Jon Lambert and his wife, Karen. Lambert’s overseas working experience includes nearly five years in Kazakhstan. Institute of Welding, currently works as a freelance welding consultant reviewing welding procedures for the Ichthys LNG Project in Darwin, Australia. He also presents API 570 and 510 seminars throughout Australia. In 2011/2012, he held a short-term contract position in New Zealand as a quality assurance/quality control manager. Beginning in 1998, he served as a welding engineer/quality control engineer in Mexico, then as a welding supervisor and CWI in South Korea. From January 2007 through November 2011, he was a welding engineer in Kazakhstan, serving as the owner’s representative for all welding aspects of the Kashagan Project. Among other tasks, Lambert monitored “the contractor’s technical design team to ensure all welding design was in accordance with the technical requirements of the relevant project specifications, codes, and standards, and provided guidance to the execution contract package managers in the evaluation of technical queries, project changes, and concession requests with respect to welding and nondestructive testing matters raised by the execution contractors.” The majority of Steve Snyder’s work during the past five years has been in Southeast Asia. Snyder is an AWS SCWI currently with Transocean Deepwater Drilling, Houston, Tex. “Although I have traveled to some extent domestically and internationally pretty much over my entire career, including about 14 different countries outside of the U.S.A., I did not start actually living overseas until 2008.” He started with a job in Shenzhen, China, doing consulting and training groups of Chinese workers about codes and standards, then spent six months in both Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and Vung Tau, Vietnam, working with local welding schools to assist them in complying with AWS Accredited Test Facility programs. He then traveled to Singapore and Indonesia beginning in early 2011. He spent a year in Singapore as the technical manager for a subsea well control overhaul and repair equipment facility. “My primary role there while supervising a team of inspectors, a welding engineer, and QC engineers was to improve the welding and fabrication operations and implement phased array ultrasonic testing to replace conventional radiography.” Language Barriers When asked how they dealt with language issues (did the people they worked with speak English, did the respondents speak the local language, did they utilize the services of an interpreter or simply use gestures), the general concensus from all four respondents was “all of the above.” “I have had the people I am working with speak English, I have made an effort to learn enough of the language that I can survive when I am deployed for long periods of time, and yes, an interpreter, particularly in the technical language is almost always a must,” Merrill said. “And, of course, on the shop floor a lot of both gestures and picture drawing. I am of the opinion that if you are going to be on a long deployment, say a year or more, the best thing to do is dive into both the culture and the language. It is the only way that you will understand why they do things the way they do them.” Of all the countries in which Snyder has worked, he found it hardest to communicate in Vietnam. “Many tones of the Vietnamese language are difficult to master and have an ear for,” he said. “The Vietnamese did have interpreters at times, and there were those in high-ranking positions who spoke English as well, but you had to listen closely and talk slowly. I did manage to pick up some Vietnamese; however, just enough to look like I was trying to learn the language.” Snyder found his ability to weld and to set up and adjust inspection equipment helped 16 Inspection Trends / April 2013 Ken Erickson performing ultrasonic testing on an offshore tension leg platform anchor chain on a project in Sweden in the 1990s.
Inspection Trends | April 2013
To see the actual publication please follow the link above