Inspection Trends

If you spend enough time working in quality assurance, you’re eventually going to be the “bad guy” in someone’s story, whether it be the foreman who’s missing a deadline, the client who’s over budget, or the welder who failed the qualification test. As inspectors, we must accept this fate, but how we deal with the adversity says a lot about our character and, in turn, our reputation and credibility. I’ve never been much of a people pleaser, and that has rendered me somewhat immune to the retribution associated with the villainy. This indifference to people’s perception has allowed me to dig in and firmly plant feet on my side of the line. Those moments of willfulness have left me with a solid reputation for being an inspector of integrity.

Integrity is one of the most important characteristics we can have in this line of work. When you sign off  on something, people need to be able to trust that you made the right decision. In many cases, lives literally depend on it. In a perfect world, when an inspector waves the red flag, production halts, minds converge, nonconformances are corrected, and life happily goes on. Unfortunately, many inspectors are hesitant to raise the red flag when they see quality issues. That hesitance can come from many angles. Sometimes guys are just under the gun to get work out of the shop. Maybe previous rework has blown the budget and people are pointing fingers at the “picky” inspector. Maybe the client has  a contract with a rapidly approaching deadline date on it. Any number of things can put pressure on you to let certain things pass. I’ve heard it a million times: “It ain’t pretty, but it’ll hold.” And sometimes, for certain applications, they may be right. But that doesn’t mean we should lower our standards and approve subpar work. If an inspector approves subpar work to help speed production or qualifies a subpar welder to meet contract requirements, and it causes an accident or failure, it comes back on the inspector. Whatever the scenario may have been, the inspector’s integrity was the last line of defense and whatever accident or failure occurred is their responsibility. That hurts one’s credibility and hampers their ability to make a living. And if someone were to have been hurt or even worse, well, that’s a whole other weight one must learn to live with. It’s an awful lot to risk just to keep a little heat from management off one’s back or to avoid slowing down work again.

On a closing note, I’ll leave you with this jewel I was once told: “You’ve got to have three I’s to be a good inspector: intelligence, integrity, and imperturbability. Intelligence, so you’ll know what’s right. Integrity, so you’ll do what’s right. Imperturbability, so you’ll be able to handle the adversity the other two I’s will bring you.”

CURT GREEN (curtis.green@kctcs.edu), an AWS CWI, AWS CWE, and ASNT NDT Level II, is the associate professor of welding technology at West Kentucky Community & Technical College, Paducah, Ky., and owner and operator of Industrial Welding & Maintenance, Golconda, Ill.