After foreign suppliers of paint coatings left the Russian market, the domestic manufacturers were granted a wonderful chance to develop and release their own products. However, for the consumers and manufacturers to be sure of the product quality, there is a need for specialists who are familiar with the technology and are capable of monitoring the production process, considers Pavel Stepanov, the Director for Development – Head of the Personnel Certification Department of the Certification Association «Russian Register».

According to the expert, in the rustproofing area it is necessary to form a system of certification and attestation of inspector specialists, as FROSIO and NACE, the leading international companies in this field, suspended the issue and extension of their certificates. In this regard, Pavel Stepanov has drawn the attention of the audience to the training and certification program that the association «Russian Register» already developed over 10 years ago. The inspectors trained under the program are highly-demanded in shipbuilding, construction, manufacture of oil and gas equipment, and the organization is ready to qualify the holders of FROSIO certificates on a fast-track basis.

Artem Polosminnikov, the Director of the Standardization Center of ANO «Institute of Oil and Gas Technological Initiatives» (IOGTI), is confident that there is no certification without standardization.

According to him, IOGTI has already developed over 200 standards regarding the basic equipment groups in close cooperation with its developers and manufacturers, as well as with the largest oil and gas companies, such as Gazprom, Transneft, etc. Artem Polosminnikov underlined that the IOGTI experts try not to duplicate the existing GOSTs, do not compete with them but take them into account. He also added that today the work is performed to create a unified standardization system in Russia.

Many session participants have also addressed the issues of standardization. There are quite a number of centers involved in the standard development, stated Pavel Yudin, the Chief Scientific Officer of Samara Science and Production Center. Large oil and gas companies have their own centers and it often happens that they issue their own requirements that are insignificantly different from GOST. As a result, a manufacturer has to undergo certification again in each of the centers in order to comply with the customer’s product procurement requirements. Pavel Yudin also added that at the same time some of the highly-demanded GOSTs have internal contradictions that make it impossible to comply with them.

Nikolay Petrov, the Executive Director of SOPCOR Association, the Chairperson of МТК 543/ТК 214 has also addressed the need of unifying the standards developed by various agencies and organizations. For instance, he pointed out that there are situations when different technical committees issue different GOSTs in respect of essentially the same products. The problem is also the fact that some national standards that are being implemented now are actually copied from the international standards ISO and still contain the references to the foreign test methods and patents, noted the expert.