Thu, 21 January, 2021
As a female inspector, Wei Yin has had to hurdle a lot of challenges, all which she finds worthwhile in pursuing her passion.
Here, Wei Yin explains more about her work and how she is using training to help her progress:
My name is Wong Wei Yin from Perak and I have a degree in manufacturing engineering from University Malaysia Perlis.
After graduation, I started looking for internship opportunities in factories. The first job that I landed was an inspector role in quality control of a steel fabrication line. This line included pressure vessels, boilers and site repair jobs; however, since my background was manufacturing engineering, my knowledge was mostly about machinery and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) engineering. I didn’t have any experience or exposure to the steel fabrication field. As I started working I started learning as well. My employer gave me the opportunity to work and learn the operations as I dealt with the clients. This helped me greatly to upgrade my knowledge.
As far as I know, CSWIP Welding Inspector is a highly in-demand certificate. As for my case, it was also required by my employer to hold this certificate so, if I want to progress in my career, I need to get certified. Of course, there are other qualifications that I need to hold too, such as NDT techniques, API 510 Pressure Vessel Inspector and API 570 Piping inspection.
At the moment, I am taking my time to go through these qualifications one at a time as I do not want to overwhelm myself in a short time. I do understand that to get ahead in the steel fabrication industry, I need a lot of knowledge and that’s why I have prioritised getting my CSWIP Welding Inspector certificate first, as it can provide me with a wealth of knowledge and industry relevant insights. This is the first professional training course that I am attending and I am aiming to take the radiographic interpretation course after this, as it is the most relevant and useful NDT technique in my line of work.
I work with vendors who are NDT certified and I feel, once I am certified, I’ll be more confident in dealing with them.
In my work, I do quality control inspection, documentation and hands-on technical inspection. My job also involves interpretation of construction drawing. The first stage of my job is to understand the drawing and prepare the Inspection Test Plan (ITP). Preparation of ITP is very important as it covers the standard codes that need to be used for the inspection of the component.
In my company, we refer to ASME codes and standards. Previously, we used to summarise the requirement into the ITP. We compare the customer’s specs with the ASME codes to ensure that they are in alignment with each other. If there are some parts that do not match, we come to an agreement with our client. The reason why we undertake this process is to ensure the integrity and safety of the component as well as its efficiency in service.
As much as I find my job challenging, actually, I am proud of myself. There are no other women in my team, the working hours are long and the job itself has some health hazards. Besides the work environment, I also face another challenge from the client side. A lot of the orders we receive are from overseas and, as a result, I need to deal with a lot of people with different nationalities and communicate with them.
In the past 6 years many people have told me how I could survive in my job but, in fact, I’ve been enjoying it as I am passionate about what I do.
I took my time to get ready to take the next step in my career and, now that I have started with the CSWIP Welding Inspector course, I am excited for the next stage of my career path. I wish to upgrade myself to manager level once I am certified with the professional certifications.
Over the past few days that I have attended the training, I found that there are a lot of methodology points that I didn’t have the knowledge of before. Technically, I am able to carry out an inspection. However, only when attending this course, could I get a deeper appreciation of the theories behind the work I perform. Before taking the training, I could just identify what is acceptable and what is rejected. But, by taking the training, I now understand why we accept or reject a particular thing.
Once I get certified as a welding inspector, I will have proof that I am a qualified inspector. This is particularly important and valuable in my industry as, by getting certified, I will have more authority to accept or reject the welds. Obviously, I aim to apply the knowledge that I have gained through the course to my job and improve the quality of my work.