Inspection requests

An inspection request is what a client, or your own staff, asks to have inspected: which welds or items, by which methods, by when, and everything the client's own paper states about them. A request is taken up by a report started for it and answered when that report is issued. What it states reaches the report, so nothing is typed twice. The requests of every project are listed under Requests in the sidebar, Open or All; a project's own are on its Requests tab.

Who raises a request, and where

• Your own staff, from a project's Requests tab or its page, or from an asset's page: Raise a request. On the Requests page of the sidebar the same button asks which project first, since a request belongs to a project. A request raised from an asset is for that asset.
• A client user, in the portal, from a project's page: Raise a request. See the client portal.
• Anyone from your website, without an account, once an owner has switched on Take requests from your website in Settings, Client portal. The link, or a button to paste into your site, opens the same form with your methods and questions. The sender confirms their email address first; the request then waits under Requests from your website (the link From your website on the Requests page), where you Make it a request of one of your clients and projects, or new ones made there, and may invite the sender to the portal; or Decline it with a reason kept for your records.
• A client's own Weld Intra. On the client's page, Make a code and give it to them; they enter it in their app, once, within seven days. From then on their welding team sends requests straight into yours, marked "Sent from …", and reads each weld's result there once its report is issued. Disconnect ends the link; the requests it raised stay. See clients and projects.

Every staff member may raise a request. Owners, admins and technicians take them up, correct them and set their status.

The request form

• Methods: tick every method the inspection needs.
• Needed by: a date.
• Your references come first: the client's own request number and its date, the order, the item as they name it, the drawing and its revision, the workshop or unit. They are printed on the report so it can be matched to the client's records.
• The job on site: who to meet, how to reach the work, what is safe, what the client wants back.
• A group of questions for each method ticked: welds and items (the welding procedure, process, filler material, the stage), radiography, ultrasonics, wall thickness, tubes, tanks, pressure tests and so on. A group appears only when a method that needs it is ticked.
• Requirements: the Procedure, the Acceptance criteria and the Extent in the client's own words. Your company applies its own procedures and limits; these say what the client expects.
• Anything else the request states: a heat number, a design code, a line class, under the client's own label. Add a detail for each.
• Note: anything else your company should know. It is not printed on the report.
• Drawings and photos: isometrics, weld maps, pictures of the items, sent with the request.

In Settings, Request forms, each standard question is Required, Asked or Not asked, for every request or differently for one method, and you add Your own questions and Your own blank form for clients who prefer it. A required question shows "Needed" on the form, and what was left out is listed under "Still missing". Nothing is enforced: a request can be raised without them, and the request's page then asks your staff to find them out before the job is planned.

The items

Under Items to inspect, one row per weld, joint, component, line or vessel: an Identifier or a Description at least, the Location, the Welders by their stamps with commas between, the outside diameter and the thickness. A size is kept in the Unit the request wrote it in, mm or in, and never converted; a second thickness is kept where the request gives two. Add from the tracker lists the asset's welds or TMLs that are not on the form yet.

Reading a request from a document

Under Upload the request, choose the document as it reached you: an email saved as PDF, a Word or Excel file, a photo of a letter.

• Read this document hands it to AI, where AI is on for your company. The form is filled in from it, with the asset the document names, the methods, each weld with its welders and sizes, the references and the other facts. The page says "Filled in from …": check every field against the document before raising the request, since AI can misread, leave out or make up. Raising it confirms that it is correct, and records who did. Read it again reads the document once more; Set the document aside drops the reading and keeps the file on record.
• Attach as it is keeps the document with the request for people to read, and you fill the form in yourself. With AI off, this is the one thing on offer.
• Pasted text is read the same way, with Read this text.

A reading that was left waiting is listed under Waiting for you on the request form of the project, for the person who uploaded it. See AI for the switch and the allowance.

