Join Tim Monday of Team Industries to learn how his volunteer efforts on the AWS Code Committees has provided invaluable knowledge to develop standards and gain insights into the ever-changing world of pipe welding.
Join Tim Monday of Team Industries to learn how his volunteer efforts on the AWS Code Committees has provided invaluable knowledge to develop standards and gain insights into the ever-changing world of pipe welding.
Thank you for joining the bevel talk season three, episode three pipe fabrication leader team industries has to stay on the cutting edge to go above and beyond for their customers. Learn what it means to be a codes and standards committee member. Let's get[inaudible]
Speaker 2:right into it. Welcome to bevel talk. Today we're talking with Tim Monday from team industries. Tim, tell me a little bit about yourself. What got you started in the welding industry and what do you do at team? So I'm a vice president of technical operations a team, so that kind of encompasses a lot of different areas. Uh, kind of covers a project management as well as contracts and also the it, but also QC. And also we get involved in, in a lot of the, the technologies as far as involvement in, in a, you know, what automation techniques we're going to in, in, you know, incorporate into our, our production, that kind of thing. I got started out in mechanical design and, and I worked for, uh, shipbuilding for prob probably 10 years and I did a lot of the piping, piping, design, whole design, worked with a lot of welding. Then as you can imagine in shipbuilding there there's a lot of welding. And from there I moved on to um, portable plants. So I was doing a lot of things like rock crushing equipment, that kind of thing. Um, so we are doing a lot of piping and incorporation of a lot of different disciplines into a small package that we'd move into cores. From there. I moved it to team industries and it was interesting. I started there when I was a very, very small that really only had probably about a 10 to 12 people working at the time in the shop. And so I've been there for 31 years and uh, moved up. Uh, I was primarily doing a module design, uh, piping design, that kinda thing, and then moved into structural and then from there moved back into piping and, and did, uh, moved up through the ranks primarily, you know, a lot of involvement in a lot of different areas. Probably started off doing some volunteer work for pipe fabrication Institute. So they develop a lot of standards, codes and standards for the piping industry. And then from there, then, uh, kind of was encouraged really to, uh, to participate in some of the other things I had done well and the, uh, the engineering. And then after a while ended up chairing the PFI, uh, engineering committee. I did that for 10 years. Um, and along with that, then, uh, my boss who was a, uh, he, he had been a long time member of AWS and, uh, an integral part of their code committees in the[inaudible] code committee. And, uh, he felt that it was really important that we participate team as a, as a, an organization should participate in many different areas. So he felt that it was most applicable to get involved at the code committees. I know as a code committee member, you probably get asked a lot of times, tell me this, tell me that, um, information wise. Um, so as we talked today, you know, I want to make sure that we're talking with you appropriately about that. So what would you tell people when they're asking you questions about being a code committee member in your thoughts on, on codes and standards? Basically it's, um, it's really my opinion, right? Uh, as a code committee member, I cannot express the views or the stances or even the legislative avenues that ACE Amigos down. I only can express my own opinion and not E S SMEs opinion. And so it's your opinion and when it's published as in the code book, it becomes get's code, it's C committee's opinion, um, is the committee's recommendations on code? Yeah, essentially just a note on that. Basically when it becomes a part of the code, it has gone through many, many, many people's review. So it, it really becomes the opinion of the whole body. And so as a result, no one person can express the views of ESM. Me. All right. So as you became involved with the code committees, um, tell our listeners what, what is, uh, what does it involve to be a code committee member? What does that entail? Well, first of all, you know, you don't just say I'm going to go to the code committee and be a member, right? It doesn't work quite that simply. Um, really what it takes is a lot of dedication to say, you know, I'd really like to be part of this organization and I can run down a couple of reasons why, but before I get into that, it takes, uh, attending the meetings. First of all, all right. Getting to know people and really understanding what it is that you're going to do and what you're really doing is you're really basically keeping the codes up to date with the current technologies as well as current trends. Um, production trends, welding trends, all of that is incorporated into the current codes. And so you would think that something like a piping code could be relatively static, but, but in fact it's always