ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code (BPVC)

The ASME Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code (BPVC) is an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) standard that regulates the design and construction of boilers and pressure vessels. The document is written and maintained by volunteers chosen for their technical expertise . The American Society of Mechanical Engineers works as an Accreditation Body and entitles independent third parties such as verification, testing and certification agencies to inspect and ensure compliance to the BPVC.

The BPVC was created in response to public outcry after several serious explosions in the state of Massachusetts. A fire-tube boiler exploded at the Grover Shoe Factory in Brockton, Massachusetts on March 20, 1905 which resulted in the deaths of 58 people and injured 150. Then on December 6, 1906 a boiler in the factory of the P.J. Harney Shoe Company exploded in Lynn, Massachusetts. As a result, the state of Massachusetts enacted the first legal code based on ASME's rules for the construction of steam boilers in 1907.

ASME convened the Board of Boiler Rules before it became the ASME Boiler Code Committee which was formed in 1911. This committee put in the form work for the first edition of the ASME Boiler Code - Rules for the Construction of Stationary Boilers and for the Allowable Working Pressures, which was issued in 1914 and published in 1915.

The first edition of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, known as the 1914 edition, was a single 114-page volume. It developed over time into the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel code, which today has over 92,000 copies in use, in over 100 countries around the world. As of March 2011^[update] the document consisted of 16,000 pages in 28 volumes.

After the first edition of the Code, the verifications that the manufacture was to the Code was performed by independent inspectors, which resulted in a wide range of interpretations. Hence in February 1919, the National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors was formed.

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