Lifetime Achievement Award

Purpose: The purpose of this award is to recognise a valuable and extensive contribution to the British Institute of NDT and the wider NDT/CM/SHM community by an individual who has been an active member of the Institute for an extensive period of time. 

Details of the award: The award will consist of a full-time registration at the NDT Annual Conference and accommodation for three nights, an engraved decanter and glasses together with a framed certificate signed by the President and the Chief Executive Officer, plus £300 cash. The award will also entitle the recipient to become a corresponding member of Council and any other committee he/she so wishes, subject to the usual exclusions.

Eligibility: The successful nominee must be reaching the end of his/her career and must have spent a substantial part of his/her career working in the field of NDT/CM/SHM or another Institute-supported discipline. He/she must have been a long-term active member of the British Institute of NDT and, during that period, must have supported the Institute as an active committee member. The successful nominee will stand out as having made a considerable contribution towards the charitable objectives of the Institute through having been proactive in the promotion of its activities. 

The proposer of the award should be a voting member of the Institute. If they are not, they will need to ensure the application is endorsed by an Institute voting member.

Frequency: It is important that such a prestigious award is only awarded when it is deemed right to do so. ONE per year.

Nomination arrangements: The nomination must be seconded by an elected member of Council and receive a 75% positive response from elected members who are in attendance on the day of the election; a proxy vote may be submitted to Karen Cambridge by any non-attending Council members. 

Awarding arrangements: The award will be made at the NDT Annual Conference Dinner and will be awarded by the President. The nominee will be given a ten-minute slot to respond after receiving the award to talk about their career. 

Committee: Council.

Winners 

John Moody

The Lifetime Achievement Award for 2023 is awarded to John Moody, who has made a large contribution to the non-destructive testing (NDT) community locally over the last 35 years and nationally in his role as Senior Technical Engineer at BINDT over the last ten years. He became a well-known figure as Chief Examiner for Rotherham-based Argyll-Ruane (formerly Ruane and T P O’Neill), working for Martin Dawson and an organisation that captured a large cohort of NDT practitioners from the UK and overseas seeking PCN NDT certification and other NDT-related disciplines. John has been a stalwart of the Yorkshire Branch of BINDT over the same period and up to the present day.

John joined the steelworks as a Metallurgical Trainee, discovering NDT, testing using magnetic yokes on crane hooks and railway rolling stock springs, penetrant on thin bar stock and ultrasonics on plate. Two years later he was made redundant and part of the redundancy package included an option to be retrained in NDT.

After the retraining package, he was offered the opportunity to stay on as an instructor for six months. John then went to work in the rig yards in Scotland and was working long hours. With the cyclic nature of NDT, he stopped contracting and joined a large engineering company that manufactured turbine generator sets, which were exported around the world. It was a significantly different working environment to the rig yards. John went back into the contracting environment and added power station outage experience to quite a wide range of experiences.

There was then an opportunity at an NDT training school, Argyll-Ruane, to work as an examination invigilator, where John stayed for many years, becoming the Chief Examiner. His next role was as a Technical Support Engineer at BINDT. John’s time at the Institute was very varied: he travelled the world and met the great and good in NDT and condition monitoring and later led the Technical Department as Senior Technical Engineer.

John continues to be involved with the Yorkshire Branch of BINDT, achieved an honours degree from the University of Northampton and was elected a Fellow of BINDT, having been a member since 14 October 1981.