Monitoring a variety of conditions
My sporting career has been one of enthusiastic activity, if not particularly noteworthy. When it came to organised sport, I played mainly team games. I started out by playing football and cricket and then went on to play rugby and basketball. The individual sports I played the most were recreational squash and badminton against friends. The issue with the team sports was that there was not an easy measure of how well I played or a measure of improvement over time. If the team won, and in the absence of someone making a comment on my performance, then I could assume that I must have been doing something right, or at least not doing anything particularly wrong. If the team lost, then I could always say “…but I played well” to counter the (my!) disappointment, if I felt that was the case. Cricket was the one sport where the individual contribution is isolated to a certain extent: statistics have always been a big part of the game. So, monitoring the batting or bowling average would show progress over time. Catches held/catches dropped gave some indication of fielding performance.
In the individual sports, results from matches against individual opponents did not always tell the full story, as the skill level of the opposition had as much of an effect on the outcome as my own skill, or lack of skill, level. Without a coach watching on, progress and improvement was very much accidental and qualitative. When I ‘retired’ from football, I tried to stay fit, and keep the weight down, by running, swimming and cycling. This opened up a new era of monitoring training performance and personal bests over known distances. The use of a simple stopwatch allowed me to record times and splits within a run or a swim. On the road, average speed and maximum speed could also be monitored with the ‘cycle computer’.
Whilst this information, carefully transcribed and graphed in an Excel spreadsheet, was useful in providing me with the motivation to get out on a dark, wet winter’s night, it is trivial when compared to the data that is collected and analysed in today’s professional sport. During the Tour de France and other endurance events, it is possible to get live human performance data from the athletes, including power, cadence, speed, heart rate and GPS position. At Wimbledon, the statistics show the number of aces served, the speed of the serves, the double faults, first serve points and the first serve return points, to name but a few. In team sports, data is now collected which enables the comparison of the contributions made by various players: metres run; tackles made; passes completed. Even in training sessions, GPS units have been embedded in shirts to provide data ranging from distance run to fastest speed to whether the individual’s running mechanics signals an increased risk of injury.
The development of intelligent gadgets, phone apps and algorithmic websites now means it is easy for you, as individuals, to get assistance, not just with sporting achievement but with controlling and improving many aspects of your life by adopting monitoring in a big way. You can record your heart rate, keep track of your movements, count your calorie intake, assess the duration and quality of your sleep, observe the impact food has on your glucose levels, see where you spend your time and analyse your money outgoings. Before you rush off to add a heart rate monitor, a personal sleep coach or a pedometer to your list for Santa, I would like you to do something for me.
The ‘What the Hec?!’ article published in October’s NDT News highlighted the acronym CM. Those of you who receive Insight along with your NDT News, and have good eyesight, will no doubt notice that the strap line under the title is: ‘Non-Destructive Testing and Condition Monitoring’. Condition monitoring is what we do. OK, so we often refer to it as NDT, because the technology constrained us to offline discrete tests, but NDT is still an activity to monitor the condition of an item. Now, just because most of our work has to do with inert materials doesn’t mean that we have to limit our exposure to articles on the condition monitoring of inert materials: innovation often comes from transferring ideas from one sector to another. So, when reading about condition monitoring in sport and so on I had an idea. I don’t know if it is possible to implement but I thought I would canvas your views to see if there was support to investigate further. In the interest of innovation, variety and technical curiosity, do you think it a good idea to include in Insight the occasional article (general or technical) on condition monitoring in its widest sense, covering sport, humans, biology, geology, oceanography or whatever?
If you agree, then send an email to ndtnews@bindt.org and put ‘Wider CM Articles’ in the title line. No need to add text in the email unless you want to.
If you disagree, then put ‘Leave CM as is’ in the title line.
The above will make it easy to count the voting responses because I have faith you will respond in numbers! If you have an opinion to express in the email, then add ‘+ Text’ to the title line so that it will be read. Thank you in anticipation of a good response and thank you for reading my articles this year. I wish you and your families a happy and peaceful Christmas.
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
In the individual sports, results from matches against individual opponents did not always tell the full story, as the skill level of the opposition had as much of an effect on the outcome as my own skill, or lack of skill, level. Without a coach watching on, progress and improvement was very much accidental and qualitative. When I ‘retired’ from football, I tried to stay fit, and keep the weight down, by running, swimming and cycling. This opened up a new era of monitoring training performance and personal bests over known distances. The use of a simple stopwatch allowed me to record times and splits within a run or a swim. On the road, average speed and maximum speed could also be monitored with the ‘cycle computer’.
Whilst this information, carefully transcribed and graphed in an Excel spreadsheet, was useful in providing me with the motivation to get out on a dark, wet winter’s night, it is trivial when compared to the data that is collected and analysed in today’s professional sport. During the Tour de France and other endurance events, it is possible to get live human performance data from the athletes, including power, cadence, speed, heart rate and GPS position. At Wimbledon, the statistics show the number of aces served, the speed of the serves, the double faults, first serve points and the first serve return points, to name but a few. In team sports, data is now collected which enables the comparison of the contributions made by various players: metres run; tackles made; passes completed. Even in training sessions, GPS units have been embedded in shirts to provide data ranging from distance run to fastest speed to whether the individual’s running mechanics signals an increased risk of injury.
The development of intelligent gadgets, phone apps and algorithmic websites now means it is easy for you, as individuals, to get assistance, not just with sporting achievement but with controlling and improving many aspects of your life by adopting monitoring in a big way. You can record your heart rate, keep track of your movements, count your calorie intake, assess the duration and quality of your sleep, observe the impact food has on your glucose levels, see where you spend your time and analyse your money outgoings. Before you rush off to add a heart rate monitor, a personal sleep coach or a pedometer to your list for Santa, I would like you to do something for me.
The ‘What the Hec?!’ article published in October’s NDT News highlighted the acronym CM. Those of you who receive Insight along with your NDT News, and have good eyesight, will no doubt notice that the strap line under the title is: ‘Non-Destructive Testing and Condition Monitoring’. Condition monitoring is what we do. OK, so we often refer to it as NDT, because the technology constrained us to offline discrete tests, but NDT is still an activity to monitor the condition of an item. Now, just because most of our work has to do with inert materials doesn’t mean that we have to limit our exposure to articles on the condition monitoring of inert materials: innovation often comes from transferring ideas from one sector to another. So, when reading about condition monitoring in sport and so on I had an idea. I don’t know if it is possible to implement but I thought I would canvas your views to see if there was support to investigate further. In the interest of innovation, variety and technical curiosity, do you think it a good idea to include in Insight the occasional article (general or technical) on condition monitoring in its widest sense, covering sport, humans, biology, geology, oceanography or whatever?
If you agree, then send an email to ndtnews@bindt.org and put ‘Wider CM Articles’ in the title line. No need to add text in the email unless you want to.
If you disagree, then put ‘Leave CM as is’ in the title line.
The above will make it easy to count the voting responses because I have faith you will respond in numbers! If you have an opinion to express in the email, then add ‘+ Text’ to the title line so that it will be read. Thank you in anticipation of a good response and thank you for reading my articles this year. I wish you and your families a happy and peaceful Christmas.
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
