The course

Hydrostatic testing training for engineers and inspectors

What the course actually teaches, chapter by chapter, and which format suits which part of your organisation.

The three formats

• HT I — Executive and Project Briefing. Four contact hours, for the people who buy, schedule and accept pressure tests. No calculation is required of participants.
• HT II — Engineering Workshop. Eight contact hours, for engineers and inspectors. Adds calculation practice; a 16-inch crude oil pipeline is engineered end to end over the day.
• HT III — Field Certification. Two days, ten contact hours. The complete programme, with equipment displays, field-reality sessions and live checklist exercises.

What is taught

The regulatory framework first, because most disputes trace back to it: the four-plus-four liquid test of 49 CFR 195.304, the eight-hour gas strength test of 192.505 at the class-location factor, the medium caps of 192.503, and the spike test added by 192.506 in 2019.

Then the engineering. Barlow’s formula and percent SMYS. The hydrostatic gradient and the allowable elevation window that decides where segments break. System compliance and pressurisation volume. The pressure-temperature relation, its coefficients, and the unit error that overstates a prediction by a factor of 1.8.

Then execution and analysis. Instrumentation and resolution. The pressure-volume plot compiled live during the climb, and the three signatures it shows. The weighted-temperature worksheet and the balance statement. What to do when the residual will not close.

The parts people remember

• Why a short hold can miss a very slow leak, and what that means for acceptance
• Why air trapped at a summit makes uphill heads add instead of balance
• Why foam pigs are the wrong choice for the fill ahead of a test
• Why drying is accepted on a post-soak reading and not on an active sweep
• What the life-of-line record under 192.517 and 195.310 actually has to contain

Taught with the equipment in the room

The two-day certification runs with equipment displays and field-reality sessions rather than slides alone. Where the site allows, we can bring a NitroTech N2 nitrogen trailer to the training, so the group sees how bulk nitrogen is actually rigged, metered and worked on a jobsite — the same purpose-built equipment that runs the purging, drying and packing the course covers.

Who teaches it

The field crews who plan and execute this work. Classes are taught by HydroTech Testing Services engineering and field personnel — the people who scope the tests, run them and sign off the records — so the examples worked in the room are jobs they were on.

The text

Every attendee keeps Proper Pigging, a 172-page field book with 16 chapters in four parts, 8 appendices, 14 original figures and 83 study questions. The course is built on it, and it is the part that goes back to the desk.