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MEETING CHALLENGE – THE WAY AHEAD
As a prelude to this immense phase of building structures, a need for the construction
of transportation systems became more apparent for economic and commercial reasons in
the supply of goods and services between nations. The globalisation of trade and industry
over the last 25 years necessitated great investment in port facilities, particularly in South-
East Asia, where Shanghai and Singapore were ranked in first and second positions among
the leading ports in the world, based on cargo and container traffic.
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During this last decade, one of the corner stones of IIW’s emphasis on
quality management has been to identify and transfer global best practices
in the field of quality management for welding and to successfully apply this
to a wide range of infrastructure projects. This largely has been achieved
through the resources of the Select Committee
Quality Management in
Welding and Allied Processes
(SC-QUAL), which played a strategic role
in the development and implementation of quality standards and guidelines
for welding in the construction and fabrication industries, including the
requirements for personnel and company certification. In this regard, the
qualification of welders and welding procedures has proven to be one of the
bestmeans of ensuringquality requirementsweremet, not only in construction
across ships and port facilities, but also in most infrastructure projects.
Both Det Norske Veritas and Lloyds Register of Shipping have also had a profound
influence inmaintaining quality in projects by ensuring that the highest levels of classification,
certification and technical assurance are applied across wide sectors of the maritime, energy
The latest change in the building of large ships has been a trend
towards the construction of bigger container ships for world
trade distribution