Welding and Fabrication Editing and Proofreading Services

A welder is qualified, a procedure is qualified, and a joint fails inspection. The investigation finds that the procedure was qualified on 12 mm plate in the flat position and the joint was 28 mm, vertical up, on a different parent material group. Everything was in date. Everything was signed. The paperwork simply covered a different weld from the one that was made.

We edit what fabricators and welding coordinators produce — welding procedure specifications and their essential variables, procedure qualification records and their ranges, welder qualification documentation and continuity records, weld maps and joint identification documentation, non-destructive testing requirements and acceptance criteria, weld inspection and traceability records, preheat and heat input control documentation, consumable control and handling documentation, distortion control and sequence documentation, and fabrication quality plans and their hold points. Our editors work on the procedure and the range it actually covers.

The welding procedure specification and its qualification range is where welded fabrication is either controlled or nominally controlled, and its failure is a procedure whose range nobody has read against the joint in front of them. A qualification test is performed on one coupon and confers coverage over a range of thicknesses, positions, materials and consumables — and that range is the whole of the document's meaning. We work through these so the qualified range is stated on the face of the procedure rather than derived from the qualification record, since a welder or supervisor selecting a procedure needs to see the thickness range, the positions, the parent material group and the diameter range at a glance; so the essential variables are identified as essential, because a change to any of them invalidates the qualification and to a supervisor they look like ordinary parameters; so the preheat and interpass temperature requirements are stated as a minimum with the measurement method and the point of measurement, given that a preheat measured on the wrong side of a thick section is not a preheat; so the heat input limits are given with the arithmetic, as this is the control most often specified and least often calculated; so the consumable is identified with its classification, its batch control and its handling requirement, since redried electrodes and electrodes left out overnight are different consumables; so the weld map ties each joint to its procedure, its welder and its inspection requirement; and so anything the procedure does not cover is stated. Procedures written this way match the welds actually made.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including procedures, qualification records and project documentation. We are editors rather than welding engineers or coordinators, and we offer no view on procedures, qualification ranges or acceptance. What we can do is make the range visible to the person selecting the procedure.