MTR Turnover- What is it Good For? Absolutely Nothin’!

INTRODUCTION

It is a commonly held belief with oil & gas (O&G), oil sands, and pipeline projects that material test reports (MTRs) are always required for turnover to the owner-user, but that is untrue.  In this article I will describe what MTRs are, how these are used during manufacturing, and when these are mandatory for turnover in the manufacturing record book (MRB) or vendor data book (VDB) to the owner-user for retention as a permanent record.  I will give specific examples from relevant Acts, Codes, Regulations, and Standards to prove that MTR turnover to the owner-user is usually not required and provide examples to clearly demonstrate how this increases costs but does not add value.  I will also describe why this is a much bigger problem than wasted paper and recommend best practices that are easily implemented.  With this information, projects and owner-users can reduce costs and eliminate headaches, while still maintaining all of their quality and technical requirements.

Figure 1. Hard copies of MTR Turnover.

Turnover of MTRs to the owner-user is usually not required, rarely provides the added value that is assumed, and often consumes valuable project resources.  Most personnel who specify MTR requirements have no way of understanding the implications or total cost.  There are problems with obtaining and properly storing or retrieving significant amounts of material data that has limited usefulness.  See the hard copies of project turnover in Figure 1 above (the picture is intentionally blurred) and digital copies of project turnover in Figure 4 below.