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Suspect/Counterfeit Items

The use of suspect/counterfeit items (S/CIs) can lead to unexpected failures and undue risk of mission impacts, environmental impacts, personal injury, contamination, or death. For these reasons, SLAC has instituted measures to prevent the purchase of as well as to detect and dispose of S/CIs.

• A suspect item is one in which there is an indication by visual inspection, testing, or other information that it may not conform to established government or industry-accepted specifications or national consensus standards.
• A counterfeit item is a suspect item that is a copy or substitute without legal right or authority to do so, or one whose material, performance, or characteristics are knowingly misrepresented by the vendor, supplier, distributor, or manufacturer.

The Suspect/Counterfeit Items Prevention Process is outlined in Section 2.11 of the SLAC Assurance Program Description. If you find something you think might be a suspect or counterfeit item and don't know how to proceed, please contact the Office of Assurance.

To emphasize the importance of reporting S/CI to the Office of the Inspector General, Section 2.11.4 of the Assurance Program description has been revised and now reads:

If an S/CI requires removal, OA must coordinate and document the disposition. S/CIs must be removed from the work site and transferred to the Salvage Warehouse to be temporarily stored in a segregated area. OA must report all discovered S/CIs to the local DOE Office of Inspector General (OIG). When/if the S/CI is no longer needed as material evidence by OIG, the warehouse will coordinate the destruction or alteration of the S/CI to render them unusable and efforts will be made by Purchasing to seek restitution.

OA must report all discovered S/CIs to the cognizant DOE operations office manager by means of the Occurrence Reporting and Processing System (ORPS).

OA will perform quarterly trending of S/CI discoveries. As appropriate, lessons learned will be communicated via the DOE and SLAC lessons learned programs.

The description was approved by DOE SSO on July 7, 2009.

Do you have a stash of bolts or a parts bin? If so, please contact OA so we can take a look.

Typical Parts Bin

Close up of Parts Bin S/CI Grade 5 Bolts

View the log of items found, analysis, and eventual disposition. View titles of the last 500 S/CI reports submitted to the DOE. If you would like to view any of these, please contact Ruth McDunn.