Soil programmes — planning QC for a surface grid

Drill QC and surface QC are planned differently, and this is the surface half.

A programme is the container

A sample programme groups surface samples by their sequence-number prefix — SS-001, SS-002 … all belong to the SS programme. It's the unit you plan QC against, assign to a crew, and print pull lists from.

You rarely create one by hand. Push a grid from QGIS and the programme appears by itself, named from the prefix. If you push SS-001…SS-156, you get one SS programme holding 156 planned samples. Import through Petra does the same thing.

Three similar words worth keeping straight:

• sample programme — the field batch, grouped by prefix. This page.
• submittal — the lab shipment a sample was sent in.
• package — the physical box at the lab.

Planning the QC

Open a programme and choose Plan QC. You tell it which bag numbers to draw from (your sample series), and it applies the project's QC protocol — or a different one if this programme runs to its own rules.

What comes back is a preview, not a commitment: the CRM and blank bags it would insert, with their numbers, plus any warnings. Commit it and those rows are created as planned QC, ready for the pull list.

Standards and blanks get numbers. Field duplicates don't. A duplicate is taken in the field, from material you're already collecting, so it can't be pre-numbered off the shelf — the planner forecasts how many you'll need and at what cadence, and you carry spare bags. That asymmetry surprises people the first time; it's deliberate.

After the crew goes out

Collected samples come back, get submitted to the lab, and the certificate lands like any other. From there the ordinary QC verdict pages judge the results — planning and judging are separate halves, and the verdict pages remain the answer of record.