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A successful Aerospace Event and Workshop in 2026

Tom Bertenshaw reports

The 2026 Aerospace Event and Workshop on Simulation of NDT, which was held at the BAWA Centre in Bristol in April, provided a good blend of topics related to NDT.

The simulation workshop took place on the first day. When I put this workshop together, I was keen to find use cases, where simulation could be used for technique development, for NDT qualification and also for NDT problem resolution. The talks offered some good examples of academic work using finite element modelling and followed on with some use cases from providers and users of simulation software. There was a discussion session at the end of the workshop, covering topics such as training for simulation, which should be considered. Training could help further the careers of NDT practitioners and engineers who want something more challenging or just a different dynamic than technique development and production/in-service work.

The first day of the Aerospace Event focused heavily on regulations and standard updates. A key update was on the much-anticipated revision to EN 4179, which included updates to major methods and a new points-based initial certification for Level 3. Many thanks to Keith Phillips for stepping in at the last minute to provide this update! There was also a proposal given by one of the speakers for an initial Level 2 certification points-based system based on competence, as opposed to experience; perhaps this may be implemented in the next update to EN 4179? There was also an opportunity to feed into a ‘state of the industry’ survey, which is currently being advertised for comment and input. Please see the article on the front page of this issue for more detail.

The second day of the Aerospace Event focused more on research and development of new technologies and techniques, where there was a broad range of methods and interesting discussions. And, of course, there was the exhibition, which ran for the two days of the event and was co-located with the presentations. We chose to do this based on feedback from other events that it would make it more interactive.

Thanks to all of those who came; I hope you found it interesting. The presentations for some of these talks should be available on the BINDT website in due course, if you want to know more.