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LABORATORY PROFILE Inside Triangle Labs Ronald Hass has guided Triangle Laboratories through the best of times and the worst of times. The Durham, NCbased laboratory is best known for handling difficult environmental analyses in complex matrices, ranging from smokestack emissions to tainted army boots to whole fish. Today, Triangle Laboratories is repositioning itself for a different future as it weathers an environmental market that Hass describes as gruesome. "My job is to first decide on where we are going and then thoroughly communicate that to the rest of the company in such a way that all moving together." Triangle Laboratories was launched in 1984, when Hass and several colleagues left research positions with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to try their hands at business. The initial years for Triangle Labs were boom years—the business grew 400% in the first year and doubled in each of the next five years. The 1990s, however, have been marked by a flat or declining environmental market, forcing Triangle Laboratories to cut back in 1993 and again this July ("AVe lost some people who were really good," says Hass). Triangle Laboratories currently handles about $14 million per year in business and employs about 150 people. Hass calls the business a "factory", an appropriate description. The laboratories occupy approximately 50,000 ft2 2o floor space and operate 24 h a day, including holidays. On a typical day, the facility buzzes with activity in nearly every laboratory, and the labyrinth-like corridors are filled with white-coated technicians moving from one place to another. Inside the laboratories are a mix of old and analytical technolo-
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gies—rows of Soxhlet extractors and packed columns for chromatography are set up in one wing, whereas another wing holds what Hass claims is the world's largest collection of high-resolution mass spectrometers in a commercial laboratory. Work comes into the lab in unpredictable spurts of either large volumes of samples or special samples requiring more difficult analysis, says Hass. On the day Analytical Chemistry visited, Hass waw waiting for samples from the Nov. 18 fire in the Chunnel, which connects France and the United Kingdom. (According to Hass, about 10% of the business is international.) Meanwhile, another expected set of samples had been delayed because technical problems had shut down an incinerator. Triangle Laboratories has built its reputation around dioxin analysis, which at its fastest takes three days to complete. The laboratory has leveraged that service into other analyses on the same samples, such as metals in air or adsorbable organic chlorine in wassewater from paper millss Thii expertise has established the lab as a place that tackles difficult and unusual analyses. Indeed, there is an "academic" flavor to Triangle Laboratories. At the heart of the operation are a core of Ph.D. and masterslevel chemists with expertise in methods development. These expert chemists oversee each project, making sure that the regulatory and customer requirements are fulfilled and mat the appropriate methods are used. In fact, Triangle Laboratories has been responsible for the development of several EPA methods. "We are unusual in the depth of [intellectual] resources in the company," says Hass. Nearly half of the workers on the "production floor" have chemistry degrees. However, the intellectual "overhead" makes it difficult for Triangle Laboratories to competitively bid for the more routine analyses that are the bread and butter of many environmental testing' labs In addition, Hass serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where he teaches. "Ron has a good perspective of what students need to learnfromresearch, plus they gain the commercial industrial point of view," says UNC analytical chemist Gary Glish. Hass also brings graduate studentsfromthe university into the company to work on collaborative projects.
Analytical Chemistry News & Features, February 1, 1997
There are other unique aspects to Triangle Laboratories. In an industry typically characterized by high worker turnover, Triangle Labs has about an 8% turnover, which includes a regular flow of studentsfromnearby UNC. In retrospect, such worker loyalty is not surprising. Each job applicant goes through 106 h of training before qualifying for a position. Many on the staff work "flexible hours", which often means part-time, yet Hass provides benefits to these workers and takes a real concern in the well-being of all his employees. He recalls supporting worker through a time of personal tragedy a gesture that sent a clear message throughout the company Nevertheless, these aretimesthat require hard-headed business decisions. Hass says that recently he spent a great deal oftimeimproving the business side of the operation. 'We've always been pretty good as chemists, what we weren't particularly good at was sales, marketing, and market research." In 1992, Hass brought in professional business consultants to fill in the missing pieces, and these consultants continue to chart a new course for the business "We are repositioning the company to be in businesses other than environmental testing," says Hass, citing examples such as analyses in support of pharmaceutical drug trials. "It is a huge emotional investment; you have a lot of your egotiedup in the business succeeding." Does Hass ever regret launching his own business? "Analytical chemistry provides something of value to society," he says. "I believe it is part of my mission to provide reliable data of high integrity that can be used to make important decisions that have huge consequences." Alan Newman
