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Inspector's Corner withstand harsh physical and chemical conditions. Tese types of products are often complex and require a great deal of training to apply them properly. For many products, mix ratios, thicknesses, and application rates must be spot-on or there will be the risk of a coatings failure in the future. Continuous testing by a third-party inspector can catch inconsistencies in the coating system and allow the contractor to fx them before a real problem arises. Tird-party inspectors are also able to ensure that external factors, such as the temperature and humidity explained in detail earlier, are taken into account for recoat windows. Additionally, coating application equipment can play a large role in the success (or failure) of a coating system. Te equipment must be properly calibrated and regularly checked to ensure that the coatings are applied uniformly throughout the duration of the job, which can last longer than a few weeks or months. A third-party inspector can help the contractor ensure that the company's equipment is performing with the same efciency from day to day. Documentation and Details With all that said, even with a thirdparty inspection, coatings failures can still happen. However, on most jobs, coatings failures don't present themselves right away; oftentimes, it's not until a few months or even a few years later that owners begin to realize that something went wrong during the application of the coatings system. With that much time having passed, it is often a huge headache to track down all the technical documentation for the job. Paperwork can be lost or misfled, key employees with knowledge of the day-to-day workings of the job may have moved on, and memories can be unreliable at best. Consistent and reliable documentation by an impartial third-party inspector can provide a roadmap of how Continuous testing by a third-party inspector can catch inconsistencies in the coating system and allow the contractor to fix them before a real problem arises. 36 JANUARY 2014 COATINGSPROMAG.COM to solve any problems that may occur down the road. Without documentation, extensive feld investigation will be necessary to get to the root of the problem, and even then, there is no guarantee that the true cause of the coating failure can be determined. Additionally, impartial third-party inspection helps to eliminate the blame game when something does go wrong after the completion of the job. Without that all important documentation and attention to detail, each entity may begin to point the fnger at each other. Te contractor may say that the specifcations were wrong and place blame with the engineer. Te engineer may then point to the coatings manufacturer, who then blames the contractor for improperly applying the coating. Te result of this blame game is never positive and takes away from what is really important: fxing the problem and getting the asset back in working order. Terefore, third-party inspection and documentation provides a way to look at the project as a whole and recognize where a problem may have occurred without the time and expense of an untargeted feld investigation. Along with centralized documentation, having a dedicated third-party inspector ofers another similar beneft: someone can keep track of all the details on the job. Specifcations for a large water or wastewater job can be extremely detailed, and even with a top-notch contractor, things can sometimes be missed. For example, if a particular length of pipe is coated at 40 mils (1,016 microns) instead of the specifed 60 mils (1,524 microns) and this is not discovered until the job is completed,