There will come a time the life of almost every project when the question of checking of pipe fabrication shop spool drawings will come up. Any time drawings are created there will be the potential for errors.
The shop is responsible for checking their own work, but it is prudent for the engineering company to do their own check to verify that the shop is doing a proper job.
On any process plant project the pipe fabrication shop should be recognized as a key player and a partner in the success of that project. The performance of that shop can make or break a project. When an engineering company is about to issue a pipe fabrication purchase order they should know everything there is to know about the proposed shop. The engineering company should also consider all the risk factors relating to the shop’s performance and make every effort to eliminate or reduce those risks. One of the ways to reduce the risk is to send a piping person into the shop to act as a focal point for questions and to solve problems.
The goal of all projects is to do as much welding as is possible in the controlled environment of a fabrication shop in order to minimize the costlier field welding, and while it would be nice to be able to fabricate whole piping systems and ship them to site in one piece, this is of course impossible.
