Hidden in plain sight
How do you read NDT News? Do you start at the beginning and work your way to the end? Maybe you go straight to the jobs and then work backwards through the news from the Branches. Perhaps you just look at certain features or read the articles where the particular headline grabs your attention. Then again, the way you read it may vary depending on what else is going on around you in that particular month. Unless you read it from cover to cover, or have a specific interest in the PCN news, it is possible that you may have missed the single sentence under the title ‘Withdrawn Certificates’ in the March issue. This one sentence raised a number of thoughts in my mind.
On the plus side, the system works: PCN has a code of ethics and a breach of that code has been identified and dealt with. On the other hand, I had a lot of less positive thoughts. If NDT News was a public daily newspaper, more information would have been published about what the breach was and how it came about. I’m not interested in knowing who, but if the reasons why and how are not promulgated, then the NDT community, and industry in general, lose a ‘learning from experience’ opportunity. It is by knowing about and responding to ‘near misses’ that accidents are avoided. Unfortunately, news on NDT is restricted on a ‘need to know basis’. So, all we need to know and are told is that a PCN certificate has been withdrawn.
Following the earthquake in Japan and the events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Geoffrey Lean wrote an article in The Daily Telegraph. He related the story of Dr Stephen Hanauer, who raised concerns in 1972 regarding the design of the container vessel around the core. Lean describes, with quotations, how Hanauer’s concerns were not acted on because the design concept had been so widely accepted by the nuclear industry, including regulators, that it had become firmly embedded in the conventional wisdom and to reverse it could end nuclear power. This is an example of what can happen when information is restricted to a group of people who have the same common interest.
The whistleblower website, WikiLeaks, was a major news item at the beginning of the year. A lot of the information released was quite banal and not very interesting, although it did show how official bodies work. However, some of it was important information which the public had a right to know, and which the organisation involved wanted to suppress for its own motives.
BINDT has three codes of ethics: PCN certificate holders; BINDT individual members; and the Service Inspection Group. If you read these codes you will get the impression that only individual members of the NDT profession are likely to bring the profession into disrepute. It has been my experience that, on the whole, the individuals do a fantastic job, under difficult circumstances, and that it is the commercial pressures on companies that have to use NDT services that lead to poor practices. Yet, neither of the codes of ethics applying to BINDT individual members or the Service Inspection Group mentions reporting poor NDT practices by companies and, in fact, could be read as insinuating the opposite by their emphasis on maintaining confidentiality of information. The only item in the PCN Code of Ethics (CP27 Issue 1 Rev A, available on the BINDT website) that addresses possible poor practice by a company is item 7, which requires that any perceived violation(s) of codes, regulations or standards should be reported to the supervisor/employer initially and then to BINDT if there isn’t a satisfactory response.
It is my opinion that, in order to improve the professional standing of NDT, BINDT, as the professional body, has to do more than just police the compliance of individuals to the code of ethics. It has to address the widely accepted cloak of secrecy around NDT issues and events so that lessons can be learned and hence standards improved. It should set up a defined process so that individuals, who live their code of ethics, can report instances of poor practice by companies. This should be more than just ‘report to BINDT’; it should specify a named point of contact. The confidentiality of both the individual and the company can still be maintained whilst appropriate action is taken. The use and success, or otherwise, of the process can be reported to provide a measure of improvement in the application of NDT.
Please note that the views expressed in this column are the author’s own personal ramblings for the purpose of encouraging discussion within the NDT Newspaper. They do not represent the views of the IVC, Serco Assurance or the HSE who funded the PANI projects.
Letters can be mailed to The Editor, NDT News, Newton Building, St George’s Avenue, Northampton NN2 6JB. Fax: 01604 89 3861; Email: ndtnews@bindt.org or email Bernard McGrath direct at Bernard.McGrath@sercoassurance.com
On the plus side, the system works: PCN has a code of ethics and a breach of that code has been identified and dealt with. On the other hand, I had a lot of less positive thoughts. If NDT News was a public daily newspaper, more information would have been published about what the breach was and how it came about. I’m not interested in knowing who, but if the reasons why and how are not promulgated, then the NDT community, and industry in general, lose a ‘learning from experience’ opportunity. It is by knowing about and responding to ‘near misses’ that accidents are avoided. Unfortunately, news on NDT is restricted on a ‘need to know basis’. So, all we need to know and are told is that a PCN certificate has been withdrawn.
Following the earthquake in Japan and the events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Geoffrey Lean wrote an article in The Daily Telegraph. He related the story of Dr Stephen Hanauer, who raised concerns in 1972 regarding the design of the container vessel around the core. Lean describes, with quotations, how Hanauer’s concerns were not acted on because the design concept had been so widely accepted by the nuclear industry, including regulators, that it had become firmly embedded in the conventional wisdom and to reverse it could end nuclear power. This is an example of what can happen when information is restricted to a group of people who have the same common interest.
The whistleblower website, WikiLeaks, was a major news item at the beginning of the year. A lot of the information released was quite banal and not very interesting, although it did show how official bodies work. However, some of it was important information which the public had a right to know, and which the organisation involved wanted to suppress for its own motives.
BINDT has three codes of ethics: PCN certificate holders; BINDT individual members; and the Service Inspection Group. If you read these codes you will get the impression that only individual members of the NDT profession are likely to bring the profession into disrepute. It has been my experience that, on the whole, the individuals do a fantastic job, under difficult circumstances, and that it is the commercial pressures on companies that have to use NDT services that lead to poor practices. Yet, neither of the codes of ethics applying to BINDT individual members or the Service Inspection Group mentions reporting poor NDT practices by companies and, in fact, could be read as insinuating the opposite by their emphasis on maintaining confidentiality of information. The only item in the PCN Code of Ethics (CP27 Issue 1 Rev A, available on the BINDT website) that addresses possible poor practice by a company is item 7, which requires that any perceived violation(s) of codes, regulations or standards should be reported to the supervisor/employer initially and then to BINDT if there isn’t a satisfactory response.
It is my opinion that, in order to improve the professional standing of NDT, BINDT, as the professional body, has to do more than just police the compliance of individuals to the code of ethics. It has to address the widely accepted cloak of secrecy around NDT issues and events so that lessons can be learned and hence standards improved. It should set up a defined process so that individuals, who live their code of ethics, can report instances of poor practice by companies. This should be more than just ‘report to BINDT’; it should specify a named point of contact. The confidentiality of both the individual and the company can still be maintained whilst appropriate action is taken. The use and success, or otherwise, of the process can be reported to provide a measure of improvement in the application of NDT.
Please note that the views expressed in this column are the author’s own personal ramblings for the purpose of encouraging discussion within the NDT Newspaper. They do not represent the views of the IVC, Serco Assurance or the HSE who funded the PANI projects.
Letters can be mailed to The Editor, NDT News, Newton Building, St George’s Avenue, Northampton NN2 6JB. Fax: 01604 89 3861; Email: ndtnews@bindt.org or email Bernard McGrath direct at Bernard.McGrath@sercoassurance.com
