In the UK there was a round robin by various labs, who all analysed the same test piece. We didn't take part unfortunately, but I am 99% sure that D Ewins at Imperial College London had something to do with it. That would be about the right timeframe. It may not have been a good training project, I expect it had a few very close coupled modes.
On the other hand why not use a simplified structure typical of your normal test items? For extra marks get them to build an FE model of it and see if they can get good correlation. Very evil grin. Once they've been through that exercise they will be amongst the best dynamic analysts around!
What sort of business are you in? Cheers
Greg Locock