Coating Inspection
Vision Integrity can help preserve your capital investment and extend your product’s life.
Getting the Most out of Protective Coatings and Paint for Corrosion Control
What is Coating Inspection?
Coatings are typically used as the first line of defence in corrosion protection. Corrosion failures are a major concern to all asset owners, and ensuring your first line of defence is applied and performing to expectations is critical to the longevity of those assets and to the protection of the environment. Improperly chosen or improperly applied coating can bring all the expense and few of the benefits. Failure case studies are full of costly didn’t quite get the coatings right lessons. Let Vision help you ensure value for your coating investment. Many owners in recent years have established inspection programs to eliminate costly failures and to maximize coating longevity.
Coatings Assessments
Field case histories show that coatings can fail after less than one year and others that perform for 30+ years. This wide variance in performance is mostly due to variance in applicator skill, proper coating specification and selection for the service, and quality control or inspection.
- Third party coating inspection is an asset owners insurance that the coating has been applied properly, to specifications, and will meet life expectancy expectations.
- Coatings consultants provide an unbiased opinion and recommendations on coating selection, performance, and application parameters based on the operation of the equipment and the needs of the client. These needs can range from; requiring alternative products due to shortage issues, applications in difficult environments, health and environmental protection issues, budget, maintenance and service life concerns.
- Stay in your lane rule – coating applicators are experts at how to best apply coatings (not selection of coatings or the operation parameters of equipment), coating manufacturers have knowledge in the performance and sale of their own coating products (but typically not their competitors products), and coating inspectors are knowledgeable in how to properly inspect a coating to ensure performance and warranty.
CSA Z662
Did you know that pipelines designed to CSA Z662, where field and/or shop coatings will be applied, need to conform to CSA Z245.30?
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- CSA Z245.30 was developed by working groups from the Banff Pipeline conference to try to reduce the number of substandard field and shop applied coatings on Z662 designed pipelines and became a requirement in 2014.
- What does this mean for pipeline owners? It means that pipelines which are constructed to the CSA Z662 standard, and where the pipeline owner decides to use field or shop applied coatings (whether for girth welds, valves, mainline pipe, etc), those coatings must conform to CSA Z245.30.
- What does CSA Z245.30 cover? This standard covers the qualification, application, inspection, testing, handling and storage of materials require for coatings applied to external piping in the field or in the shop. It also covers coating products from FBE to liquid, heat shrink sleeves, tapes, and more.
- Does your company coating specification cover the requirements outlined in CSA Z245.30? Not sure? Our in house Coatings Expert can both review your coating specification and/or develop a new coating specification to ensure you are meeting CSA Z245.30 requirement.
Coatings Inspection Services
Vision integrity provides a full range of coatings consulting services including; development of maintenance plans, material selection studies, coating specification, commentary and procedure writing, approved product and vendor lists, coating failure investigations, and coating system evaluations.
Vision integrity also provides a full range of coatings inspection services including; coating project management, turn-around inspection, applicator qualification, inspection for field and plant applied coatings, warranty inspection, coating shop audits, and corrosion surveys.
Experiencing Coating or Paint Product Shortages? Need an Alternative?
- In the post-COVID world, we’ve all felt the pain of product shortages recently and the paint and coatings industry has been hit especially hard.
- With approved paint and coating lists developed before covid we are frequently running into a need for alternative products. Products we can acquire and still meet our construction and maintenance schedules. But how can we ensure that these alternatives will perform the same or better as the product we love but cannot get our hands on? Our in house coatings expert can help. Our review and assessment of; ease of application, laboratory data, field data, and case histories can help give you the confidence you need that you’ve selected an alternative coating product that will yield the service life you expect.
How We Add Value
Vision Integrity provides asset owners, engineers, fabricators and contractors peace of mind that the integrity of their coated assets are properly assessed and protected.