AS/NZS 5131 fabricator certification

What is certified, and what is not

Personnel certification answers a question about a person. A welder ticket says this welder can deposit sound weld metal within a defined range. It says nothing about whether the company employing them controls material traceability, records fit-up, or can produce an inspection and test plan when asked.

Fabricator certification answers the company question. It is an assessment of capability and control: the procedures, the competence of the people holding the key roles, the equipment and its calibration, the traceability chain from mill certificate to erected member, and the records that prove all of it happened.

A certificate names the construction category the fabricator has demonstrated capability in, and the scope of work it applies to. It is not a warranty on any individual weld. It is evidence that the system which produces the welds has been examined by somebody who does not work for the fabricator.

Construction categories CC1 to CC4

AS/NZS 5131 scales its requirements to the consequence of failure through four construction categories. The category is nominated by the designer in the project documentation, and it determines what the fabricator has to hold before it can tender.

The practical effect on a business is blunt. A shop certified at CC2 cannot bid CC3 work on the strength of good welding alone, because the gap between the two is a management system and documented coordination competence, not weld quality. That gap takes months to close, so it has to be closed before the tender rather than during it.

Two things about that table are settled in the standard rather than a matter of opinion, and they change what a fabricator should buy. If the project documentation nominates no category, clause 4.1.2 says CC2 applies, so a silent specification is not a soft one. And the recommended welding quality level per category, from clause 7.1.1.1, is ISO 3834.4 at CC1, ISO 3834.3 at CC2, and ISO 3834.2 at CC3 and CC4.

The step from CC2 to CC3 is where the cost sits. Welder qualification moves from AS/NZS 1554 to AS/NZS 2980, coordinator qualification moves to ISO 14731, and identification and traceability of both welders and weld procedures stops being optional. None of that is about weld quality. The AS/NZS 5131 page sets out the full table.

What the assessment covers

The audit follows the structure of the standard rather than a generic quality checklist. In broad terms:

• Management and responsibility. Who is accountable for fabrication quality, and whether that person has the authority to stop work.
• Welding coordination. The nominated welding coordinator, their competence, and whether their responsibilities are documented and actually exercised. AS/NZS 5131 table 7.4 names AS 2214 and AS 1796 certificate 10 among the qualifications that satisfy ISO 14731 at CC3 and CC4, so that is citable evidence rather than custom. At CC2, a coordinator without a formal qualification should be assessed by professional interview.
• Personnel. Welder qualifications current and in range for the work, inspection personnel competent for the acceptance criteria they are applying.
• Welding procedures. Qualified procedures that cover production work, and the discipline that keeps production inside them.
• Material control. Mill certificates, identification, segregation, and traceability that survives cutting.
• Equipment. Suitability, maintenance and calibration, including the instruments used for inspection.
• Execution. Cutting, forming, holing, assembly, bolting, protective treatment, and the geometric tolerances in the shop and on site.
• Inspection and testing. An inspection and test plan matched to the category, and non-destructive testing done by qualified people to a written procedure.
• Non-conformance and corrective action. What happens when something is wrong, which is where a system is really tested.
• Records and handover. The documentation package the client is entitled to at the end.

Two of those carry most of the findings in practice. Welder qualification confused with procedure qualification is the most common documentation problem in Australian shops. Traceability that breaks at the saw is the second.

Who conducts the audit

An audit is worth what the auditor knows. AWI does not staff assessments with generalist quality auditors working from a checklist, because a checklist will not tell you that a production weld is running outside its qualified range, or that a coating system went on over the wrong surface preparation.

Every AWI fabricator assessment is led by a practising welding consultant: somebody who has written welding procedures, qualified welders, interpreted radiographs and stood in front of a rejected weld on a live job. AWI assessors hold, as a minimum:

• Welding competence at coordination level. Practical experience in the processes the shop actually runs and in the standards those processes are qualified to, with AS 2214 welding supervisor certification or the international equivalent as the floor and welding engineer level competence on CC3 and CC4 assessments.
• Coating inspection competence. NACE Coating Inspector Level 2 or Level 3, now issued under AMPP. Protective treatment is an AS/NZS 5131 requirement and a large share of structural steelwork disputes, and it does not get assessed properly by somebody who has never held a dry film thickness gauge.
• Current shop floor practice. Assessors work in fabrication, not only in assessment. Findings reflect what is achievable in a working shop rather than what reads well in a report.

The practical effect is that findings are specific and technically defensible. A fabricator is told which procedure is out of range and why, not that a clause is non-compliant.

Accreditation, stated plainly

AWI is not accredited to ISO/IEC 17065 as a certification body for this scheme. AWI issues the certificate on its own authority, against the requirements of AS/NZS 5131 and its own published scheme rules.

That is on the page rather than buried in a footnote, because a specifier is entitled to know what a certificate rests on before relying on it. Where a project specification requires certification by a body accredited to ISO/IEC 17065, an AWI certificate does not meet that requirement, and AWI will say so at the enquiry rather than after the fee is paid.

What the certificate does rest on is the competence of the people performing the assessment, set out above, and a certification decision made independently of the audit team, set out below.

How it sits with AS/NZS ISO 3834

AS/NZS ISO 3834 sets quality requirements for fusion welding at company level and is not specific to structural steel. AS/NZS 5131 governs the fabrication and erection of structural steelwork and calls up welding quality management at the higher construction categories.

