Personal Contribution Award

Award criteria

Purpose: The purpose of this award is to recognise a valuable and significant personal contribution to the British Institute of NDT and the wider NDT/CM/SHM community. This award acknowledges individuals who have contributed to and influenced the wellbeing of the Institute. 

Details of the award: The award will consist of a gift to the value £300 cash, an invitation to the NDT Annual Conference Dinner and one night’s accommodation, a framed certificate signed by the President and the Chief Executive Officer, together with a personalised letter from the President.

Eligibility: The successful nominee must have been a long-term active member of the British Institute of NDT (minimum of ten years) 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 personal contribution towards the charitable objectives of the Institute.  

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: There is no periodicity for this award; suitable recipients will emerge from time to time and their selection will be obvious by their acknowledged contribution. It will be possible for more than one candidate to be given this award in the same calendar 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; one 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.

Committee: MQ&E Committee and ratified by Council.

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Winners

2023 winner: Dr Mike Smith

The Personal Contribution Award for 2023 is awarded to Dr Mike Smith in recognition of his professional career, which has spanned 30 years in the non-destructive testing (NDT) sector. During this time he has held many
high-level positions for various blue-chip companies and organisations, including TSC Inspection Systems,
H Scan International (HSI), Eddyfi Technologies and his own consultancy, DrM Consulting Services. He has played a role in the advancement of the art of NDT through publishing papers in journals, including being published in Insight four times.

Mike Smith has been working in NDT for over 33 years, with ten years at director-level in a small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) and six years leading service teams in the USA. Industries he has worked in include oil & gas, petrochemical, marine, transport, mining and civil.

Mike started his initiation into the NDT industry by studying for a PhD in NDT at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, UK. Here he studied under Dr Mike Lock and investigated the practical effects of, at the time, varying test sample standards used in the calibration of eddy current equipment used for testing aircraft fasteners under the ageing aircraft programme run by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the UK and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
in the USA. He also conducted a project to image, by ultrasonic immersion scanning, high-temperature brazed parts before fitment at CERN. It was at this time that Mike was first introduced to BINDT, attending conferences and presenting a student poster.

On leaving Cranfield, Mike joined Technical Software Consultants in Milton Keynes, which specialised in the development and marketing of the alternating current field measurement (ACFM) technique. Initially, he was tasked with site testing and support, which involved offshore projects in the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and North West Australia. He then became more deeply involved in developing new equipment, probes and custom systems as NDE Projects Manager under Dr Martin Lugg. Projects he led included the development of a rail surface inspection pedestrian system for Network Rail (then Railtrack), a custom system to inspect rail axles and bogies with Bombardier Transportation, a new software analysis and reporting suite to support a custom ACFM system to inspect a titanium drilling riser in Norway and custom probes for use in the nuclear industry. He also wrote the internal software code that powered the Amigo and U31 ACFM instruments.

During this period, Mike wrote several papers that were published in Insight, including co-authoring one which won the John Grimwade Medal in 2005.

Mike originally certified in ACFM operation with a Lloyd’s certificate and then went on to become Level 2 qualified in ACFM through CSWIP, there being no PCN course available in the technique at that time. Mike was involved in the creation and delivery of several training courses for bespoke ACFM system customers, which led him to help in founding the first Level 3 course with TWI in Middlesbrough, where he became one of the first Level 3s in ACFM alongside Jim Sheppard from TWI. Mike has maintained his
Level 3 in ACFM to date.

In 2007, Mike had the opportunity to move to Los Angeles to work with IESCO and H Scan International in developing new inspection applications and systems. He particularly specialised in the inspection of steam methane reformer tubes in hydrogen furnaces when he led the development of a crawler-deployed inspection system using ultrasonic testing, eddy current testing and laser dimensioning tools to carry out a comprehensive condition assessment of each tube and utilised a finite element model, originally devised by Battelle, to predict remaining lives. This also gave him the opportunity to travel the world widely to support operations in places as diverse as Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, Alaska, Canada, Bangladesh, Japan and Brunei.

While in the USA, Mike was active with the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT), presenting papers on high-temperature creep damage at conferences as well as being Vice Chair of the Electromagnetics Committee and on the University Programs Committee, where he was involved in selecting the submissions for student funding awards. He also continued his association with BINDT and successfully applied for, and was registered as, a Chartered Engineer through the Institute.

On returning to the UK in 2013, Mike became more closely involved with BINDT and joined the Engineering Council Working Group, where he assesses applications for registrants to the Engineering Council. This included two years as Chair, mainly through the challenging online COVID-19 years, and he greatly values and continues this work to date. Mike joined Council in January this year and became a trustee of the Institute.

Mike worked from 2013 to 2020 as Innovations and then Technical Director with TSC Inspection Systems and then Eddyfi, where he managed the ACFM technology portfolio and led the development of the PACE, Amigo 2 and U41 instrument lines and associated probes. He also returned to study at the Cranfield School of Management and gained his MBA in 2017.

Currently, he is owner and Managing Director of DrM Consulting Services Ltd, where he offers consulting services specialising in the ACFM technique and bespoke inspection system software development.