Reynolds Wrap Up: Why Do We Have So Many API FEMI Standards?

Introduction

In a recent Inspectioneering Editorial Board Meeting, a question was raised that some industry users may want to know why we have so many API Fixed Equipment Mechanical Integrity (FEMI) Standards/Codes/RPs and what triggered the need for them. So, I thought with my 40 years of experience being involved in the API standardization process, I would try to address those questions. Back when I started out in the API standardization process, we had only one Code (API 510) and it was only 12 pages long. Additionally there was a set of Guides for Inspection of Refinery Equipment (GFIORE), a series of 20 or so paper copies in a large binder of these “guidelines” detailing experiential information relating to inspection and maintenance practices with all sorts of refinery equipment, including not only fixed equipment, but also machinery, electrical, instrumentation, PSVs, and more. I believe that the last editions of the GFIORE were published in the 1970s or so and then were withdrawn or superseded by various RPs. Those were the documents on which I “cut my teeth” when it came to educating myself about industry inspection practices that came before the time that I joined the industry out of school in 1968. Some of those documents became precursors for follow-on FEMI RPs for inspection of vessels, PSVs, welding, etc. Much has changed since the time of the original GFIORE and our one Code - API 510.

In this edition of Reynolds Wrap Up, I will try to answer some of these questions:

• Why do we have so many API FEMI standards now?
• How and why did each of them come into being?
• Do we need all of them?
• What is their value to the industry?
• Who approves the need to create them and the eventual contents in them?