Boiler Inspection

in the USSR, the administration for the inspection of boilers and of hoisting equipment within the State Mining Supervision Administration. It oversees the observance of rules for construction and safe operation of steam boilers, vessels working under pressure, and hoisting installations.

In prerevolutionary Russia, inspection of steam boiler operation was established in 1843. At first the inspection was carried out by mechanics subordinated to province authorities; from 1822 it was the responsibility of the Factory-Plant Inspectorate of the Ministry for Trade and Industry. The first rules for construction and operation of steam boilers were developed by the inspectorate. In accordance with the rules, boilers underwent an external inspection every two years and an internal inspection and a hydraulic test every six years.

After the Great October Socialist Revolution responsibility for boiler inspection was transferred to the People’s Commissariat for Labor, where special inspectorates, introduced in 1918, worked out rules for safe construction and operation of steam boilers, vessels working under pressure, gas cylinders, hoisting cranes, and elevators and followed up on the observance of the rules. The examination of facilities and hoisting structures was conducted upon request of the enterprise.

Beginning in 1933 boiler inspection was administered by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions; in 1937 boiler inspection was transferred to various people’s commissariats. On this occasion the Inspectorate of the People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry was charged with working out legislation on boiler inspection. In 1939 the Central State Inspectorate for Boiler Inspection was created within the People’s Commissariat for Electric Power Plants of the USSR; the office handled inspection in plants reporting to 20 individual people’s commissariats. In 1946 the Central State Inspectorate for Boiler Inspection was transferred to the Ministry for Electric Power Plants of the USSR. In 1954 the Committee for Supervision of Safe Conduct of Work in Industry and for Mining Supervision was established, subordinated to the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The Central State Inspectorate for Boiler Inspection became a department member of the committee.

In 1958 the State Mining Supervision Administration of the USSR (Gosgortekhnadzor SSSR) was reorganized into separate inspection bodies for all the republics of the Soviet Union. In 1966 the administration of boiler inspection and hoisting equipment, which was subordinate to Gosgortekhnadzor (reporting to the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR), was made a part of the Union-republic Gosgortekhnadzor SSSR, which replaced the corresponding separate inspection organizations of the Union republics.

The office for boiler inspection and hoisting installations of the Gosgortekhnadzor SSSR now has the responsibility of supervising compliance with construction rules and safe operation procedures of steam boilers and vessels operating at pressures of more than 0.17 meganewton per sq m (1.7 kilograms-force per sq cm), water-heating boilers with water heated above 115°C, pipelines for steam and hot water, hoisting cranes, elevators, escalators, funicular railways, and aerial passenger cableways in plants and organizations of ministries and administrative offices of the USSR, Union republics, and bodies of local subordination (with the exception of plants and organizations subordinate to those ministries and administrative offices that have their own boiler inspection offices). The boiler inspection administration also prepares rules that are obligatory for all ministries and administrative units; the rules, which concern construction and safe operation of facilities subject to inspection, are being unified with the analogous rules of other member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.