Most laboratories store their standard operating procedures as PDFs on a shared drive. The procedure is written, approved, filed, and then ignored. Apprentices learn the work the same way they always have: by watching someone else do it, then doing it themselves, and hoping nobody notices when they get something wrong.
The audit at the end of that pipeline is exactly as good as the memory of the people in the room.
What we changed
Labredi runs the SOP itself, not just stores it. The procedure is the platform’s central object. Apprentices move through three stages on every SOP, and at each stage the platform captures the work as evidence.
Shadow. The apprentice watches the SOP being run by a senior technician. They upload notes, photos and video against each step inside the platform. The act of capture itself reinforces the procedure and produces the first piece of evidence on the apprentice’s record.
Do supervised. The apprentice runs the SOP with the mentor present. Evidence is logged at every step: photos, video, files, free-text notes. The mentor confirms or comments on each step in real time. Real-time validation flags anything missing before the apprentice submits.
Do solo. The apprentice runs the SOP independently. Same evidence capture as the supervised stage. Validation rules check that nothing has been skipped before submission. The mentor reviews on a schedule rather than in real time.
At the end of the third stage, the apprentice has a record of competence on that SOP that is grounded in real work, dated, time-bounded and exportable. The auditor sees the same record the mentor and apprentice see.
What this looks like in practice
A new apprentice arriving on a Monday is assigned a queue of SOPs in the platform. The mentor’s first conversation with them is not “let me explain how we do this”, it is “let me show you, and you capture what you see”. The shadowing stage is the apprentice’s introduction.
By the end of week one the apprentice has shadowed three or four SOPs and the platform already holds evidence of what they observed. By week three they are running SOPs supervised. The mentor’s feedback and sign-off comments live alongside the work. By week six they are working solo on the SOPs they have been signed off for, and the audit folder for the lab is filling up with real evidence rather than ticked boxes.
When the auditor turns up, they do not assemble the folder. They open it.
What is not in the beta yet
The current Labredi beta is focused on this workflow. It does not yet connect to your LIMS or ELN. It does not run the lab. It captures the SOPs, the evidence and the sign-off cycle, and produces the audit trail.
Connectors to lab systems are on the roadmap. So is Labredi Intelligence: voice-first natural-language AI built on top of the evidence captured during the workflow. The pieces are coming. The shape of the product is clear.
If you want to see the beta on one of your real SOPs, book a 30-minute call and we will walk through it together.