A spool or system turnover package, assembled from shop records and marked wherever a record is missing.

A spool's records scatter as it moves through the shop. The weld map or log stays with the foreman, welder qualifications with quality, mill reports with purchasing, examination reports with your technicians or the owner's agency, and the pressure test record wherever the test happened. Someone walks each joint, ties those records to it, puts them in the order the customer's index wants, and chases whatever is absent before the package can go.

For the test, AI reads copies of those records and assembles a draft package: the weld map, each joint with its welder and procedure references, material test reports by heat, examination reports, pressure test records, and a list of what is missing. Nothing gets signed off or altered, and your quality manager reviews every draft.

What closes the job depends on where the pipe goes. ASME's forms page lists P-4A, the Manufacturers' Data Report for Fabricated Piping, under Section I, and under B31.1 lists CC-1 for a complete piping system and CC-2 for fabricated components, subassemblies and assemblies. Section I's rule on boiler external piping, reprinted in an appendix to Wisconsin's boiler code, lets a shop other than the boiler maker fabricate that piping under an S or PP stamp and has it furnish the P-4A. ASME's guide to certificate scopes splits PP into shop only, shop and field sites, and field sites only. A water plant job can run on New York's kind of master section instead, asking for shop test results or a certificate of compliance from a manufacturer the authority has approved. The draft lists what your reviewer's index calls for and which of those the file holds.

Every joint has to lead back to a person. Minnesota's high pressure piping rules give each welder a unique identifier and want each weld stamped or marked with it, or else records showing which welder made which weld. Michigan State's steam standard offers the same two routes, a symbol on the joint or weld map records. A sample specification from New York's State University Construction Fund asks for more: a key plan and a spreadsheet giving each weld a unique tag, the welder's name and symbol, the date, location, temperature, time and procedure. The map is the drawing and the log is the table, and the two can disagree, while a repaired joint picks up a repair number and a new examination record. The draft ties each joint to what your records show and names any with no welder, no procedure or two answers.

Qualification papers often begin outside your shop. The National Certified Pipe Welding Bureau, a subsidiary of the Mechanical Contractors Association of America, is described on one state chapter's page as offering members over 100 procedure specifications, a test record that can move with a welder to a new employer with the signature block left blank for that employer, and continuity records kept in a national database. Minnesota wants procedures, qualification records and continuity records acceptable to its administrative authority and available at the work site. Kentucky has the installing contractor produce them for the inspector. The draft names the procedure, the qualification and the date each joint relies on. Whether that qualification covers that joint is your quality manager's call. These rules are summarized for recognition, and nothing here is legal or engineering advice.

One spool pulls from many heats. Pipe, elbows and flanges on a single assembly can each carry a different heat, so the draft lists every piece with the heat your records show and the report covering it, and a fitting with no heat recorded goes on the gaps list. Owners may want more than the mill's page. Vista Irrigation District's steel pipe section asks for certified reports of physical and chemical properties, hydrostatic tests and production weld tests, with mill reports on each sheet on request.

Reports may not be yours to write, and order matters. Michigan State allows examinations by the fabricator, the erector or a party the owner authorizes, and keeps inspection with the owner. Under the construction fund's sample, the owner's agency writes its own reports and has the final word. Vista and the City of San Diego want each steel plate special tested after welding and before lining and coating, and Michigan State puts a pressure recorder on its tests. The draft shows who wrote each report, sets its date against any coating or lining record, and lists what is absent. Your reviewer, usually the quality manager, checks that each joint landed on the right records and that nothing was shown as complete when its record was absent.

Once your reviewer says yes, spools and systems nearing shipment get a draft package for about 30 days, early enough to chase what is missing.

Your quality manager reviews and releases every package. Nothing reaches a customer on a draft alone. The next job is priced on its own, and monthly support comes after that.