A major oil/gas company was one of the participants in a Group Sponsored Project (GSP) aimed at determining the delay time before inspecting for hydrogen cracks.
This is traditionally set at 72 hours but the GSP showed that, in many circumstances, this time could be halved.
In response to a questionnaire concerning the financial benefits of consultancy and R&D at TWI the company tried to estimate the savings which might accrue from this reduction in delay time.
The company purchases about £160M worth of steel fabrication annually. Savings of approximately 1% in these costs could be derived from applying the lessons learnt in the GSP, so the savings might amount to about £1.6M. Whilst this calculation is very approximate, it is clear that the savings can be very large. Cost of participation in the project was £17 000.