The Underutilisation Problem: When Good Laboratories Fall Short of Their Potential

Well-equipped, well-trained but underused

When visiting public quality infrastructure facilities around the world, a striking paradox emerges time and again: laboratories equipped with sophisticated instruments, staff trained through international development cooperation programmes, and test benches that sit largely quiet.

These laboratories are frequently underutilised, resulting in disproportionately high relative costs per test — and a vicious circle that is difficult for many managers to break.

Because their costs cannot be fully passed on to a small number of customers, the laboratories operate at a loss. With few resources left for reinvestment, the attractiveness of the services on offer gradually declines, worsening underutilisation, not improving it.

Why does this happen?

The problem is widespread across many countries, but hits especially hard in small nations, not least the Small Island Developing States (SIDS), were market size limits demand structurally. Three root causes tend to recur:

1. Lack of local demand: The domestic market may simply not generate enough volume to sustain specialist laboratory services at full capacity.

2. Lack of demand-oriented thinking: Facilities are established around technical capability, not around verified user needs, building the supply before confirming the demand.

3. onor support misaligned: International funding often prioritises equipment and training, without adequately assessing whether real, sustained demand exists.

Together, these factors create a self-reinforcing trap.

Figure 1: The vicious circle of underutilization of lab services

Figure 1 shows six stages that reinforce each other in a closed loop. Starting at the top: low utilisation of laboratory services leads to a high cost per test, since fixed operating costs are spread across too few clients. High unit costs generate losses, as they cannot be fully passed on to customers. Losses leave no resources for reinvestment in equipment, maintenance, or staff development. Without reinvestment, service quality declines — making the laboratory less attractive. Declining quality and reputation produce even lower demand, which brings the cycle back to where it started: low utilisation. Each stage makes the next worse, and without deliberate intervention the circle is self-sustaining.

A Caribbean example: metrology services in CARICOM

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) offers a well-documented illustration of the underutilisation challenge and of the innovative regional responses it has prompted.

CASE STUDY: CARICOM / Caribbean Metrology (CARIMET)

Across CARICOM's member states, National Metrology Institutes (NMIs) have invested in calibration laboratories for quantities such as mass, volume, temperature, and force. Many were developed with support from international cooperation partners, and their staff have received internationally recognised training.

Yet the demand to fill these laboratories has lagged the supply of services. With small manufacturing sectors in most CARICOM states, the pool of industrial clients requiring regular calibration is simply too limited to sustain each national laboratory's costs. As CROSQ has noted, metrology services have become underutilised in many countries, partly due to limited market demand, and partly because the Bureau of Standards, which are hosting the NMI functions, historical role as regulators has made private companies reluctant to engage with them voluntarily.

"Metrology services have been developed that are underutilised in many countries because of reluctance on the part of the private sector to utilise the services of the NMI or due to limited market demand data."

— CROSQ / The Q-Factor, CARICOM Metrology Series

The consequences are familiar: calibration costs per instrument are disproportionately high. Some Caribbean industries find it cheaper and easier to send equipment outside the Caribbean region, e.g., to the United States, Canada, or Germany, than to use a local NMI, further eroding the domestic client base.

The regional response has been instructive. CARIMET has established the Caribbean Reference Laboratory (CaRL) scheme, which designates regional National Metrology Institutes (NMIs) for specific measurement quantities. This initiative aims to create regional hubs that provide smaller states with traceability for their measurement standards. As a result, these states can concentrate on services with sustainable local demand. The Bureau of Standards Jamaica became the first CaRL for mass metrology in 2013.

A complementary mobile calibration service was once suggested to pool expertise across islands rather than duplicate it, but it was never implemented.

LESSON FOR QI PRACTITIONERS

The CARICOM experience shows that in small economies, the solution to underutilization is often not to do more, but rather to do less, in a more strategic manner. Focusing each national laboratory on its sustainable core, while building regional sharing mechanisms for the rest, can turn a vicious circle into a virtuous one.

