Improving the Cost Effectiveness of Advanced NDE Applications

In our inspection organization, we have indentified a number of critical success factors (CSF's) which are vitallly important if we are to achieve the level of pressure equipment reliabilty and integrity to which we aspire. One of our CSF's is the level of service provided to our refineries and chemical plant sites by our Nondestructive Examination Technical Direction Team (NDE TDT).

This is a team of selected NDE professionals and para-professionals that seeks to make sure that our refining and chemical manufacturing sites receive the the best value for our NDE inspection dollars. With the rapid expansion of sophisticated, expensive NDE devices and services in our industry, we recognized, early-on (short school of hard knocks) that we could not just hire high cost, scientific, black-box technology purveryors to inspect our pressure vessels, piping, and storage tanks without having our own knowledgeable inspectors and engineers who knew how to interpret the data received.