They overlap heavily and they are not the same certificate. A fabricator holding ISO 3834 has demonstrated welding quality management. It has not, by that fact alone, demonstrated the tolerances, bolting, protective treatment, erection and handover requirements that AS/NZS 5131 adds.

AWI’s position is that a fabricator should be able to buy the certificate the specification actually asks for. Where a project nominates a construction category, AS/NZS 5131 certification is available on its own. Where a business also wants the welding quality management standard recognised internationally, the two are assessed together in one audit programme rather than two.

How certification works

1. Enquiry and scope. The construction category sought, the products and processes in scope, the sites involved, and the number of welders and shifts. This sets the audit duration.
2. Application. Formal application with the management system documentation, the welding procedure register, the welder qualification register and the coordination arrangements.
3. Document review. Desktop assessment against the requirements for the nominated category. Gaps are reported before anybody travels, because finding them on the shop floor wastes a day and a fee.
4. Site audit. On-site assessment of the fabrication facility: the system as it is practised, not as it is written. Interviews with the welding coordinator and production personnel, review of live jobs, examination of records against physical work in progress.
5. Non-conformances and corrective action. Findings issued in writing with a category and a closure period. Corrective action is verified by evidence, and by a return visit where the finding warrants it.
6. Certification decision. Made by a person independent of the audit team. The certificate states the construction category, the scope of fabrication covered and the sites it applies to.
7. Surveillance. Annual audit through the three year cycle, to confirm the system is still operating rather than only that it once existed.
8. Recertification. Full reassessment at the end of each three year cycle.

What you have certified is your choice

The scheme is modular. A fabricator nominates the scope, and the scope drives both the audit and the fee:

• Fabrication and welding. The base scope, and the one most specifications ask for.
• Plus protective coating. Added where the contract puts surface preparation and coating application in your hands, which AS/NZS 5131 section 9 covers and which carries a disproportionate share of steelwork disputes.
• Plus erection. Added where you erect as well as fabricate, bringing site work, bolting and the erection tolerances of section 11 into the certificate.

Coating and erection can be taken together or separately. A fabricator who only ever ships to somebody else’s crew has no reason to pay for erection scope, and the certificate says what it covers rather than implying more.

Cycle, surveillance and what drives the fee

The fee is not a list price, because the work is not the same in every shop. Three things drive it:

1. The scope you nominate. Fabrication and welding alone is a shorter audit than fabrication with coating and erection.
2. The size of the business. Number of sites, number of welders, shifts worked.
3. Location. Travel to the facility is a real cost and it is quoted rather than absorbed.

Fees are quoted on application. Ask us for a quote against the construction category you are specified at and the scope you actually need, and the useful first step is that conversation rather than an application form.

If you already hold ISO 3834 from another body

It can be recognised as input to the assessment rather than ignored, on two conditions. The certificate has to come from a credible certification body, and it has to be demonstrable that the auditor held adequate welding knowledge. AWI will ask who audited it and against what competence, because an ISO 3834 certificate issued by somebody who could not read a WPS is a document rather than an assurance.

Where both conditions are met, the overlapping elements are not re-audited from scratch and the assessment concentrates on what AS/NZS 5131 adds: tolerances, bolting, protective treatment, erection and handover.

If you disagree with a finding

A non-conformance can be challenged. Findings are issued in writing with a category and a closure period, so there is something specific to argue about, and the certification decision is made by a person independent of the audit team. If you still disagree, the AWI appeals and complaints procedure, AWI-C-P-003, sets out who hears an appeal and the timeframes that apply. Ask AWI for the current revision.

The grounds on which AWI may suspend or withdraw a certificate are set out in the Rules of Certification, AWI-C-M-002, which is also available from the office. If a specific ground matters to a contract you are tendering, ask before you apply rather than after.

Who needs this

• Steel fabricators and erectors tendering work where a construction category is nominated, which is now most public infrastructure and a growing share of commercial building.
• Principal contractors and builders who need to know a subcontractor can deliver the category before the steel is on a truck.
• Asset owners and specifiers writing a specification they intend to enforce.
• Fabricators competing against imported steelwork, where demonstrated category capability is one of the few defensible points of difference.

Common questions

Can we get AS/NZS 5131 certification without ISO 3834?

Yes. AWI assesses AS/NZS 5131 on its own where that is what the specification asks for. The two can also be assessed together in a single audit programme.

Does certification cover our welders as well?

No. Fabricator certification assesses the company system, and part of that assessment is whether your welders hold current qualifications in range for the work. The welders themselves are certified separately under AS 1796 or an equivalent standard.

What construction category should we certify to?

The one your work is specified at, and generally not higher. Certifying above the work you actually win costs money in audit time and system overhead without winning anything. If your tender pipeline includes CC3, certify to CC3.

How long does it take?

The audit itself is short. Closing the gap between what a shop does and what it can evidence is the long part, and for a fabricator starting without a documented welding quality system it is realistically measured in months rather than weeks.

Do we need a certified welding supervisor?

The standard requires welding coordination competence appropriate to the construction category. In Australia the usual evidence is AS 2214 welding supervisor certification held by the nominated person.

Related

• AS/NZS 5131 explained, what the standard actually requires
• AS/NZS ISO 3834, the three levels and the coordination requirement
• AS/NZS 1554, the welding standard AS/NZS 5131 calls up
• Welding supervisor certification, the coordination competence evidence
• Corporate membership, which sets the fee rate