Obstacles to regional roll-out

Regional cooperation is the logical response to small market size, but rolling out laboratory services across the Caribbean faces its own significant hurdles. Three obstacles stand out in particular:

• Logistics and insularity: Sending samples or measuring instruments for calibration between islands involves considerable effort, time, cost, and risk, as the damage sustained by mass artefacts in transit has already demonstrated within CARIMET. Although a CARICOM common market exists, national customs procedures continue to hinder smooth cross-border transport.

• National self-interest: A regional division of labour requires countries to relinquish certain services to neighbours. In practice, national self-interest frequently stands in the way: every country wants its own laboratories, for reasons of prestige, employment, and political visibility, even where local demand cannot sustain them.

• Sustainability of Centres of Excellence: These tensions are especially visible in the Centres of Excellence established by CROSQ under EU-funded projects. State-of-the-art reference laboratories have been set up for food safety, environmental testing, energy efficiency, and metrology, but attracting and retaining regional clients beyond the project period remains an open challenge.

A closer look: CARIRI as a regional service provider

SPOTLIGHT CARIRI — Caribbean Industrial Research Institute, Trinidad & Tobago

One organisation that has long aspired to a regional role is the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI), based in Trinidad and Tobago. Established in 1970 with support from UNDP and UNIDO, CARIRI was designed from the outset to serve the Caribbean region, and today offers a wide range of accredited testing, calibration, and research services across sectors including food, environment, petrochemicals, and materials.

CARIRI holds ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation for its laboratory and calibration services and positions itself as a centre of excellence for Caribbean industry. Its mandate explicitly covers the wider region, and it does serve clients beyond Trinidad and Tobago's borders.

Yet CARIRI faces the same structural obstacles described above: high inter-island logistics costs, customs friction within CARICOM.

Trinidad and Tobago's relatively larger economy and industrial base give CARIRI a stronger domestic foundation than most CARICOM Labs, but whether this translates into sustained, broad regional uptake of its services is a question that deserves closer examination.

Breaking the cycle strategies

There is no single solution, but a combination of demand-side and supply-side measures can shift the dynamics. Here are the approaches worth exploring:

1. Awareness-raising and targeted marketing: Many small and medium-sized enterprises simply do not know what quality infrastructure services exist, or why they matter. Systematic outreach, through trade associations, export promotion agencies, and sector bodies, can connect potential users with services that are already available. CROSQ could also make information available on its website regarding the accredited conformity assessment services available in the region.

2. Reducing transaction costs: Customs agreement and procedures (to facilitate standards/equipment travelling), proper (specialized) packaging, security of postage, transportation costs and insurance. Some are logistics, some are legal and other operational. In the case of accreditation remote assessment is not widely used.

3. Cross-border and regional service offerings: If domestic demand is structurally limited, the solution may lie beyond the border. Actively marketing services to enterprises in neighbouring countries, particularly in regional economic communities, can open new revenue streams and lift utilisation rates.

4. Focus on core services, outsource the rest: Trying to offer everything at low volume drives costs up and quality down. A sharper focus on two or three high-demand services, combined with structured outsourcing or referral for others, concentrates resources where they make the greatest impact.

5. Demand-led planning from the outset: Future investment decisions — including donor-funded programmes — should be grounded in verified demand assessments. Building supply around real user needs, rather than technical ambition, is the most reliable way to avoid the underutilisation trap in the first place.

Join the conversation

What experience have you had with underutilised laboratory capacity? How have you dealt with it, and what strategies proved most effective in your context? Please share your success stories with the QI4D community.

References

CARICOM (2015): Accreditation and Metrology Services given a Bood in the Bahamas, News 11/05/2015, (retrieved 17/03/2026)

Salimkhani, S. (2023): Caribbean pilot project demonstrates virtual hands-on lab training, PTB, Candela blog, 23/01/2023 (retrieved 17/03/2026)

Tomlinson, D. (2016):Developing Metrology in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) - The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Experience Developing Metrology in Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Interamerican Metrology System (retrieved 17/03/2026)