changing and there's, there's always a suggestions. There's always pressure from industry as well as legislative pressures to change certain things. And so you first 10 probably, Oh, I would say that I probably attended meetings for two to three years before I was asked to participate. I mean really volunteer. And so, so once you were asked to volunteer, then you get onto the CNS connect. It's really an online way to do all of the transactions that happen in, in ASM E code committee. And uh, once that happens, you have to wait for an opening to open up, see, because most of these code committees are limited or they kind of self police how many members that they have in the code committee. So it's approximately 30 people for each section. So if you think about the code community piping, we're just talking about piping. So B, 31 codes, they're divided up into power piping and uh, process piping and uh, uh, transmission line piping, that kind of thing. Um, so each one of those has about 30 members. All right? So you wait for an opening. And so finally, when you do get asked, obviously if you've invested that much time to come, you're definitely willing to be part of it. And once you become part of it, then it's a putting in the time. Um, you have to volunteer for taking on TRS, which are tentative revisions, you know, you have to sponsor them. So you're the project manager, there's a, there's a proposal by someone who has raised an issue, uh, you need to investigate into it, determine the validity of the, of the proposed change. And if you feel that it is in fact a good proposal, then you go forward with it. But then you have to investigate all of the issues and all the implications that it means with all parts of the code that you're involved with. So it takes a little time to, to actually establish that. So it's a very, very involved process and definitely takes people that are willing to be invested in and are invested in the welding industry and trying to make it better and safer for all of us. Yes. So, and maybe I should just kind of point out maybe some of the advantages of being a a code member. I mean, first of all, from a personal standpoint, you get to interact and learn from the best of the best. You really have a exposure to pretty much all of the experts with Indian news industry. And uh, and when I say experts, you're talking about a very wide variety of different disciplines that are involved in code committee and you know, from very specialized engineering portions, very specialized NDE methods and methodologies and new technologies that come out with that fabrication as well as the welding and what happens in the field and how things are put together. So it takes a combination of all of the different disciplines from the highest PhD engineering down to the people who are welding every day to have input and to have a good code that's applicable across the whole board. But what I would say is then it also creates a personal network. Um, so that you're, you know, you're, you're dealing with these experts that you can tap into and you can talk to them. If you, if your organization is experiencing an issue, you can easily talk, call one of these because you know them personally. Right? So it's, it's a huge benefit. You also are very aware of all of the revisions that are coming up, right? So as all of these proposals that are coming across the board, you're seeing exactly what's being proposed and you're aware of that. You have input into that also. And you also are aware of a lot of early technical problems. So they might not necessarily be part of the code, but what they will be is something that you can be aware of and alert your organization to these issues. Right? Right. It gives you the ability to really help drive your industry forward and stay compliant. Exactly. Exactly. From an organizational standpoint, obviously some of those personal benefits translate into the organization. I mean the, the whole organization gets the advantage of, of all of these things that have been happening, failures that have happened. You know, it's not necessarily, they're not too many times where organizations are willing to air their dirty laundry with regards to the failures that they've had. But what happens in code committee stays in code committee kind of a thing. So they'll talk about them and they talk about them because they want to make sure that the, the safety elements and actually the service elements are addressed. So that the, so that is still Apple Google code and we're looking after those issues that have happened. Right? So, but, but without, you know, hanging somebody out to dry, right? Right. Codes and standards aren't there to make life as a welder, as the manufacturer, more difficult. They're there to make people stay safe and things to say consistent. Exactly to two. The first one is always safety and the second one is a service life, right? So we expect a manufacturers expect a certain service life out of all of the welds, all of the piping that are installed, all the equipment that's installed into anything at a power plant or refinery, they expect a certain service life. Right? So it demands a certain grade of workmanship and design in order to be able to do that.
