African Fusion March 2017

NDT perspective through to a full-face mask. When on top of a four level scaffold within a large vertical tank, one’s thoughts tend to go in the ‘what if?’ direction. If you suddenly lose all air supply, what do you do? Our options were limited; hold your breath and climb down the scaffolding or re- move your mask and egress the vessel without too much speed. The process controllers told us the fumes within the vessels would kill you in a very short time should you inhale them. During the last few days of my first us had zero experience in inspecting such equipment. Some components had to be re-inspected as the incorrect method was ini- tially specified. We often had to revise our inspection reports, as the component identificationwas usually in- correct. This occurred when the senior supervisor was asked to ensure that the componentswere labelledas per the drawings. He would usually delegate this task

shutdown, we were asked to start pro- viding NDT reports. This proved to be quite interesting as we had not made any notes or recorded what vessels we had inspected beforehand. It then became necessary to go back to each vessel and try to recall what weld and configuration/type thereof we had inspected. This information had to be transferred to a drawing of the vessel that did not always showall of thewelds in the vessel’s construction. At the power station, the system worked differently to that of petro- chemical. We had to draw up a turbine inspection quality control plan (QCP) from an example that was provided. The problemwas that the QCP example that we were given was for a different turbine manufacturer. Our component descriptions did not match that of the actual components, which we only found out when the drawings circa. 1962were given to us. Our QCPwas also drawn up where the NDT was required on components unseen as they were still in-situ in the turbine set that was still assembled. Additionally, most of

Particle testing (PT) on the piping inlets of an oil pump.

Some lessons Proper planning, organisation, leader- ship and control must all be well estab- lished. A full breakdown of activities should be devised well before a shut- down/outage begins where everyone is fully informed and clear about the task and its objectives. The NDT activities should also in- volve all paperwork including records, data capturing and reporting. The ‘Management of Change’ process should be an underlying principle that keeps everyone ‘in the loop’. A line of leadership or command should also be established and made known to everyone, as this helps espe- cially at the early stages of a project. Respect for other ‘trades’ should be a top priority as everyone has a job to do and no one should be made to feel inferior. I have no doubt that many of these lessons are now been widely adopted and are routinely implemented during modern day inspections.

to an apprentice or assistant. Many an hour was wasted trying to decipher the person’s handwriting on the tags as well as swopping the tags around when it was discovered that the components had been incorrectly marked, and the reports had to be revised too. We had no access to any previous inspection records, so our brief was to ‘record all indications’. This often led to some technicians recording gouges, scratches andother non-relevant indica- tions. We were soon accused of record- ing ‘fly crap’ by our ‘learned’ colleagues from Europe who had been brought to SA to help and advise. We learnt a lot about quality and the correct process selection – and think- ing on your feet had to come into play. There was little time for indecision and procrastination. One had to be astute, especially where the age-old standoff between production and quality came to a head. This proved to be interesting when their cousin, Mr Safety, also had to be taken into account.

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March 2017

AFRICAN FUSION