Backweld, backing weld or melt through

  I explained to her, errr, I mean Bob, that welding both sides of these deckplates was not feasible and that his interpretation was wrong. Bob supported his assertion with the fact that he used to be a welder (which means to me he was a failure) and his position as an inspector made the probability that he was incorrect somewhere around six standard deviations. He further attested to the likelihood of my ignorance being tied to lacking the credentials of an inspector. I sought to use simple logic to belay his concerns. I opened the military weld code book that governed the contract and read from it. After all, I figured, no matter who is wrong here, the code must be correct. Problem solved right? Hah! Read on.

Bob’s boss, The Level 3 radiography NDT inspector, was (yep you guessed it) as clueless as he. Lacking the technical depth to make an independent decision, and due to my refusal to relent. We further escalated the issue. The QA manager, who would have the final say, not only lacked the relevant experience to make a sound decision, but also lacked the talent of critical thinking skills. Feeling the pressure (who is the boss here?) to support his group of inspectors, he agreed with Bob and inspector X-ray. Lacking the support of my boss, or perhaps understanding that asking for his support would be useless, I relented the dispute. I resolved to kill one of my welders and meet this ridiculous requirement. When all of these welds were finished and given a thorough preliminary inspection by the welding supervisors, I called the welding inspectors. I explained to them that the deckplates were ready for their inspection and they were indeed, welded on both sides. I also wished them well on their requirement to inspect the bottom of tons of steel deckplate welded fast to T-beams that completely eliminated access to the side in question.