About Steel Tank Inspection

What we do

We carry out external and internal examinations on welded, field-erected aboveground steel tanks under API 653, and on shop-fabricated tanks under STI SP001. One scope covers the records review, the examination, ultrasonic thickness readings, the bottom evaluation, the calculations and the report.

We do not sell coatings, repairs or tank cleaning, and we take no commission on any of them. An inspector who also sells the repair has a reason to find one, and removing that reason is worth more to a tank owner than any discount.

Why it exists

This is a small market with a high commercial temperature: most searches are made by people who already own tanks and are looking for a vendor. The available pages reflect that, they are capability statements, honest about their author's services and silent about scope.

The result is that the facts that decide a project, that floor scanning coverage is a number you should specify, that cleaning and waste often exceed the inspection, that unmarked reading locations destroy the value of the next inspection, are rarely written down plainly. We write them down, including where they cost us work.

That is the reason this site reads the way it does. Several pages here exist mainly to make a reader ask us a harder question, and to give them the words to ask it with.

Verify the provider yourself

Worth doing regardless of where a contact came from, including from here.

1. Ask for the certified inspector's name and certification number, and check that it is current.
2. Ask for the NDT personnel qualification scheme and the written procedures being worked to.
3. Ask for insurance certificates rather than assurances.
4. Ask for two references on comparable assets in comparable service, tank count is not the same as terminal experience.

How it is paid, and what that means

Providers pay to receive project descriptions. Visitors pay nothing, and any price quoted is a matter between the visitor and the company quoting it.

A platform paid per project has an obvious reason to encourage everyone to submit one. The editorial policy below is the counterweight, and it is the thing to hold us to.

Editorial policy

• No prices, ranges or averages, because there is no bid data behind them.
• No standard presented as law. API 653 and its companions are industry standards; they bind through the instrument that adopts them, which varies by product, size and state.
• No interval figure presented as a general rule, because the interval is calculated from measured data by qualified people.
• No procedure content: no entry guidance, no permit text, no repair method. Those belong to the people who carry the responsibility for them.
• No invented certifications, partners, reviews, client names or project counts.
• No claim that any provider is certified, insured or verified by us.

Reporting an error

If something here is wrong, a description of a method, a characterization of a standard, an account of how a project runs, we would rather be told than left repeating it. Pages carry a review date so it is visible when they were last looked at.

Contact details are on the legal notice.