Inspection authority

Inspection Authority The National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors is composed of the chief inspectors of states and municipalities in the United States and Canadian provinces which have made any pari of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code a legal requirement. This board promotes uniform enforcement of boiler and pressure-vessel rules. One of the board s imporiant activities is providing examinations for, and commissioning of, inspectors. Inspeciors so qualified and employed by an insurance company state, municipality, or Canadian province may inspect a pressure vessel and permit it to be stamped ASME—NB (National Board). An inspector employed by a vessel user may authorize the use of only the ASME stamp. The ASME Code Committee authorizes fabricators to use the various ASME stamps. The stamps, however, may be apphed to a vessel only with the approval of the inspector. 

The standard requires that records identify the inspection authority responsible for the release of conforming product. 

The inspection authority is the organization that decides whether the product is conforming or nonconforming. 

The inspection authority for a document is the person who approved it. There may be other personnel in the chain such as the issuing authority or the publishing authority, but the person who verified the content is normally the approval authority. With documents that carry signatures you have less protection from prying users and so here is a good reason for excluding the name of the author or approver from the finished document if it is to be used externally. Separate document development records can be used to trace authors and approvers to specific documents. 

Concessions are any relaxations granted by the customer, design authority, inspection authority, or other body authorized to accept nonconforming product. 

FPN No. 1) It is important that inspection authorities and users exercise more than ordinary care with regard to installation and maintenance. 

Inspection is also an important activity in the regulation of international trade through the certification of vehicles and containers used for transporting hazardous products and for providing foreign purchasers with evidence that manufactured goods comply with specification before they leave the country of origin. The essential characteristics of and requirements for an inspection authority are ... 

The role of the inspecting authority must clearly be sensitive to change in the light of both technical advances and alterations in the political climate. The response time will sometimes depend on whether the authority concerned has addressed itself to a rather narrow sector of the inspection field or operates over a wide spectrum. 

The 1982 White Paper on Standards, Quality and International Competitiveness was concurrent with increasing interest in the techniques of quality assurance and the need for international harmonization of standards and the reciprocal recognition of certification. It is worth noting that the ISO 9000 series of standards on Quality Systems 1987 followed the layout of BS 5750 1979 almost clause by clause. ISO Guide 39 covers the general requirements for inspection bodies. Auditing on behalf of certification bodies is part of the inspecting authorities role. 

During this training, an engineer surveyor can expect to be shown examples of the defects that he is likely to encounter. Many inspecting authorities have a black museum of such defects or they are described and illustrated by photographs in the training literature. He will also be instructed, both in the classroom and on-site, about locations where defects are likely to occur. Most surveyors develop an instinct , which helps them to find defects, and this can only be acquired through practical experience of different types of plant. 

It has to be recognized that some examiners are better than others in their use of language, and many inspection authorities have standard phrases, which their surveyors are advised to use. Some use a shorthand system to facilitate the production of reports whereby the surveyor sends back a string of numbers to his head office that are then converted into standard phrases in the report. Inevitably,... 

Having set out the factors that may tend to produce a rather stilted report, we should also consider the positive side. The last thing an inspecting authority wants is for his client to look at the report and say Why am 1 paying so much money for this . 

Although written reports are the inspecting authority s end product they by no means comprise the whole of the professional service that is supplied or is available on request. The authority s quality assurance objective is likely to be on the lines of client satisfaction allied to compliance with contractual obligations . Although reports are almost certainly monitored, they are a poor indicator of the quality of the examination, and the authority s quality control will rely less on report... 

The majority of the independent engineering inspection authorities now provide a wide range of engineering inspection services quite apart from the in-service inspections of insured plant. These services are available to industry at large and, although widely used by presently insured clients, they are frequently employed by organizations that have no specific insurance or inspection involvement with the chosen engineering inspection authority. 

The major engineering insurance companies are recognized as competent independent inspection authorities having a range of services, which they have developed during many years of service to the engineering industry, and therefore the following inspection procedures indicate many of the standard inspection services in use. However, special inspection procedures are frequently drawn... 

The plant engineer should strive to make sure that, whenever possible, his purchase orders specify compliance with the correct standard. Many manufacturers can tmthfully claim that their specifications exceed the minimum requirements of a material standard, in which case they will have no objection to its inclusion in the order. Those who protest too much that its requirements are superfluous may deserve further scmtiny. Choosing the correct specification is not always easy, and requires expertise in the relevant field. This expertise is available from consulting engineers or from an inspection authority, who will also appraise the vendor s designs and, if required, will witness critical stages of constmction and test. 

Inspecting Authority Engineer Surveyor for Member Company... 

The inspection system is described in Articles 8 and 9 of the Regulation. The member states can choose between using the inspection authorities to apply the inspection system or using private inspection bodies do it, or a combination of both. Private inspection bodies must be authorised and supervised by competent authorities. A purely state-administered system is... 

If a facility conducts nonchnical laboratory studies, it is a testing facility and is subject to inspection by FDA to determine its GLP comphance status. If a facility conducts nonchnical laboratory studies as well as studies that do not meet the definition of nonchnical laboratory study, then only those portions of the facihty that conduct nonchnical laboratory studies are subject to a GLP inspection by FDA. The portions of the facihty that conduct studies other than nonchnical laboratory studies are not subject to inspection by FDA unless FDA has inspectional authority under some other set of regulations. 

The inspection authority of the FDA includes the right to copy records and to collect samples. It is discretionary with the inspected laboratory whether to charge for copies of records or to provide them to the inspector free of charge. The same is true with regard to the inspector s request for samples, although requests for samples are rare during GLP inspections. In most cases, laboratories wiU provide samples and copies of documents free of charge unless FDA requests for these are excessive. 

For an excellent discussion of the legal issues surrounding FDA s inspectional authority, see volumes 16 and 52 of this series [13, 14]. 

The inspection and test status of the product or parts are clearly identified by marking, tags, labels, inspection records, test reports, shop travelers, physical location, or other suitable means that indicate the conformance or nonconformance of the product. Records show the inspection authority that determined the status. 

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