The Ultimate CIPP Repair Quality Control Checklist
Your success as a CIPP repair company depends on your ability to secure repeat business and recommendations. And that only happens when your customers are satisfied with your work.
If you’re struggling to get an established quality control system in place for your CIPP repair business, we’re here to help. Acknowledging the challenges of each stage of installation and determining the appropriate solutions for each challenge is essential before you start repairs.
Our experienced team of CIPP experts has a systematic approach to quality control, starting before you ever arrive on-site for the work, and we’re going to share it with you.
Why Worry about Quality Control for CIPP Repair?
Simply put, the quality of your work is the foundation of your business. From your operational costs to your reputation, improving your quality control systems and protocols will make your business more profitable and more resilient.
Long-Term Performance
First and foremost, your repairs need to meet the expectations of CIPP repair lifespans, which typically fall around 50+ years of use. Your quality control process directly impacts your short-term and long-term liner performance.
Your Reputation
If you want to build customer confidence, you need to provide trustworthy repairs. Your QC process ensures you’re giving your customers the best repairs possible, and your documentation backs up your work without question. Improve your QC and you’ll improve your reputation naturally.
Reduced Operational Expenses
Time is money in any industry, and the less time you spend on callbacks for improperly installed liners, the more money in your pocket. You can also avoid mistakes during installation to reduce material costs. The documentation you keep also protects both you and the customer from defective workmanship by tracking standard operating procedures.
CIPP Repair Quality Control: Step-By-Step
So what does it take to build a comprehensive quality control system for your CIPP repair business? We’ve broken it down into four steps:
Pre-Installation Quality Control
Quality Control During Installation
Post-Installation Quality Control
Common Issues in CIPP Repair Quality Control
Building your own QC protocol should take into account each of these areas. We’ll help you get started with our own recommendations, but it’s up to you and your team to determine what works best for your current systems.
Step 1: Pre-Installation Quality Control
Proper installations start before your team gets the equipment running. Calculating material needs, determining the condition of the host pipe, and making adjustments for climate- and site-specific concerns will put your team on the right track for success.
Initial Pipe Assessment Requirements
Your team needs to know what it’s up against before they start repairs. Some repair companies simply insist on their repairs being the right solution, even when the repair doesn’t meet the needs of the situation.
Key questions your team should answer before starting work:
Has a CCTV inspection been performed to verify the condition and dimensions?
What kind of damage does the pipe have?
Are there any special considerations we should be aware of with the pipe?
Is CIPP repair the best solution for these problems?
Material Inspection Protocols
There’s nothing worse than arriving on the job site and not having the materials you need to get the job done. Your team should have a protocol in place to assess any needs before driving to the site.
Check the following areas:
Resin storage conditions and expiration dates
Project specs versus liner material specs
Confirmation of resin and liner calculations and ratios
Environmental Condition Verification
One of the biggest issues we encounter with the CIPP businesses we serve is curing issues due to environmental conditions. If the weather is too hot or too cold for your resins, you’re in for a mess.
Look for:
Current and/or expected temperatures at the repair site
Humidity levels
Site conditions that could impact installation (moisture, interior temperature, pipe locations)
Equipment Readiness Checks
Once you’ve confirmed the environmental conditions and the materials you’ll be using, it’s time to get your equipment ready. Even with the right materials, broken or uncalibrated equipment could cost you time and money.
Determine:
Proper calibration needs for your key equipment
Availability of backup equipment in case of failures
Tool and supply inventory
Site Safety Preparation
Your teams should always aim for safety at any installation site. This starts with having procedures and equipment needs in place across all teams.
Prep for safety with these steps:
Where to place safety equipment during installation
Checking safety equipment for functionality
Review emergency procedures with teams
Site security and access protocols
Step 2: QC During Installation
Once the site is ready for installation, the real work begins. Your teams now need a clear protocol for installing liners, including ways to adjust installation procedures for unexpected changes or challenges.
Resin Mixing and Saturation Monitoring
Resin is the single most important component of your CIPP repair installation. Without it, you don’t have a new pipe. Your team members should know how to mix and monitor proper resin ratios, as well as when to add or leave out epoxy activator.
Temperature and Pressure Tracking
Proper curing and lamination requires stable temperatures and pressures throughout the process. Techs should have methods for continuous monitoring and recording of measurements to make sure the curing process is successful and dependable.
Liner Insertion and Placement
If your liner isn’t in the right place or is inserted too rapidly, you could void the entire installation. Have ways for your techs to track the rates of installation, as well as some form of monitoring for liner placement. Geospatial integrations can aid with placement, especially in large-scale CIPP repairs.
Real-Time Video Inspection
Depending on the size and scale of your installation, there may be opportunities (and even requirements) for real-time CCTV monitoring and inspection. This live look at the installation process can provide documentation of both correct curing and concerns. When in place, teams should also have a documentation system ready. This could include paper records or digital spreadsheets.
Documentation Procedures
To make all the during-installation processes work smoothly, have your documentation protocols in place and ready to use. Digital database systems can be helpful for in-the-field records, but paper documentation can work if your company isn’t set up for a fully digital system.
Step 3: Post-Installation Quality Control
Once the installation is complete, your teams should always verify the quality of their work. Leaving a job site with insufficient repairs can result in a ton of wasted time, energy, and money.
Curing Verification Methods
Your best method for verifying proper curing is monitoring during installation. Curing is both time- and temperature-sensitive, so keeping records of internal temperatures, timelines, and external conditions will help your techs confirm proper curing.
