Weld & Material Traceability
Weld & Material Traceability
(OP)
Do any of the ASME Codes discuss material traceability and weld maps as a requirement for Code Data Books? In other words, do contractors have to supply weld history and material maps on their AS BUILT isometrics? Is this required by ASME B31.3?





RE: Weld & Material Traceability
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
2 If the project specification requires it
3 No
Regards,
Kiwi
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
Agreeing with the above responses, how would you propose to assure traceability without some type of recorded paper or electronic data base?
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
These welds have to be traceable to the weldor. As an Owner's Inspector, I like "Weld Maps", usually consisting of marked-up iso's. Makes my work very easy.
As the Contractor's Inspector, weld mapping is a royal pain in the hindquarters. I ensure that ALL wleds are stamped with the weldor(s) symbol before the weld gets cold.
Final thought: it is impossible to have an adequate ASME B31.3 job without In-Process Inspx by a person that knows welds & welding, and can recognize appropriate and inappropriate pipe grades & specs, flange and other fittings, bolting and bolt-ups, and gaskets. When the welds are 'old & cold' it is waaay too late to try to 'inspect quality into the pipe system'.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
How you satisfactorally meet a contractual requirement is a matter of negotiation between you and the owner or their representative.
In regard to weld maps: it's tough (but not impossible) to ensure that the code-required NDE, welder qualifications etc. are in place without some means of mapping who did what- unless of course the entire job is undertaken only by one person. Some companies rely on welder's ID stamps etc., while others rely on a paper mapping process.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
The Code does not describe the means or process to verify the material received and installed met a material specification, this is left up to the Inspector, Owner or installation contractor. Piping that is ordered to a known material specification requires it to be marked and material test reports are provided. This is considered traceability for construction purposes.
Once the line is placed into service, B31.3 may not be applicable because this is a construction code. There are other in-service Codes which may be used. I will tell you this one better be able to show through Piping Design tables or some other form of paperwork/records that the pipe material has met a known material specification.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
What metenge and I are calling the required "Traceability" required by ASME B31.3 is Spec + Grade [no requirement for Heat/Batch No.] If you can get to the pipe prior to painting, you can *usually* verify proper Spec & Grade after the Fitter & Weldor have walked away. Fittings & Flanges are steel-stamped [mostly] and can even be verified after paint.
But once the Weldor has walked away from the weld, and there was no Fitup or In-Process inspection, it is now impossible to know what filler metal(s) he/she welded with. You now have a total lack of traceability. Oops!
Yes, with an XRF 'gun' - x-ray fluoroescence analyzer - you can pretty well tell what the cap was welded with, but the root and the fill layers are the important ones.
"Houston, we have a problem . . . . "
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
Many owners expect you to be able to trace everything used in the line, including individual pieces of pipe or butt-welding fittings which do not come with durable markings, back to heat/batch (i.e. to the MTR) after the fact. This is not a code requirement- but if they're paying for it per their contract, you need to have a means to ensure it gets done. Doing that consistently is not easy, especially when you're talking about small lines.
The in-process welding issues Duwe6 mentions are important and emphasize the need for care in control of welding consumables as well as all the other variables in a welding procedure.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
- Interpretations 5-10, 8-02, 8-19 and 19-28 may provide some assistance on traceability/re-identification, etc.
- Note that traceability of welders (e.g. by means of identification symbols) is required per 328.5.1(b) [2010 edt.].
- metengr: which para states the requirement of material traceability? (not that I dont believe you)
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
You would be looking for a 'negative', XL86NL. The language in B31.3 addresses maintaining material such that all presslure-boundary items are built using Code Compliant materials. Period.
The 'gotcha' part is when you actually try to build something and prove that you have never incorporated a substandard item in your piping system. Pipe has its spec, grade, and Heat Number stenciled down the length of the piece. Mr. Freddie Fitter needs an 8-inch long piece to go between an Ell and a Flange. He cut around the spec stencil, and the Heat Number was where the weld was going, so he buffed all that paint off while prepping for the welding. Without some form of traceability, how do you prove to the Owner's Inspector that that 8-inch slice of pipe actually meets SA-106 Gr.B?
Granted, if there is no other spec & grade of pipe in the entire fabrication area, the pipe storage yard, and the crew's gang-box, you will be able to 'sell' that piece to an Inspector. But if that Inspector finds some SA-53 Grade A [soft] pipe of the same size and schedule, somebody had better have maintained traceability of your 8-inch slice by color-coding, transfering the spec & grade and/or the Heat Number to that 8-inch piece during the cutting process, or some other reasonably foolproof ID method.
Otherwise, that piece is of indetermanent origin. It will have to be cut out and replaced with a piece that you can prove is the correct spec & grade. Thus, in the 'Real World' traceability becomes a necessity, unless you can have the Owner's Inspector stay with the fabrication process from the first cut of a stick of pipe, to the last weld on a pipe, on every shift that pipefitting and welding occur.
