Credentials for PV design work 1

[MikeG7]

Please advise what are the requirements of the vessel engineer performing PV design work as required by the National Board. I want to establish the requirements for experience and qualifications. Please state if your response applies to your local state. Thanks.
Mikeg7

 

[jharris3]

PV design work would be related to ASME Code and that would be a good place to go for some qualifications. The best description of what the ASME Code really wants I think is B31.3 where it identifies the basic qualifications for several contributors to the safety of the product.

Another approach would be to mirror the NBIC qualifications for the inspector + so many years of PV design experience. Could also add that a PE license is required if you want to really cover it all.

I think the National Board has the same verbiage as ASME for engineers by the way. PE in pressure vessels, or engineer with experience in the design of pressure vessels.

 

[JStephen]

On a related post a while back, the tongue-in-cheek comment was made that all you had to do was buy some software and start bangin' away, and that's about the sum of a lot of it.

It's generally left up to the manufacturer to determine who does the design work. I think it would be beneficial if there was some sort of uniform qualification for the designers, but that isn't the case. If you left half the welding undone, nobody would accept that, but you can miss half the design and nobody cares.

 

[dhengr]

Jstephen:
That’s not really tongue-n-cheek though, is it? That’s pretty much the facts of life these days. Give many guys CAD, FEA and some pressure vessel design software, and they can pretend to be an engineer, that’s what their calling card calls them. That title was given in place of their last raise. Half the time the boss doesn’t care or seem to know the difference between a good engineer and a computer jockey. And, too few of the bosses these days are engineers, proud of their profession. They just want it done at min. cost, in the min. amount of time. All that counts today is that they push it out the door and that they keep their insurance premiums paid up. At the same time I have worked with many non-engineers (techs. and draftsmen) who I would let do some engineering for me, as long as it was done under my guidance, they were very capable people as long as they stayed within their experience limits. I have also worked around a bunch of P.E.’s who I would not want doing engineering for me.

 

[MJCronin]

I suggest that it would be interesting to compare PV designer's credentials requirements among various countries.

I would imagine that the euro PED has requirements for PV engineer credentials

 

[MikeG7]

MJCronin
That would be interesting. I'm getting the feeling that ASME does not govern the requirements for performing this work but it is defined by local or national standards.

 

[stanweld]

During the 20+ ASME Joint Reviews that I have been involved, someone in the organization demonstrates an ability to do the hand calculations. Other than that, the credentials of those doing the design have never been addressed. Note that these Joint Reviews never involved Sec. VIII, Div.2. The NBIC does require a Licensed Engineer to review and sign off on proposed repairs of Div. 2 vessels.