But doing this the right way means having curing parameters for your resins. Many resins offer basic parameters (required time at a set temperature), but few resin suppliers do further benchmarking or provide customer support that can help CIPP companies better understand how resins work in varying conditions. If you’re not sure about your pipe lining supply company’s resins, contact customer support to find out more.
Post-Cure Cooling Procedures
The cool-down process for CIPP repairs is crucial to a proper installation. If pressure is removed from the calibration tube before the pipe liner has had a chance to properly cool, it could result in delamination and sagging in the new liner. Temperature monitoring after installation will eliminate this challenge, and allowing for proper curing and cooling time will make it easier to maintain the liner lamination once the installation is complete.
Final CCTV Inspection Protocols
Quality CIPP repairs should start and end with CCTV inspections. Visual confirmation of a proper cure is one of the most beneficial ways of providing confidence in your work. Your teams should be trained to recognize visible issues in the liner so that immediate corrective action can be taken rather than waiting for a callback due to a failure.
Some visual indications of potential liner issues include:
Variations in color and texture (indicates improper curing and/or inconsistent thickness of the liner)
Visible wrinkles or sags in the liner (indicates incomplete lamination of the liner to the host pipe)
Rough, partial, or uncut liners at pipe terminals and junctions (indicates reinstatement issues that could cause serious problems for property owners/managers)
Sample Testing Requirements
For large-scale and municipal contracts, you may need to collect and test samples of the pipe lining to ensure curing and proper thickness tolerances. Documentation is especially important for this aspect of these larger projects, as it could make or break your ability to guarantee your workmanship.
Common CIPP Quality Control Issues
As you build your QC protocol, you’ll want to keep the most common issues your teams will encounter on the job. You may find more specific issues you’ll want to prepare for, but having these 5 most important areas thought through and accounted for will cover 9 out of 10 issues you’ll see.
Temperature-Related Problems
This is the most common issue we have when we get support calls. We went in-depth with this issue on our blog, but here’s the basics:
Warm Weather
If you’re working in heat (more than 75° F ambient temperatures), your resin is going to cure faster than normal. We’ve gotten many calls from teams who couldn’t get the liner inserted before the curing process was underway, leaving them stuck with an unfinished job and problems with their equipment.
The fix? Keep your resin refrigerated for as long as possible before installation. This slows the curing process, allowing you to insert the liner without issue. Another recommendation is to leave out any activator that you may use on a regular basis.
Cold Weather
The other calls that we get frequently are for liners that take far too long to cure. When working in cold weather (below 60° F ambient temperatures), most epoxies won’t start curing. Ambient curing methods simply won’t work, and hot water and steam curing will often take longer because the internal temperature is battling against ground temps.
Here’s how we help our clients approach this issue:
First, your resin should include activator for colder temps. This is the most important tool for cool weather, since it’s easy to add and generally solves the problem. Second, we recommend switching from ambient to hot-cure methods like hot water and steam. Third, changing your base resin from a 60-minute cure to a 30-minute or 15-minute cure will improve your results.
Another option to consider is switching from ambient- and heat-cure resins to UV curing systems. These resins only begin curing when exposed to UV light, making hot and cold climate issues irrelevant. These resins, however, take specialized equipment to use, which could be a challenge for some businesses if they’ve already invested in other equipment.
Installation Defects
Defective installations often start with improper preparation and ambiguous standards. Protocols for installation can help prevent some of the most common issues your teams will encounter.
Preparing Resins and Liners
Standardize your mixing and wet-out tolerances so that teams can calibrate with precision. Mixing and weighing resins properly, and then impregnating and rolling out the liners to more exacting standards, will reduce the occurrence of incomplete curing, premature curing, and contamination issues.
Curing Protocols
Your teams need to know how to adjust curing protocols for various conditions and applications. That starts with developing clear standards for your most common challenges. Document epoxy mixing ratios, how and when to use activators, and which types of resins should be used for specific conditions.
You should also have calibration tube pressure settings and formulas available, along with approximate curing times. This information helps technicians get through the curing process without guesswork.
Equipment Malfunctions
If they haven’t already, your crews will run into problems with their equipment while on the job at some point. Your best defense against work-stopping equipment malfunctions is training your teams in troubleshooting the most common issues.
Choosing new equipment over used equipment may help with initial concerns over malfunctions or breakdowns, but the only way to avoid interruptions in your work is to keep your equipment in good working order through regular maintenance. Start documenting issues you’ve seen in the field. Then develop action plans to address each of these problems so teams can keep moving forward when things go wrong.
Documentation Gaps
One of the best ways to ensure quality for your repairs is to learn from past experiences. Documenting how installations were performed, as well as any challenges or successful solutions, helps you develop more reliable protocols for your technicians.
Start your documentation with the basics: resin ratios, activator use and amount, ambient temperatures, challenges or problems, and how problems were solved. Build this basic documentation protocol, then add to it as necessary to fine-tune your processes.
Building Your Own Quality Control System for CIPP Repair Teams
Taking time to build your quality control system seems like a lot of extra work, but it will save you time and money in the long run. Get started by building out the following key components:
Staff training requirements: courses, certifications, and required hours
Equipment maintenance schedules: have regular maintenance on the calendar to reduce equipment malfunctions
Documentation templates: easy-to-use forms for on-site records
Quality control team structure: have leads to ensure quality and aid in training
Review and improvement process: scheduled team meetings and agendas to help technicians improve results
With these QC pillars in place, you’ll be able to guide your team and your business toward better results and a better reputation for your business. But if you need help getting your teams set for more stringent quality control protocols, give us a shout. We bring decades of expertise and experience to our business, all to help your business grow the right way. We can train your teams at one of our two locations, or we can come to you. And we always provide customized training so that your teams learn what they need to know, not just the basics.
