How to Use This Book

This book is a Quick Guide to the API 510 Certied

Pressure Vessel Inspector examination syllabus (formally
called the body of knowledge by API). It is intended to be of
use to readers who:
. intend to study and sit for the formal API 510 Individual
Certication Program (ICP) examination or
. have a general interest in the content of API 510 and its
associated API/ASME codes, as they are applied to the inservice inspection of pressure vessels.
The book covers all the codes listed in the API 510 syllabus
(the so-called effectivity list) but only the content that is
covered in the body of knowledge. Note that in some cases
(e.g. ASME VIII) this represents only a small percentage of
the full code content. In addition, the content of individual
chapters of this book is chosen to reect those topics that
crop up frequently in the API 510 ICP examination.
Surprisingly, some long-standing parts of the API 510 body
of knowledge have appeared very infrequently, or not at all,
in recent examinations.
While this book is intended to be useful as a summary,
remember that it cannot be a full replacement for a
programme of study of the necessary codes. The book does
not cover the entire API 510 ICP syllabus, but you should
nd it useful as a pre-training course study guide or as preexamination revision following a training course itself. It is
very difcult, perhaps almost impossible, to learn enough to
pass the exam using only individual reading of this book.
This quick guide is structured into chapters each
addressing separate parts of the API 510 ICP syllabus. A
central idea of the chapters is that they contain self-test
questions to help you understand the content of the codes.
These are as important as the chapter text itself it is a wellproven fact that you retain more information by actively
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How to Use This Book

searching (either mentally or physically) for an answer to a

question than by the more passive activity of simply reading
through passages or tables of text.
Most of the chapters can stand alone as summaries of
individual codes, with the exception of the mock examination
questions that contain cumulative content from all of the
previous chapters. It therefore makes sense to leave these
until last.

Code references dates

The API 510 ICP programme runs several times per year
with examinations held in June, September and December.
Each examination sitting is considered as a separate event
with the examination content being linked to a pre-published
code effectivity list and body of knowledge. While the body
of knowledge does not change much, the effectivity list is
continually updated as new addenda or editions of each code
come into play. Note that a code edition normally only enters
the API 510 effectivity list twelve months after it has been
issued. This allows time for any major errors to be found and
corrected.
In writing this Quick Guide it has been necessary to set a
reference date for the code editions used. We have used the
effectivity list for the June 2010 examinations. Hence all the
references used to specic code sections and clauses will refer
to the code editions/revisions mentioned in that effectivity
list. A summary of these is provided in the Appendix.
In many cases the numbering of code clauses remains
unchanged over many code revisions, so this book should be
of some use for several years into the future. There are subtle
differences in the way that API and ASME, as separate
organizations, change the organization of their clause
numbering systems to incorporate technical updates and
changes as they occur but they are hardly worth worrying
about.

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Quick Guide to API 510

Important note: the role of API

API have not sponsored, participated or been involved in the
compilation of this book in any way. API do not issue past
ICP examination papers or details of their question banks to
any training provider, anywhere.
API codes are published documents, which anyone is
allowed to interpret in any way they wish. Our interpretations in this book are built up from a record of running
successful API 570/510/653 training programmes in which we
have achieved a rst-time pass rate of 8590 %+. It is worth
noting that most training providers either do not know what
their delegates pass rate is or dont publish it if they do. API
sometimes publish pass rate statistics check their website
www.api.org and see if they do, and what they are.

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