Sunday, April 14, 2013

Utility/NACE Inspector

The last few months have brought a lot of change for us. The biggest one being that we moved all the way to North Dakota so that Josh could get his first Inspection job. This has been something that he has been working towards for a long time so we weren't going to pass up on it just because it would take us to the Great White North.

As you know, I've been keeping busy in ND by going to the gym, grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking dinner, reading, and watching TV. Josh has been working hard... well, kind of. Inspectors can have really easy days where they are in their trucks for most of the day OR they can be really busy. It just depends on the weather and how fast the contractor is going. Josh is a NACE Inspector which means that he specializes in inspecting the coating (paint) that covers the welds on the pipeline. If the weather is nice and the welders can work and get a lot of joints welded then the guys that Josh is inspecting can coat the welds AND THEN Josh can check them to make sure they have been done right. He uses a lot of devices and makes calculations to make sure that the coating is applied correctly. This may not seem like a big deal to most. Sure, it seems like he just watches paint dry for a living, BUT the coating is very important to pipelines. It prevents rusting which can cause pipelines to leak. We do not want that! So Josh's job is important : )

Here are some pictures from his most recent job:

[Pipeline ROW]


[Josh's truck]

[Pipeline with coating (the blue paint)]

[Bad weather]

[Pipeline ROW] 




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