Welds or TMLs: saying what the items are

The items are tells the tracker what to make of the identifiers: Welds, TMLs or Not tracked (tubes, tanks, lifting gear and the like). It is guessed from the methods ticked and changed on the form. With a kind, the tracker makes the welds or TMLs it lacks when the request is raised, so each can be marked in the field, pinned on a drawing and reported on. An identifier the tracker already holds is matched to it, case, spacing and the punctuation between its parts aside, and the page says so: "LS-3 · LS 3 in the tracker".

Only staff say what the items are. A client's request, from the portal, the website or Weld Intra, arrives without a kind and makes no weld until someone on staff says They are welds or They are TMLs on its page. See the tracker.

The asset

A request is for one asset of the project, or for the whole project. A document read by AI names the asset once; the form matches it to the project's assets by its tag, the same letters and digits ("E401A" for "E 401A"). Where the project has no such asset, owners, admins and technicians may choose A new asset…, added to the project when the request is raised. A client user cannot add one: their request is raised for the whole project, and you move it to the asset afterwards.

The request's page

• Request: the methods, the date needed, the references, the answers and the other facts, and who raised it and when.
• Items to inspect, each with its welders and sizes, what the tracker holds for it, the mark from the field, and its Result from the reports that answer the request, worked out from the issued reports.
• Start report: a report started for the request begins with its welds and their welders, the sizes, the stage, the procedure and the acceptance criteria. The rest of what it states is printed on the report. Someone without the Technician role is told which role starts a report.
• Reports: the reports started for the request, and Link an existing report.
• Status: Update status with a Note to the client, shown with the status in the portal.
• Who does the job: the inspector assigned. While the request is in progress the client sees this person with their email and phone, where Settings allow it.
• Original document and Drawings and photos, as they arrived.
• Add to the scope of work, while nothing is entered for what the request is about: the scope's form opens from the request's welds and methods, and the lines made read "requested". See the scope of work.
• Plan a job for this request, while the Operations module is on.

Marking items from the field

On the request's page, Mark an item, or tick several and Mark … ticked: in progress, inspected, accepted, or rejected with the kind of defect, a note and photos. A mark is never a result and the client never sees one; it says what was done on site before the report exists, and a report started for the request begins with exactly that: the dispositions, a row of the indications table per defect, the photos. Accepted and rejected on record come from the issued report, which takes the marks away. See the scope of work.

Correcting a request, and moving it

An open request is corrected by owners, admins and technicians with Correct: what it states is put right once, at the request, and every report started for it that is not issued yet follows. An issued report keeps what it was issued with. The request then shows "Corrected by …", on both surfaces.

Move to another asset takes the request, its welds and its drafts to the right asset; the welds it left behind with nothing to their name are archived. A request that a report in review or an issued report already answers stays where it is, and so does one whose draft was started from a line of the old asset's scope until the draft is taken off that line.

What reaches the report

Each fact the request states reaches the report one way or the other:

• Into the template's own field, where it has one of the same meaning: the stage, the procedure, the acceptance criteria, the extent, the welds with their welders, a diameter or thickness every item agrees on. From then on the field is the report's own statement, edited like any other.
• Otherwise into the report's request block, printed between the header and the first section: the client's number for the request, who asked, and each fact with its label in the report's languages. A field of the report left empty leaves the fact in the block.

The block is read from the request until the report is issued, and frozen then. Nothing is rounded or converted: a figure that does not fit a field stays in the block as written. See writing a report.

Statuses

• Open: raised, no report issued for it yet.
• In progress: taken up; the inspector, where shown, is named to the client.
• Done: answered.
• Declined: not taken up, with the note saying why.

Staff set the status on the request's page; the dashboard lists the open ones under Open inspection requests.

What the client sees

In the portal, a client user sees every request of their projects: what it states, the status and your note, who does the job where you show it, the document and attachments sent with it, and under Reports answering this request the issued reports with each item's result from them. They see no draft, no report in review and no mark from the field. A client's own Weld Intra reads the same, through its link. See the client portal.