UNI EN ISO 14731 Welding coordination — tasks and responsibilities

Who it is for

Wherever welding quality is run to ISO 3834, someone has to coordinate the welding: decide which procedure applies, check the welders are qualified, see that the right material and consumables are used, and make sure what was done is recorded. ISO 14731 says what that role covers and how the company shows the people in it are up to it.

For structural steel, EN 1090-2 asks for welding coordination from EXC2 upwards and sets the level of knowledge needed by execution class, steel grade and thickness.

What the standard asks

The current edition is ISO 14731:2019. It asks two things of the manufacturer.

• A job description for each coordinator. The tasks, the responsibilities and the extent of authority are written down. Coordination can be shared between several people, as long as it is clear who does what.
• Competence at the right level. The standard describes three levels of technical knowledge: comprehensive, specific and basic. The level has to match the work the person coordinates.

Two things changed from the 2006 edition. The term “responsible welding coordinator” is gone, and so is the reference to particular training schemes. IIW diplomas (IWE, IWT, IWS) remain a common way to show knowledge, but the standard does not require them.

The tasks, in practice

The coordinator’s tasks follow the elements of ISO 3834. In a fabrication shop they come down to this:

• reviewing the requirements and the technical content of the order;
• choosing and qualifying welding procedures, and issuing the WPS;
• checking that welders and operators are qualified for the work and keep their continuity;
• the welding equipment, the consumables and their storage;
• material identification and traceability, from the certificate to the joint;
• inspection and testing before, during and after welding;
• non-conformities, repairs and corrective actions;
• the welding records that end up in the dossier.

What you need to be able to show

At an audit, the coordinator’s job description and evidence of competence are the easy part. The hard part is showing that the coordination actually happened, joint by joint: which WPS covered the joint, who welded it and whether their qualification was valid that day, which heat of material went into it, and what the inspection found.

In Worgify that evidence is recorded as the work is done: procedures in WPS and PQR, welders in welder qualification tracking, joints in the weld map, and inspection in the inspection and test plan.