The newest standard on the block for welding AS 1796, has been published by Standards Australia to help inspectors carry out efficient and modern welding inspections.
This actually represents the 5th edition of AS 1796, being a revision of the 2001 edition. In the 2022 version, Standards Australia nods to the importance of the standard within the welding and pressure equipment industry, as well as updating certain elements with new content. The new copy of AS 1796 – “Pressure Equipment – Qualification of welders, welding supervisors and welding inspectors” has some major changes. Not only does the new edition simplify much of the guidance, but it brings it more in scope with the technology within the industry today. With the advancements within Australian pressure equipment standards, as well as greater availability of inspection solutions, the scope of the standard has been expanded to account for improved pressure and structural application inspection, compared with the previous edition.
For welding personnel, the new AS 1796 standard comes into a toolbox filled with other ISO (international Organization for Standards) and industry regulations. Today, those within welding inspection industry are increasingly choosing to use paperless inspection solutions to monitor welding within their business or organisation. There is a greater availability of paperless applications, as well as rugged mobile devices, that have allowed inspectors within the welding industry to take this step. The increasing adoption of these digital tools has gone hand in hand with industry standards such as AS 1796 going paperless. Together, they form a potent tool in the hand of a welding inspector. Paperless inspection solutions have long been available for many industry fields, allowing field officers to carry out any form of business check or audit on a digital device. Remarks and data are stored in paperless checklists via different methods such as pictures, standardised response drop down, speech-to-text or annotations. With smart checklist logic, certain sections can be made mandatory, with others being skippable if the previous checks follow a certain pattern. This means that for a welding tool or safety protection you can take a picture as evidence that there is no wear and tear, whilst a pass will mean that further damage checks are not required etc.
