Piping Inspection - It's Not Neurosurgery, But...

Introduction

It's probably more important to those of us who don't have a brain tumor. Unfortunately, it's precisely because piping inspection is not neurosurgery that it's often done poorly, which can lead to significant impacts on process unit reliability, or worse, a catastrophic event, where people can get hurt.

Clearly, if you have a brain tumor, your longevity depends upon the skills, knowledge, training, and qualification of your neurosurgeon. On the other hand, there are a lot of us in the hydrocarbon process industry whose safety and perhaps longevity depends upon the skill, knowledge, training and qualification of those responsible for process piping inspection. So why don't we focus more attention on the issue? Well, I'm going to do just that in the next few articles I write for the journal.