I know there is reciprocity between CSWIP and CWI but am not sure if it goes both ways. My advice is to contact Terry Perez, Director of Certification at AWS. You can find her e-mail contact under "Contact Us" on the Home Page. I do have a comment however, that is, in my opinion, I do not believe the "pre-qualified" WPS' you are referring to are suitable for fuel tanks, i.e., pressure vessels. If you are in reference to truly "pre-qualified" WPS' those fall under the Structural Welding Code- AWS D1.1 which is not intended for pressure vessels. If you are in reference to an AWS B2.XXX Standard, those may be used for pressure vessels and have ASME approval however, please be cautious in using the B2.XXX Standards as some form of testing may also be required in your particular situation, depending on fabricating code requirements.

Hi rhoople47

The answer is maybe (!).
Under the British code, BS5500
1.1 Scope
...
This standard applies to only to pressure vessels manufactured under the survey of a competent engineering Inspection agency or Organzization. The intent of this requirement may be regarded as satisfactory where inspection is carried out by competent personnel of a seperate engineering inspection department maintained by the purchaser of the vessel. An inspection department maintained by the manufacturer does not satisfythis requirement except:
a) that specific responsibilities may be delegated at the descretion of the inspecting authority....
Regarding prequalified WPS's the answer is NO. Even ASME has givin leeway to prequalified welding procedures but I think it will take many years before the European community agrees to this.
Check howerver the specific design code, that's what they taught us to do!
Daon

Hi

As I am not from America I can not comment on the American system, but I believe that if your customer is from Spain, then the American system is not really what is important. Rather, you have to establish how the Europeans (your customer) expect inspection work to be performed.

In South Africa, we have an Inspection Authority system that is similar to that in Europe. (Not necessarily exactly the same however.) This is how it works:

All work that falls within certain definitions (vessels under pressure) must be "supervised" by an approved inspection authority. (IA) The actual inspection work is performed by personnel that have been registered as "Inspectors of Pressurized Equipment". (IPE's) These IPE's are not free agents. They have to work under the auspices of an IA. The question then becomes: Is the IA qualified to supervise work to the European code? This question is answered by looking at the scope of registration of the IA.

From the tone of your question, it appears that you are the fabricator's inspector. (Employed directly by the fabricator.) If so, you do not qualify to "supervise" the work to any code, because you are not an independent third party inspector. The issue here not being your ability, but rather your relationship with the fabricator.

Just a further point: I see in another post that you are to perform the welding to EN288. You must however understand that EN288 is the REFENCED code. The REFERENCING code (e.g BS5500/PD5500 or ADM) may require additional testing of procedures, or limit the approved ranges of the welding procedures. As such, these codes need to also be checked for requirements. (e.g. ADM expects impact testing on almost all welding procedures, while PD5500 requires all-weld tensiles.)

If there are any personnel from Europe reading this, they may be able to give a better answer.

Hope this helps in some way

Regards
Niekie Jooste