Shop audit - incompetent auditors

Date 03-16-2005 23:19

Just got to vent with you guys. Many in the same boat I am sure.

Had a call last week from a representative for a juristiction that we regularly do work for. He was coming by this week to perform an audit of our facility. He wanted to go through our facility, review QA Manual, welding certs, procedures, etc. Sounded like I needed to make sure all my "T"s were crossed and "I"s dotted. So I spent some extra time (Saturday, for free!) being sure I had everything ready this gentleman may want to see.

He got here today and introduced himself. His business card says he is the "Product Control Inspector" with the "Building Code Compliance Office". Sounds like a rather important position weilding much power. Well someone's tax dollars are sure wasted because this yuckapuck could not find his *** with both hands, directions and a big mirror!

He had no idea why he was here. He had a highlighted checklist that he had obviously never read before. When he got here he said he had already reviewed our QA Manual and it looked like we were doing everything pretty good, but he still wanted to see my welder certs. HE HAD BEEN HERE 27 SECONDS AND WE HAD NOT LEFT THE RECEPTION AREA YET!!! We walked to my office and I showed him the certs. He watched me open the book and flip through the certs. He was satisfied and he looked at his highlighted audit sheet and then wanted to know if I had the education, training and experience records for the welders. I said "HUH?" Yea, it says here you need education, training and experience records for your welders. I said I had never heard of that before. "Well, it says here you need education, training and experience records for your key personnel. Aren't your welders key personnel?" I said, in my humble opinion, that "requirement" was verbiage from AISC type auditing procedures and is directed towards management type personnel, not welders. "Are you sure?" Yes, pretty sure. No, I do not have those records for my welders. "Well OK. Looks like everything is covered. I don't really know why they sent me here except to get me out of the office." DUH, I could see why! He wanted to walk through the shop, but was afraid to get his shiny new shoes dirty (poor guy). He wanted to see some fabrication drawings. I showed him and he looked at his highlighted audit sheet and then asked, "Is there an identification mark?" Now I have seen many different types of drawings, but the piece mark is usually pretty obvious, and it was on this drawing also. But, hey, it was a question on his highlighted audit sheet, so I am sure he felt compelled to ask! I am not sure how many other question he skipped. And we were his second stop of the day. He had 4 more companies to go bless today. And this guy probably has a major impact on whether or not our company and other companies do work within this very picky juristiction. Probably makes as much or more money than I do to spread his blessings around.

Now, as I sit in front of my management and try to explain to them why they need to do things they don't really want to do, because it required by codes or specs, and they look at this yuckapuck and they say "why?", what I am supposed to say??? Any of you guys been there before? I KNOW you have!

By jwright650 (*****)

Date 03-17-2005 12:31

Ok Doug, you asked for it...
Oh yeah, they've been here too. One guy sticks out in my mind that came by to look us over and found out from my qualifications, that he asked to review, that I did the UT inspections here. Then he asked to be excused for a moment and he ran out to his pickup and pulled his UT machine out and met me back in my office. He asked to see some of the full pen joints that had recently been welded, so I took him out to our shipping/loading area and pointed out several stacks of material with full pen welds(columns mostly w/ outriggers and full pen base plates). He had our guys pull through all that material and spread it out so he could go through it all and UT the joints. He took all of two minutes on each column spreading couplant around and he was asking for the next column to be pulled out of the stack and this one put back because he was done. Well, after he left and gave us his blessing (as Doug called it) my people here wanted to know why it took me as long as it did for me to UT the same amount of material(and I thought I was pretty fast with this stuff). Oh man, I was boiling. I try my best to give my company a good, thorough UT inspection to where if these same pieces get UT'd in the field behind me, there won't be any problems found. This guy whips through this material in record time, so they look at me like I'm just wasting precious shop hours. I never once saw this guy pull out a calibration block(unless he did a quickee out at his truck). Here I was trying to explain why I do all that I do, when now they think I am just trying to justify my existance by doing all this extra work or something. Yep, it doesn't sit well when those "yuckapucks" breeze through our shops. I like a good thorough audit every now and then to keep our shop on it's toes, so I don't have to keep beating on these guys (management and shop guys) about doing things by code.
As for venting,...Yeah, I'm with ya on this!
John Wright

By DGXL

Date 03-17-2005 16:54

OUCH!

I know the situation well. I used to be an auditor for ICBO-ES (now IAS).
I quit because they believe you don't have to know about the product or service to audit, a philosophy I strongly disagree with. They made it a point to occupy my time with fasteners, glass, wood or plastic products. $ is more important than quality.

Two years ago I did a technical presentation for a room full of building officials. One from the County mentioned there are two trades that you can't inspect without having more than fundamental knowledge of: Welding and Electrical. They all agreed even special inspectors need to be more thoroughly screened and evaluated before giving them a card to inspect. The County wanted to implement additional continuing educational requirements for their structural steel & welding inspection staff, don't know if they actually followed through.

Had an AISC auditor request my NDT certs earlier this year - I do not perform NDT for the company being audited. I was told the auditor wanted to verify my qualifications as I test welders and procedures for this firm. Have no idea what my NDT certs were requested for... Another AISC auditor accepted WPS's that have been rejected by just about every engineer and building dept. locally, but he found them to be satisfactory, go figure.

I still do QA audits, but now in the aerospace industry. Too many bad apples made the bunch a place I don't want to be or associated with.

By mksqc

Date 03-17-2005 18:25

I think we all could fill a page on this topic but one that stands out is an a request for micrometer training records that would be fine but all the mics. we use in the shop are digital (that didnt matter to this guy by the way)

By leon phelps (**)

Date 03-19-2005 02:34

I have had several encounters with the such inspectors. I have been asked for engineering specifications for a 6' picket fence, wastewater pollutant certification for a site with no water, parking lot traffic study for employee parking, electrical inspection for wireless communication nodes (they plug into a 110 outlet and a PC). Never had any welding related issues.

After making an ass of these inspectors, I was eventually offered a job as an inspector. Deal was 1K/week first three months. 50% new revenue after that. Now we know why the inspectors invent the issues. Some are legit issues, but most are revenue generating issues. I am guessing you know I didnt take the job by now.