Hi Chet,
I did just retest many of our shop's weldors, but not all, only a third or less. It's hard to keep up with who has what qualifications, so I test everyone to the same thing. If I do need the qualifications to be done within the last 12 months, I'm going to test the balance of our weldors. I'm not even going to attempt to keep track of who, what, and when. The way they work our fitter's tables, I'll never keep up with it. If something gets moved up in the schedule, I don't see them letting me stop production and test weldors before letting them work on that job. As it is, I can put work on any table in the shop and have weldors qualified in 2G - unlimited thickness. But if the date of qualification is going to be a player now, instead of what D1.1 states that as long as continuity is maintained the qualifications remain indefinitely, unless quality of welding is an issue with a particular weldor, then I will need to retest the balance.
My whole point to our estimating dept. is that when they see verbage like that they need to address it then, and also allow time in the delivery schedule for testing all of those weldors that are not qualified within the past 12 months. But now that the contract has been agreed to and awarded to us, I don't see how we have any room to dispute any of it, just comply with the requirements as stated in the specs, period.
John Wright