Your reference : ASME IX - "Responsibility"

This is the scenario.

Contractor A – took a welding job as a main-con for entire piping project.

He hired three companies (B, C, D) as sub-contractors. Except for company B, all the sub-cons including the main-con have no available WPS & PQR.

The main-con who obviously trying to save cost of qualifying the welding procedure has submitted the WPS & PQR of company B to support the whole project. When the 3rd party inspector objected, the main-con asked company B to write a letter stating they’re allowing companies C & D to use their WPS in production welding and company B is willing to accept full responsibility.

Contractor A brought this matter to the owner, but the owner wanted the 3rd party inspector to decide since they could not make a decision on whether to accept or reject this arrangement.

A penny for your thoughts:lol:

~Joey~

My position would be that if contractor A does not have the authority to hire and fire workers paid by either contractor B or C, then the WPSs cannot be shared.

If contractor B and/or C are subdivisions of contractor A, then the WPSs and supporting PQRs could be shared.

Section IX provides a fairly comprehensive explanation of how one company can adopt the WPSs of a subdivision or of a company that is acquired. It makes no provisions for shared welding documentation between two different companies that have no shared ownership.

There is no reason why Contractor A and Contractor B could not enter into a joint partnership and then share welding documentation. They could then compile the welding documentation and use a new letterhead; "Joined @ the Hip LLC."

It would be interesting to see if Contractor A would be willing to share the profits earned from the project with Contractor B. Not that it would change my position, but it would be an interesting position for Contractor B to take; "You want to use my welding documents, I want an equal share of the profits earned on the project. Oh, by the way, I want Contractor A to share the cost of insurance, benefits, etc." Hmm, I bet that would change Contractor A's thought process.

Best regards - Al