On an offshore platform, an FPSO, or a petrochemical plant, the valves in service are trusted to hold up for years, often in conditions where there’s no easy access to check on them. That trust comes from knowing exactly what each valve is made from, how it was built, and how it was tested, all the way back to the raw material.
That’s what traceability provides. It is a trusted record that connects a finished valve, sitting in service years after it was installed, back to the exact material it came from and every process it went through to get there.
What full traceability covers
Traceability is a chain, built document by document as the material moves through the manufacturing process, and each link has to hold with the same rigour as the last. It covers:
The mill certificate. This is where it starts, before the material reaches a machine tool. A mill certificate to EN10204 3.1 confirms the specific cast or heat the material came from, along with its chemical composition and mechanical properties, tested and verified by an accredited body independent of the manufacturer. It tells you that the steel, or the Duplex, or the Alloy 625, is what the specification says it is.
In-process records. From that point, every stage the material passes through – machining, assembly, heat treatment where relevant – is recorded against the same batch. If a component is reworked, or a batch is split across multiple orders, the record has to follow it accurately. This is where traceability is easiest to lose: a mislabelled batch or an untracked substitution at this stage breaks the chain even if the paperwork at either end looks correct.
Testing and inspection. Pressure testing, function testing, dimensional inspection – all tied back to the same material record, with results retained against the specific valve or valve set, not just a batch average.
Despatch documentation. The final pack that leaves with the valve: material certificates, test certificates, inspection records, and any project-specific documentation the client’s specification calls for. For projects with a defined valve narrative or a detailed supplier data requirement, this can run to a dozen or more individual documents, each one needing to match the physical valve it’s shipped with.
The stakes in high-consequence environments
In oil and gas, offshore, and process industries, a break in traceability can have serious consequences.
If a valve fails and the material record is incomplete, the investigation into why it failed has a gap in it from the start. Was it a material defect, a manufacturing fault, or a specification error. Without a verified chain back to the mill certificate, that question can be difficult to answer with confidence, and difficult to close out with an operator, an insurer, or a regulator.
There’s also a compliance dimension. Operators usually require documented proof that a valve performs to spec, before it’s ever installed. A comprehensive data package should be part of the engineering deliverable, produced alongside the valve itself.
And there’s a practical element. When a valve is one of hundreds installed across a facility, and something needs investigating years later, being able to identify the exact material batch, test result, and inspection sign-off for that one component, quickly, is what makes the difference between a contained review and a wider one.
How this gets built in from the start
Full traceability only works if it’s built into the process from the first stage of manufacture. Trying to reconstruct it retrospectively, from whatever records happen to still exist, is where gaps creep in.
At Colson, that means design, machining, assembly and testing all happen under one roof at our Rotherham facility, with material traceability maintained to EN10204 3.1 throughout. Every valve is checked against internationally recognised standards, and the documentation pack that goes out with it is built to match what was done to that specific valve.
This is detailed, meticulous work. But it’s the only way that holds up, if and when someone needs to ask, years later, exactly what was installed.
If you’re specifying valves for a project, talk to the Colson team about what our full documentation package looks like before you commit to a supplier.