Speaker 3:[inaudible]
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Speaker 2:you know, earlier some keeping track of trends that are happening in manufacturing trends that are happening in codes. What are some of those trends that you, you could discuss with us today? Well, that's um, there's a, there's a kind of, uh, a couple of things that I could probably talk to with regards to trends up. One of the things that, that we see is um, you know, if you think about the whole piping industry and how it evolved, it used to be that they would draw everything on paper and then they would make actual models and then the ice and metrics that you'd typically see in the field to erect all of the piping would be drawn from these three D models that have been built. Right? Actual models. Right. And they would measure with little scales and they would measure everything on that three D model and then they would convert that into an isometric. Compared to these days, obviously everything is drawn in threeD models and computer. But what that means for us, for team, we're a fabricator. And so what we do is we basically take all of that data that's in the three D model. It's exported into what's referred to as an IDF o r PCF a nd intermediate data file or a piping component file. It's exported. And then we can import that into our systems and actually draw the spool drawing in a nice metric form. So i t's been a huge, it's been a huge impact with regards to how production i s t aking place in a, in a shop setting, right. Other things that, u h, a re technical specifications are much more stringent now when I say that, I think that's probably a product of a combination of the kinds of industries that we've progressed into. H is team h as progressed into, but also it's been more data centric. So if, if you think about what it used to be to, for example, do a isometric, we would send that out and then it was up to the field guy to erect it into the field and that was pretty much it. You maybe made some notes on the ice symmetric and then they kept that into a hard file, you know, bankers box, whatever they did. Maybe they even scanned it into a PDF later on, but it was still really kind of dumb data. You had to really dig through it in order to do that. Today's trends were pretty much moving all to database. So everything for the life cycle of the whole plant is going to start from the acquisition or the, the requisition of the materials all the way to when it's demolition. They want to know life cycle. So we're putting all of that data in and we're finding more and more that our clients are expecting us to upload data to their database with, for example, all the welder, all up welding processes that we've used. WPS is that we use the welder IDs to the point now that we're seeing requests. We haven't had any buddy actually impose this on us yet, but they have had some requests is to recording the welding data. I know Miller has a systems where they can, where they can export the data that's being monitored as they're doing the welding. Yep. And that is something that, uh, that we're going to see in the future more off. But we really haven't had that imposed yet. So it's really data from cradle to grave. They want to be able to understand and know, Hey, there's, there needs to be maintenance done at this timeframe on this. They want to keep factories and facilities up and running in a safe manner. Right, right, right. It's all about leveraging what's already been accomplished. If you think about the way that everything progresses, everything before was all just one capsule of information and you never really used it for anything downstream and now everything is being used downstream. And so I would say that's probably one of the biggest impacts that we've seen is just how data centric everything is. Now, paint systems have been increasingly more complex from what they were when we first did pipe fabrication. And I think this has something to do with the industry that you're in also. But we were doing red oxide. Red oxide was the typical coding. Nowadays, um, we're doing three code epoxy systems and fusion bonded they proxies and that kind of thing. And so it's gotten, there's, there's far more attention paid to coatings now than welding. In some cases. It's crazy. Well, as, as a welder, you wouldn't think about how important a coding system is, but it's important to the total life of the project, the total life and service. It absolutely is. And if you think about a lot of the areas where, uh, these piping systems are being put in, for example, uh, the Gulf coast States where you're close to salt water, obviously you've salt there is going to corrosive. So it's very important to them. By contrast, we've had applications for example, that are in the middle of a desert where no coating at all is put on them. So it just depends. We see a lot more non metallics now. That used to be that everything was metallic. We always had steel piping. And, uh, now with the advent of, uh, more reliable resins in the H, uh, high density polyethylenes, uh, we see a lot of that now almost we're seeing probably 50% of the underground piping now is moving to, to these HDPE stuff. Okay. Um, so as we talk about this, as we continue to move forward and looking at these trends in the industry, trends in welding and heating and coding, talk to me about how you manage that as team. How do you keep up with all of it? Yeah. So, um, one way is obviously it's not only myself, Greg Rinehart is another member of our team that also is a member of the code committee. Uh, he's on be 31, three and I'm on B 31. One. We certainly keep up with all the trends from that standpoint. Another way is that technical specifications that we're seeing coming from our customers are ever changing. So as we see more and more of a demand for a certain requirement, then we up our game by increasing, you know, how we collect that data, what the process is. Sometimes it becomes more detailed and how we collect that data. As a matter of fact that we're in that process right now we're implementing a new ERP system so we know all of those small pieces of information that we have to collect. Now how do we assemble that in a easy to assemble and useful for our customers? And so that's been a challenge that uh, but we've been working on it for about four years now. We expect to be online here soon. That's fantastic. I think it's important to, to recognize that the industry is ever changing. It's ever growing. It's ever trying to get better. And that as, as fabricators and manufacturers and welders, as business people that we need to continue to, to follow that so we don't get left in the dust. So join us next time. As we talked to Tim and we take a deeper dive into some of the trends in welding and heating in the fabrication shops.