a master spreadsheet, fighting typos and mismatched decimal formats.

For Spektrokhim we built a platform that turned that chaos into a clear digital workflow.

250+

active laboratories

600+

registered analysts

x3

faster reporting

x2

fewer corrections

How Spektrokhim worked before

Spektrokhim runs interlaboratory comparisons / proficiency tests (ILC/PT). The same sample goes to dozens of labs so each participant can prove measurement competence.

Until 2022 the team used a legacy German platform. It was expensive and hard to support, and many steps still ran through Excel and email. Collecting applications, registering participants, and assembling the final report took weeks. Our brief was to

and ship an independent custom system.

Organizer portal: a knowledge base, not a generic admin

For Spektrokhim administrators we built a control panel that behaves more like a structured chemical-research database than a stock CMS.

What the organizer portal does:

• Manage complex structures: objects (crude oil, fuel oil), analytes (ash content, water mass fraction), and thousands of methods and national standards.
• Run rounds: create a proficiency-testing round in a few clicks, pick analytes from the library, and assign samples.
• Moderate participants: review applications and grant lab access inside the system.
• Export for audit: the final report downloads to Excel with strict data types — a number stays a number, the comma stays the decimal separator — as required for their audit trail.

Lab portal: precision in every measurement

Participants need an interface that does not get in the way of entering results. Analysts see only their assigned tasks and deadlines.

Result entry is the critical step. Fields accept values to five decimal places. An analyst cannot submit until every required field is filled and a protocol scan is attached (PDF or image). That way

Rollout is not only code — it is change management with people on the bench. We covered why that fails in the article Why lab staff bypass LIMS.

Stack and team

We chose a stack that stays fast under heavy tables and stable under concurrent rounds.

• Backend: Laravel — roles and the graph between objects, analytes, and methods.
• Frontend: Vue.js — responsive UI when operators work large tables.
• Database: MySQL.
• Team: PM, frontend engineer, backend engineer, QA, and designer.

Why custom beat a boxed product here

In niches like chemical proficiency testing, off-the-shelf products rarely fit. Spektrokhim now owns an asset that is theirs alone.

1. Independence: the business no longer depends on a foreign vendor’s license and upgrade cycle.
2. Scalability: new measurement methods can be added without a developer for every change.
3. Integrity: after a round closes, data is frozen — no silent edits — which matters for regulated reporting.

Outcome

More than 250 laboratories work through the platform today. Report preparation is about three times faster: work that used to take weeks of manual collation now finishes after the organizer closes the round.

We keep extending the product with reporting modules and analytics. If your team still reconciles complex offline lab processes in spreadsheets — we know how to move that into a transparent digital system.

More on WAPP lab solutions — on the chemical labs page and LIMS.