API 1169 pipeline construction inspector certification is designed to qualify individuals who shall be the eyes and ears of the owner/operator company in the pipeline construction field.
Qualified individuals should be knowledgeable about:
- General onshore pipeline construction inspection
- Inspector responsibilities
- Personnel and general pipeline safety
- Environmental and pollution control
Pipeline Inspector should be monitoring and reporting all aspects of pipeline construction (Survey; Clearing & Grading; stockpiling & Stringing; Field Bending; Ditching & Excavation; Welding; Coating; Lowering-In; Backfilling; Cathodic Protection; Hydrostatic Testing; Clean-up & Restoration) as well as be involved with the contract and agreement, monitor safety and health, environmental aspect and finally ensure compliance with project specifications. So, the inspector is practically representing the owner in the field. For example, the inspector has the authority to stop the work when there is imminent danger to people or environment.
API RP 1169 defines the inspector as somebody who is qualified to monitor, assess, evaluate, verify, discuss, decide, resolve, report, and document pipeline construction activities to ensure the requirements of the design, drawings, specifications, regulations, and industry practices are being met safely, efficiently, & in an environmentally sound manner.
There are two definite leads to help you understand what type of questions to expect during examination. These are:
- API 1169 Pipeline Construction Inspector body of knowledge
- Experience of other candidates who attempted the exam
Area of examination
Exam questions are based on the API Recommended Practice 1169 Pipeline Construction Inspector body of knowledge.
- 10-15 questions shall come from the open book. Nothing complicated or cross referenced, just need to know where to find the information. We suggest flagging them off to be answered at the end since open book questions would need more time to answer than the closed book questions.
- Most of questions are common sense provided you know various phases of pipeline construction.
- Around 8 – 10 questions shall come from API Q1 and ISO 9000.
- Rest of questions are almost equally distributed between remaining reference documents.
How the API 1169 exam questions developed?Â
A question writing session is periodically conducted by Subject Matter Experts (SME’s), or individuals who specialize in pressure vessels, write questions from specific sections of the Code. Each question is then checked by three other SME’s.
This validation exercise answers two questions;
- Is the question written clearly?
- Does the question cover knowledge that is important to a vessel inspector?
These questions then go into a question data-bank as non scored exam questions.
Presently there are over 1000 questions in the data-bank and are grouped by topics. For each examination, there are 115 questions on the exam pulled from Area of Examination (see above) categories. Only 100 Questions are scored. The remaining 15 are pre-test questions and not marked towards your score, that is, these pre-test questions do not affect your score whether you have answered them correctly or not. API does not tell you which ones these questions are.
API needs to ensure that these questions are not significantly challenged by the candidates and have also been answered by a reasonable number of candidates before adding them to their question bank as scored questions.
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No Negative Marking
The pass mark is roughly 70% for all the API examinations. No negative marking is applied. Therefore, make sure that you have answered all the questions. At the end, click the ‘’review all’’ button and peruse through the list to ensure that you have not skipped any question. You can also check ‘’review incomplete questions’’ to ensure there is nothing on the list, that is, no question left unanswered.
