Why the record hangs off the weld
Steel is inspected twice, in two places. The member is fitted, welded, tested and coated in a shop, then it turns up on site weeks later to be bolted, surveyed and made good. Both halves belong to the same member.
The weld number and the member mark are set on the drawing before fabrication starts, and the shop, the test contractor and the erector all work to them. The record should hang off those identifiers.
One test report can cover a run of welds, and it attaches to each of them. Ask what happened at W-2210 and the answer is about that joint.
A hold point is a point you nominate on the ITP, not a fixed idea the software brought with it. Work does not move past one until it is signed, and the register shows which are open and which were bypassed.
What gets recorded against the weld
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ITP and ITRsA prebuilt ITP to start from, with the required ITRs modified to suit the project. Any other ITR is built in the form builder or mapped from the form you already use. The Client's requirements or your own QMP set what has to be inspected, not the software.
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Fit-upThe joint checked and signed before welding. This is the hold point. Once the weld is run, the fit-up cannot be inspected.
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Hold accountabilityA bypassed hold point cannot be backdated. If a joint was welded without its fit-up sign-off, the record says so and says when. On paper, in a spreadsheet or in a generic checklist module, the date is a field somebody types.
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Test resultsVisual inspection and non-destructive testing held against the weld number, with the report reference beside the result. One report covers a run of welds and attaches to each of them.
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Shop and siteFabrication, coating, erection and survey records land against the same mark, whoever captured them and wherever they were standing. It is one record, and there is no second set to reconcile at handover.
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Defects and NCRsA rejected weld is raised from the field, triaged immediately in the admin portal, and added to a live-link job pack. The cut-out and the re-weld sit against the same joint, under the same non-conformance.
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MDREvery accepted record lands in the Manufacturer's Data Report as it is signed.
One row per weld
| Weld | Member | Joint | Test report | Fit-up | ITRs | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| W-2207 | B-14 | Beam to column | NDT-0412 | Signed | 6 of 6 | Accepted |
| W-2208 | B-14 | Web splice | NDT-0412 | Signed | 6 of 6 | Accepted |
| W-2209 | C-08 | Base plate | NDT-0415 | Signed | 5 of 5 | In shop |
| W-2210 | C-08 | Stiffener | NDT-0417 | Bypassed 09 Apr | 4 of 6 | NCR open |
| W-2211 | B-15 | Beam to column | NDT-0417 | Signed | 6 of 6 | In shop |
| W-2212 | B-15 | Web splice | Not tested | Open | 0 of 6 | At hold point |
What the programme view cannot answer
Your project management platform has a task called steel erection. It has a start, a finish, a percent complete and a subcontractor against it. For a programme that is the right level of detail. Someone has to know whether erection is tracking, and a bar on a chart answers that.
It is the wrong level for the questions asked at handover, which are never about erection in general. What proportion of the welds were tested, and show it. Which joints a welder ran in the week his qualification lapsed. Why W-2210 is still open and what closes it. Coverage is the hardest of them, because a claim about coverage is a claim about every weld at once, and it can only be answered from a record that goes down to the individual joint.
That is not a failing of the platform. The programme is its job. A weld is under coating and cladding within days of being made, and from then on the record held against the joint is the only weld anyone can examine.
With the weld as the unit
- Weld W-2210's test result and the non-conformance it raised
- Which of its ITRs are complete and which are outstanding
- That its fit-up hold was bypassed, and the day it happened
- The report behind a result: who tested, to what procedure
- Test coverage across the package, counted from the register
With the task as the unit
- "Steel erection, 61% complete"
- A fit-up checklist as a generic form, not tied to the joint
- A hold signed off last Tuesday, typed in this morning
- The weld map as a PDF, marked up by hand
- Test reports filed by report number, not by joint
The MDR the contract already asked for
A live MDR is not a nice-to-have. Most contracts of any size already require the Manufacturer's Data Report to be built up as the work proceeds, rather than assembled once the work is done. Many do not work that way. The records exist, in the fabricator's folders, in the test contractor's reports, on somebody's phone, and the last month of the job goes on collecting them. FOC Capture tracks every record against its element and its tags from the beginning, so what you hand over is comprehensive rather than reassembled. It is added to the MDR as it is signed, which takes that work off the end of the job.
The same requirements expect a record to still be findable long afterwards, by someone who was not there when it was made. The ISO 19650 container convention was written to answer that, by making the name itself say what the record is. FOC Capture names the records it generates, built from the job data rather than typed: the project, the document type, the author and the revision are all in the name. It does not rename anything you bring. Shop drawings numbered to the fabricator's own scheme keep those numbers: confirm one and the as-built honours it. Shop records and site records come out in the same shape, which is what lets the set reconcile. The identity never changes once it is assigned. Only the status and revision move, from work in progress through sign-off to the locked as-constructed record.
Container codes this work uses
STR Structures. The system code for structural steelworkIT The weld or member inspection and test recordCE Certificates: welder qualifications, procedures, mill certificatesNC A non-conformance raised against a jointPH Photo evidence sheets against the member markSV Survey and set-out records for erected steelRP The conformance report compiled for the client