Tracking offsite fabrication and repair:
work that leaves the gate should not leave your system

01What leaves the gate

Each of these is on the critical path of a package and each has a return date the schedule depends on. The shop also holds documentation the owner needs at installation and for years afterwards.

02Why visibility breaks

The shop runs its own system, or a whiteboard. Status reaches the owner when the expeditor calls. Documentation arrives with the item, after it, or in a box at the end of the event. On one job, hundreds of pipe spools came back without proper labels or the required test records, and re-verifying them took days that were not in the plan.

The owner's planning system knows the item left and knows the date it is due back. It knows nothing in between, which is where the slip happens.

03The milestones to track per item

1. Released from site: date, carrier, the shop, and the package and activity date the item belongs to.

2. Received at shop: date confirmed by the shop.

3. Inspection and scope confirmed: what the shop found and what it will do, with any scope change approved before work starts.

4. Work started.

5. Work complete.

6. Testing complete: hydrotest, NDE, balance, whatever the item requires, with the records attached.

7. Documentation complete: the records reviewed and accepted.

8. Shipped: date and carrier.

9. Received on site: date, condition, labels checked against the record.

10. Installed: equipment tag, date, installer.

Each milestone has a planned date from the schedule and an actual date entered by the shop. The gap between them is the status, and it is visible without a phone call.

04Documentation with the item

The records the shop produces belong on the item record, not in a box: weld maps, NDE reports, hydrotest certificates, MTRs for new material, PMI results, balance reports, dimensional checks. Attach each at the milestone that produces it. When the item arrives on site, the record is already complete and the receiving check is a comparison, not a reconstruction.

05Chain of custody

Every hand-off is recorded: who released the item, which carrier took it, who received it at the shop, who shipped it back, who received it on site. For alloy items and pressure parts this is the same chain that makes PMI and MTR records defensible. For everything else it is how a missing spool is found.

06Bringing the shop into the system

Shops will work inside the owner's system if it costs them less than the phone calls. Give each shop time-limited access to its own items only, with the milestones to tick and the documents to attach. Most shops train in about 30 minutes. The shop's status becomes the owner's status the moment it is entered.

07All year, not just the event

Offsite fabrication and repair runs year-round: turnarounds, capital projects and daily maintenance all send work out. The same milestones and records apply to a single valve sent out in March as to two hundred spools before the fall turnaround. A system used all year is also one the shops already know when the event starts.

08A worked example: 200 spools before a fall turnaround

Two hundred pipe spools go to a fabrication shop in June for an October turnaround. Each spool leaves with a record: its package, its activity date, its drawing and the test records it must come back with. The shop ticks milestones as it goes and attaches weld maps, NDE reports and MTRs at the milestone that produces them. In August, 30 spools are two weeks behind. That shows against their activity dates, by package and by contractor, without a phone call, and the scheduler re-sequences the affected packages in August rather than finding out in October.

In September the spools arrive on site with labels that match the record, and the receiving check is a comparison. Nothing is re-verified. The documentation is complete before the first spool is lifted.

09What to put in the shop's purchase order

1. The milestones the shop will record, with planned dates.

2. The documents it will attach at each milestone, by name.

3. Labelling: the record identifier on every item.

4. Access: the shop's users, and that access is limited to its own items.

5. Training: a 30-minute session before the first item ships.

6. That status is entered in the system, not reported by phone.

10What to measure

11The shop's side of it

Shops resist new systems because every owner has one and each costs them time. The case to make is that this one replaces the expediting calls, the emailed photos and the re-sent certificates with ten milestones and a few attachments, entered once. A shop that updates the record is not asked for status; a shop that attaches the records at the milestone is not chased for them in October. Most shops see it in the first month, which is why a 30-minute training session is enough. The owner's side is simpler still: the planner who used to call six shops on Monday reads one screen, and the scheduler sees a slip the day the shop records it rather than the day the truck fails to arrive.