Basically, anything that we may need to refer back to as part of the inspection needs to be recorded to indicate adherence to: • Client requirements, which may be specific to the job, stated in the nomination.
5.1.2 Prove it or Lose it
5.1 Document Management
Critical to the defence of a company in a product or service liability lawsuit will be its system for records management and documentation. In many situations, if you cannot prove it, it does not exist. Our quality systems and back-office systems require any implementation to fully document our work processes; and record work results in such a way that we can demonstrate that we are performing our services in conformance with these systems and in compliance with industry standards. NOTE: A good way to think of documented system record requirements is that, if you did not write it down, you did not do it .
A good way of thinking about documents is that documents are the written record of our communications. Obviously, we do not document and record everything we say, only the important parts; i.e. the parts that we need to remember or the parts that we might need to prove someday. Unfortunately, in the present, we do not know what may be important a day, a week, a month, a year, or 7 years from now. Therefore, we must develop and maintain a recordkeeping mentality / processes for important information that, from experience, we have learned is most often needed or most often poorly recorded/maintained.
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• General, included in standing instructions “follow API MPMS” or “follow industry norms”. This requires all liquid level measurements taken (innage/ullage) and all temperature measurements obtained to be recorded in the inspector's notebook. For example, when gauging a shore tank, the inspector should document whether the gauge to be used and reported was established using two identical consecutive gauge readings or three consecutive readings within 3 mm (1/8 in.) to indicate adherence to “API MPMS Chapter 3.1.A - Standard Practice for the Manual Gauging of Petroleum and Petroleum Products”. Likewise, when determining the temperature of the liquid in a shore tank, the inspector should record all temperature measurements taken, and the average of these measurements in scenarios where the depth of liquid requires more than one temperature to be taken in accordance with “API MPMS Chapter 7.2 - Temperature Determination: Portable Electronic Thermometers”.
5.1.3 Primary Data
5.1.1 What are Records?
Primary data, often referred to as raw data is the data that the Inspector captures in the field. This data is just as vital a record as the figures we communicate in the published inspection report. The raw data is the verification of our reported quantities, observations, and a record that we performed the job in compliance with the applicable industry standards. It is not sufficient just to do the job correctly; our records must confirm that we did so. In many cases we do not officially report all the data captured in the field, but it needs to be available where necessary to validate our reported findings.
We have a tendency to think of records as only reports and field and laboratory paperwork. This is not the case. Just about everything that is written down is a record. This includes calibration records, equipment repair reports, invoices, minutes of meetings, notes in notebooks, inspectors' notebooks (or scanned copies of), yellow pads, or even post-it notes. If it is written down and can be shown to pertain to something, then it is a record.
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