Audit Findings Five Weeks Before Delivery
During an internal audit of a pressure-vessel shop, the QA manager records: 9 of 62 WPSs in use on the floor reference PQR numbers that are not in the controlled PQR file; 4 of 18 welders have no continuity record for more than six months yet have been welding; two welding machines and one digital thermometer carry calibration stickers expired by four months; 27 radiographs from the last quarter lack location markers; and 6 of 8 nonconformances raised at the previous audit are still open with no root-cause statement. The shop is 70% complete on a vessel due in five weeks, with 100% radiography required. The project manager wants the audit report softened so the delivery date is not put at risk.
1. How would you classify and prioritise these findings, and what is your response to the project manager?
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Classify by consequence, not by ease of fixing. Three tiers:
Immediate containment - product may be nonconforming now. The four welders without continuity evidence: every joint they made is of unproven qualification and needs to be identified and held. The expired calibration on the welding machines and thermometer: any parameter recorded with those instruments is unverified, and a thermometer four months out of calibration undermines every preheat and interpass record taken with it, which reaches back into the joints already accepted.
Correction required before further work. The nine WPSs without a traceable PQR. If the PQRs exist but are misfiled, this is a documentation fix and can be closed quickly; if they do not exist, the WPSs are unsupported and the work must stop on those procedures.
Systemic corrective action. The radiograph location markers and the six open nonconformances with no root cause. These indicate that the corrective action system is not functioning, which is why the same findings recur.
To the project manager: the audit does not create the risk, it reveals it. Softening the report does not remove a single unqualified weld; it only means the delivery is built on unknowns. The fastest route to the delivery date is containment plus a clean, prioritised closure plan with named owners - not a quieter report.
2. For the four welders with lapsed continuity, what is the technically defensible disposition of the joints they made?
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Treat it as an evidence problem first. The question is not whether the welders could weld, but whether the records demonstrate they were qualified on the dates in question.
- Establish what exists. Search test reports, shift records, previous employment verification, and any earlier continuity log. Lapsed records in the controlled file do not prove the welder never welded the process - but the burden is on the records, and absence of evidence is treated as non-qualification unless it can be reconstructed from independent, contemporaneous sources.
- Segregate the joints. Identify every weld by welder, date, WPS and process, using the weld map and traceability records. Mark them as held.
- Requalify the welders now. A fresh performance test is quick and cheap; it establishes qualification going forward but does not retrospectively cover earlier production.
- Assess the held joints. If the welds were made to a qualified WPS by welders whose skill is not in doubt and the joints pass the full required examination, a documented engineering disposition accepting them may be defensible - with owner agreement. If the examination is only partial, the confidence is correspondingly lower.
- Do not backdate. Any attempt to create continuity entries now for past periods is falsification and ends the discussion.
The disposition must be written, signed, and traceable to the specific weld numbers.
3. Design a 30-day recovery plan. What would you measure to know it is working?
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The plan has three parallel tracks with owners and dates, reviewed weekly:
Track 1 - Containment (days 1–5). Hold and list all joints from the four welders; verify or replace calibration on the three instruments and re-examine parameter records taken with them; freeze work on the nine unsupported WPSs until each is tied to a controlled PQR or withdrawn. Owner: QA manager. Deliverable: a held-joint register with weld numbers and status.
Track 2 - Correction (days 3–20). Requalify the four welders; reconstruct the PQR file; re-shoot or re-mark the 27 radiographs where the absence of markers prevents location traceability - in most cases the film must be repeated, because a radiograph that cannot be located is not evidence. Owner: NDE responsible person and welding engineer.
Track 3 - Corrective action (days 1–30). Root-cause the six open nonconformances and close them with verified actions; introduce a WPS-to-PQR register with a single controlled index; add an instrument calibration list reviewed monthly; add welder continuity expiry dates to the weekly production meeting.
Measures: number of held joints cleared per week against plan; percentage of WPSs traceable to a controlled PQR (target 100%); welder continuity currency (target 100%); calibration currency (100%); open nonconformances older than 30 days (target zero from the current eight). Trend these weekly - a plan that reports activity rather than closure is not a recovery plan.