Increasing concern has developed in the hydrocarbon and chemical processing industries because of the seeming inability to be sure that the proper materials of construction have been used. Getting the right materials in the right places becomes more and more important as process temperatures and pressures increase and more economic material selection and design criteria are used. Despite the very careful and detailed development of specifications, codes, and material control procedures, the completed project will contain many discrepancies. When the manufacturer, supplier, fabricator, and contractor have each routinely followed their control procedures to see that specifications are met, the completed project is usually assumed to be correctly built. The fallacy in this approach is that each may assume that the previous handler has performed inerrably and a mistake anywhere along the way may only be passed along. In many cases, these mistakes are not harmful. In critical services such as high temperature hydrogen attack, however, the inadvertent use of substandard material can result in a catastrophic failure. This paper presents a construction material control program developed at American Oil Company's refinery at Texas City, Texas.