ASME flanges and other fittings are 'hard-stamped' with the Spec & Grade, so unless the painters get crazy prior to the Owner's Inspex, correct material on these can be verified after fabrication.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
Interpretation: 8-19
8-19,8-20,8-21
Subject: ASME/ANSI B31.3-1987 Edition, Paras. 323.1.1 and 323.1.2; Material Reidentification
Date Issued: May 7, 1990
File: B31-89:'043
Question (1): Does ASME/ANSI B31.3 require that materials conforming to para. 323.1.1 or
323.1.2 be reidentified after cutting for fabrication?
Reply (1): No.
Question (2): Does ASME/ANSI B31.3 have qualification requirements for an individual who
reidentifies material?
Reply (2): No.
Regards,
Kiwi
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
What you cannot do is claim that this traceability practice is a code requirement, and hence must be done at the fabricator's cost regardless of whether or not it is addressed in the specs. Some owners try to play that game with us as fabricator.
Maintaining traceability on each piece of pipe in the cut condition is not a trivial exercise. It gets harder still when you're building small lines. Doing this properly requires great care during the fitting process on the QA's part to make sure that the fitters transfer the heat numbers to every single piece. It also requires the maintenance of permanent records so that when all the temporary marks are removed by surface finishing operations, the fabricator will still be able to prove that the correct materials were used. All of that costs money and time. Only the owner can assess in the context of their project whether or not that money and time is well spent relative to minimizing future risks.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
However, in South Africa, we have a national standard that outlines AIA functions which includes the verification of material traceability. But is also not so clear whether the intention is to verify it to a certificate or to verify that every piece of pipe has been traced.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
Working with PED 97/23/EC and B31.3 takes away a lot of discussion on traceability (but probably costs more money and time as moltenmetal indicated),
since traceability (regardless of how 'vague' it's defined in the PED) is a mandatory requirement for piping that has to conform to the essential sfatey requirement of the PED.
What we often see is that behind every isometric in the manufacturer data book (or even on the iso itself), the MFR tends to use an additional weld map sheet to put down all heat numbers of single components in a piping system,
write down which welder welded which part(s), and which heat numbers where used for filler materials (when required by the hazard category of a piping system).
The 2012 edt of B31.3 will have an additional appendix (app N) that outlines how a piping system can conform to both B31.3 and PED 97/23/EC. This appendix is I think most probably based on CEN-TR EN 14549,
a technical guideline on the differences in B31.3 vs PED 97/23/EC. That directive outlines addresses how to comply with these differences in a B31.3 job for the EU market.
In view al these interpretations, Im not sure of there's any real advantage of not having the PED 97/23/EC traceability requirement in the B31.3 code, looking at all discussions above.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
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Several major EPCs in my country are oblivious to that necessity, and see QC/vendor surveillance as an ideal place to cut costs. Even though you and I know they are not cutting costs, they are multiplying and postponing them after transferring them to the Owner.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
How detailed or careless the Owner's Inspector is, is up to the Owner.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
NB:
- SANS 347 is a South African standard that refers to e.g. B31.3.
- PED 97/23/EC is a European directive for pressure and equipment.
Both docs dont really deal with design, but more with design requirements and conformity assessments and when NoBo's have to verify design etc.
NPR-CEN/TR 14549:2004 en may be of use when dealing with a B31.3 job and PED 97/23/EC.
Furthermore ISO 15649 may be of some use, although Im not sure where ever that standard has been used.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
There is NO markings or color code on the 'silver' pipe. No job#, sketch, etc.....
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
Let's think a little further: how do you know that a short piece of pipe marked with a colour code, job number, and/or heat number and grade, had these marks transferred faithfully from the source piece of material, prior to the welding rather than after the fact?
How do you mark a pup piece of 1/2" pipe used between two socket welding fittings, in any meaningful way?
Even if the pipe and fittings are of the right material, how do you know that the right filler metal was used on the root pass?
How do you know that the marks the mill put on the pipe, and the matching mill cert, weren't fraudulent in the first place?
Let's say that despite doing the best that you could during fabrication, there's still a failure that might have been caused by bad or incorrect material. Sure, you do forensic work on the failed component. But what do you refer to when you're doing your investigation, to see where things went wrong in the fabrication process? The mill marks and temporary marks are both long gone by that point.
A fabricator needs a designed process to procure and inspect incoming material, assign it to jobs per the specifications, store it properly until it is used, and ensure that properly trained and qualified staff carry the rest of the fabrication through to completion in accordance with the required procedures. A fabricator also needs a quality program which inspects the work in process and verifies that those steps are being followed, which carries out NDE and other examinations in accordance with the code and the client's specs, and which records the results.
The owner or their engineer needs to review the fabricator's quality program and decide whether or not those systems are likely to be followed, are adequate to the task at hand, and to what extent they need to be augmented with additional inspections by the owner's engineer or inspector. There's no one single right answer to this: the right answer depends on the size, scale, design life and risk profile of the work at hand.
I know everybody wants their work reduced to an algorithm so that no engineering judgment or thought is required to deliver a safe piping system, or more properly so that if they followed the algorithm and something still goes wrong, they can't be blamed because they followed all the rules. Thank goodness the people on the B31.3 committee haven't obliged them.
RE: Weld & Material Traceability
You answered my question, the material can not be identified and is not acceptable to B31.3 for fabrication.
It is the fabricators responsibility to ensure that the materials used meet the requirement of the code.