Engineering Safety Articles
Scope of Inspection (updated 08/04/05)
This article is based on, and replaces, an article of the same title, which appeared in Safety Lines No 65 (March 2005).
An inspection body enquired about the scope of inspection as covered by a certificate of inspection for pressure equipment (excluding boilers) issued under the PECPR Regulations. At the heart of the enquiry was the need to establish whether or not the full system into which the equipment was installed should be complete and functional, and the subject to the inspection leading to the issue of a certificate of inspection.
A certificate of inspection for pressure equipment certifies that equipment will be safe, with respect to its pressure containment capability, for those aspects of equipment operation specified or implied by the PECPR Regulations and the equipment manufacturing standard(s). In general a certificate of inspection does not cover other aspects of installation such as fencing, signage, fire protection, etc.
An inspection body may perform inspection work that is outside the scope of the PECPR Regulations such as fencing, etc., but this work would not be covered by the certificate of inspection and should be reported separately to the client.
Equipment coming within the scope of the PECPR Regulations must not be certified for service until all aspects of the equipment covered by the regulations and its manufacturing standard(s) have been completed, inspected and tested. Ideally inspection should be carried out following completion of construction of the system containing the equipment but this is not an essential requirement for the issue of a certificate of inspection.
Stationary container systems (See HSNO definition) such as LPG installations are also covered by controls and regulations made under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act and are subject to test certification by test certifiers appointed under this Act.
In general the relevant HSNO regulations and controls treat certification of PECPR pressure equipment as a subset of and a prerequisite for overall HSNO test certification of a system. Hence, a HSNO test certifier would require a certificate of inspection to be issued for any pressure equipment in a stationary container system before issuing a test certificate for that system.
HSNO test certification for stationary container systems is covered by "Controls for stationary container systems" in Schedule 8 of the New Zealand Gazette, Issue No 25, dated 25 March 2004. These controls specify requirements for design, installation, maintenance and test certification for complete stationary container systems.
A PECPR certificate of inspection will generally satisfy HSNO requirements for test certification of the corresponding aspects of a stationary container system. However, reference should be made to Schedule 8 of the New Zealand Gazette, Issue No 25, for precise information on the relationship between HSNO test certification and PECPR certificates of inspection.
