Fifteen years under
the hood came first.

Nobody should have to do it twice

I came up in the trade: welding, fitting, rigging, layout and pipe takeoffs. I worked on process piping and pressure equipment, including repairs that kept mills running. Welding was the part people saw. Knowing how the whole job fit together made me useful.

What drove me toward inspection was rework. Nothing made me angrier as a boilermaker than being sent back to redo a repair someone had already made once, because it wasn't done right the first time.

Rework costs more than money. It sends the crew back into the same confined space, hot work, isolation and scaffold. The same hazards get opened up again. That extra exposure is part of the cost, even when it never appears on the invoice.

That is why I went after my CWI. Checking the requirements before the first arc helps catch problems before they become rework.

I moved from quality control into API inspection to learn why equipment fails. A crack, corrosion pattern or old repair detail can point to the cause. Finding that cause helps plan the next repair.

That is the approach behind Appalachian Integrity: understand the damage, check the requirements and explain the next steps.

Today, Appalachian Integrity builds the Weldbook AI software family. The tools draw on that field experience.