Statutory Inspections for Fabrication & Welding

Welding fume LEV: what the 14 month test actually judges

The thorough examination and test under COSHH Regulation 9 is not a filter check; it is a performance judgement. The competent person, typically P601 qualified, measures each hood's capture against the benchmarks the system was commissioned to, HSG258 territory: capture velocities at the working position, transport velocities in the ducts, pressures across the fan and filter, and the physical condition of everything from hood lip to discharge. The question is not does the fan run but does this hood still remove the fume before it reaches the welder's breathing zone.

Fab shop LEV fails in characteristic ways the test is designed to catch. Hoods positioned by habit rather than at the fume source, capture collapsing with every extra hand span of distance. On torch extraction underperforming because it was never balanced for the torch actually in use. Systems extended bay by bay as the shop grew, until a main duct sized for four bays starves six. Flexible ducting crushed behind benches. And the universal one: the moveable hood that welding repositioned a hundred times a day and the test finds parked out of the plume.

Between tests, the duty continues: COSHH expects controls maintained in efficient working order, which in practice means the weekly user check, filters and condition on schedule, and defects reported like the safety equipment this is. A failed hood is not an inconvenience; it is a welder breathing what the system was built to remove.

Plate handling: the lifting chain from crane to clamp

Moving plate and fabrications is a lifting chain, and every link is statutory. The overhead cranes and jibs sit on the 12 month tier; every chain, sling, shackle, eyebolt, plate clamp and lifting magnet is an accessory on 6 months, and fab shops run more accessories per tonne of crane than almost anyone. Plate clamps and magnets deserve particular attention: they are the links that fail workpieces onto legs, their condition is judgement work an examiner is trained for, and they multiply in drawers exactly like slings.

Fabricated lifting points are the sector's own special case. When the shop welds a lifting lug onto a fabrication, it has manufactured lifting equipment: the design, the weld and the rating are all load bearing decisions, and anything that will be lifted by shop made points repeatedly should be examined like the accessory it is. The habit of grinding a lug off after one lift is not tidiness, it is the correct end of a temporary accessory's life.

The documents are the standard set: Reports of Thorough Examination to Schedule 1 per item, kept until the next report or two years, whichever is later, with the accessory register carrying every clamp and magnet by serial. The two minute retrieval test applies here as everywhere: any examiner, insurer or customer auditor should get from the clamp in the bay to its current report inside two minutes.

Signs a fab shop's controls have drifted from their commissioning

The fab shop calendar: 14 months is not a year

The sector's calendar carries one interval that defeats annual thinking: the LEV test's 14 months walks through the calendar, landing two months later each cycle, and shops that manage it as the annual test drift out of compliance by arithmetic alone. Anchor it as a hard diary date set from the last test, with the booking made eight weeks ahead so a busy examiner's schedule cannot push you over.

Around it, the fixed points: the 6 month accessory sweep, best run as a single visit where every sling, clamp and magnet is examined together against the register; the 12 month tier for cranes and jibs; and the Written Scheme intervals on the air plant with their 28 day report windows. Fold the PUWER machinery cycle, press brakes, rolls, saws and guarding records, onto the same page at the intervals you have set in writing.

The pairing that saves fab shops money: put the accessory sweep and the crane examinations in the same visit window, and brief the examiner with the service and repair history since last time, because welding repair on a sling or a re roped hoist is exactly the change an examination should know about. And run the two column audit, serviced and examined per asset, quarterly; the compressor on a gold service contract with no scheme examination is this sector's recurring finding too.

The air estate: receivers, plasma packs and the scheme behind the shop

Compressed air is the fab shop's third utility and its quietest statutory duty. The receiver behind the main compressor, and any packaged receiver inside plasma cutters, laser packages or press brake systems, is a pressure system, and above the 250 bar litre threshold PSSR requires a Written Scheme of Examination certified by a competent person before the system runs, examinations to that scheme, and reports within 28 days. Steam, where a shop runs a wash plant or cleaner that raises it, is in scope at any pressure.

The fab shop failure pattern mirrors the sector's LEV drift: air systems grow with the shop. A second compressor is banked in, a receiver is moved, galvanised pipe gets extended bay by bay, and nobody asks whether the scheme still describes the system it certifies. A Written Scheme is a living document tied to the installed system: change the system and the scheme needs reviewing, exactly as extraction needs recalculating.

The examination itself is judgement work on the parts that fail dangerously: shell and welds internally and externally as the scheme directs, safety valves proven at their set pressures, gauges reading true, drains functioning, because a receiver that cannot shed its condensate corrodes from the floor up. Between examinations the shop's duty is the unglamorous one, daily drain down where no auto drain runs, and defects reported like the pressure vessel findings they are.

Running the programme: one body across fume, lifting and air

A fabricator's cleanest compliance arrangement is one independent inspection body covering the LEV testing, the lifting estate and the pressure plant on a single schedule: one relationship that knows the shop, one calendar the office actually runs, and reports in one format the QA system can file against jobs. For a sector that sells into principal contractors and OEM supply chains, that file is commercial: welding fume compliance is now a standard supplier audit line, and the shop that produces its TExT reports, accessory register and crane reports in minutes wins work from the shop that cannot.

Independence has a sharp meaning here: the LEV examiner who also sells ductwork has an interest in findings that generate installation work, and the lifting examiner who services your cranes is marking his own maintenance. An examining body that fixes nothing gives you findings you can spend money on in the right order, and reports every auditor reads at face value.

Then close the loop the sector most often leaves open: act on the reports. A failed hood gets fixed and retested, not filed; a B tier clamp gets its date honoured; an observation trending on a crane rope becomes next quarter's planned work. Compliance in a fab shop is not the absence of findings, it is findings closed faster than the work creates them.