The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has the mission to conceive and execute civil works projects in the nation's waterways. Projects relating to this mission are subject to various environmental regulations that require the collection of environmental data for project planning, design, construction, and operation. These data-collection processes must be performed under controlled conditions to be legally defensible. An effective quality assurance (QA) plan is needed to meet these requirements. in response to the need for a guidance document to assist Corps personnel with the preparation of QA project plans, a task group met and recommended the preparation of a single standardized approach that would be applicable to all civil works data-collection programs. This guidance report was prepared in response to this recommendation.

It is Ecology policy to have an approved Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) for all Agency-sponsored studies and activities generating and/or interpreting data. This universal QAPP will serve as a plan describing the common practices, procedures, and quality requirements for product testing studies at Ecology. QAPP addenda will be prepared for implementation, and data assessments where they differ from the standard plan guidelines presented in this document.