The Tony Lager Award

Award for BINDT members, Branch Award

Award information

About the award: The Tony Lager Award was introduced in 1996 in honour of the late Tony Lager, who served the Institute for many years on head office and Branch committees, including Council. Tony passed away in July 1996. The award is for meritorious service to an Institute Branch by an individual.

Purpose: For meritorious service to an Institute Branch by an individual.

Details of the award: A framed certificate, £200 cash and an invitation to the NDT Annual Conference Dinner with one night's accommodation.

Eligibility: Any individual Institute member.

Nomination arrangements: Branches to nominate. Contributions to the Branch and other Institute activities should be described.

Committee: MQ&E.

Winners

2024 winner: Bill Brown

The Tony Lager Award for 2024 is awarded to Bill Brown.

Bill started his career in non-destructive testing (NDT) in August 1969 as an apprentice NDT Technician at pressure vessel manufacturer Babcock & Wilcox Ltd in Renfrew, Scotland.

From 1974 to 1978, he worked with British Steel Corporation as the NDT Manager of the plate mill in Cambuslang, Glasgow, overseeing all NDT methods and applications, as well as managing major projects.

1978 saw a career change as Bill joined Inspection Instruments (NDT) Ltd as a Sales Engineer.

In the late 1970s, the late Benny Donnelly of Source NDT Ltd had the idea that removing all the coatings for subsea magnetic particle inspection (MPI) should not be necessary. He set up a company to research, develop and manufacture an eddy current unit to inspect the welds through the coatings.

Bill was intrigued by this idea and in 1982 joined Source NDT Ltd, a subsidiary of the Tokola Group of Companies, set up to apply the developed eddy current unit offshore.

Here, Bill progressed to the role of Managing Director, overseeing a wide range of NDT applications and the day-to-day management of the company.

Unfortunately, the unit, through incomplete validation and lack of formal training and certification, did not prove to be the way forward.

In 1985, Bill took the decision to try and progress this venture and set up Laighpark Technical Services Ltd.

With the invaluable support of Professor Willie McEwan and senior lecturer Roger Cummings at the Scottish School of NDT and together with Don Hocking and his skilled technical team including Dr John Rudlin and John Hansen, the Hocking equipment was proving to be a suitable alternative to MPI.

The combination of formal training, certification and detailed validation exercises by the Scottish School of NDT led to the acceptance of the application by the certifying authorities.

Bill joined Thistle Well Services in 1987, where they combined the eddy current application with industrial rope access techniques. This proved to be a very effective combination, saving literally millions of pounds in annual inspection costs, and quickly became an industry norm.

The inspection division of Thistle Well Services was purchased in 1994 by CAN (Offshore) Ltd and Bill was appointed to the role of Inspection Operations Director, responsible for the worldwide operations of one of Europe’s largest NDT companies. The role included the development of services in the Middle East, the USA, Azerbaijan and West Africa.

The validation process continued, mainly through practical inspections on jack-up and floating offshore units for major oil companies.

The validations consisted of 100% eddy current inspection followed by MPI. The results were very positive and confidence in the technique grew.

The initial third-party evaluation of the application and ongoing validation in this process was led by Larry Goldberg, owner of Sea-Test Services Inc Florida.

Bill and Larry spent many months together on board these offshore units conducting inspections.

Meanwhile, there was involvement in other validation exercises. University College London was the appointed management contractor for the manufacture of top-side and subsea components with specifically developed anomalies representative of those to be found in practice. Again, the application proved to be comparable with MPI.

This period of time involved the development of standards, including BS EN 1711 and AWS D1.1, together with authoring and presenting several papers on NDT and in-service inspection at international conferences such as those organised by the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing (BINDT), the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT) and the American Petroleum Institute (API).

Bill joined Eurotechnology Group in 2004 as a Training and Consulting Engineer, overseeing technical and business development within the group and conducting third-party audits at Sandvik facilities, Sweden, and in the USA.

This led to joining TWI a couple of years later and setting up a local Aberdeen branch for TWI, offering all of its training courses and subsequent certification.

In 2014, Bill joined TRAC Oil & Gas Ltd as Technical Manager and continues in this role, albeit on a semi-retired part-time basis.

For many years now Bill has been an active and participating Member of BINDT.

Bill founded the North East Scottish Branch when he moved to Aberdeen in the early 1980s and has supported the Branch since then, helping to organise and manage many technical, sporting and social events.

Bill continues to be a member of several BINDT committees and would like to think he continues to make a positive contribution to the development of training and certification.

He is pleased to have managed, through further education and training, to gain the relevant certification required of the roles he has held, for example Chartered Engineer, BSc (Hons) in Non-Destructive Testing and PCN Level 2 and Level 3 qualifications in ultrasonics, MPI, liquid penetrant inspection and eddy current testing. Bill was also the recipient of the BINDT Nemet Award in 2011.

The Tony Lager Award was originally established as a prize for the Institute Branch achieving the highest number of new members in the year. This criterion was altered after 2000; until then the winners of the award were:

1995   North West
1996   Solent
1997   London and Home Counties
1998   West of England/West Midlands
1999   South Wales/West of England
2000   South Wales

Since then, the award has been for meritorious service to an Institute Branch by an individual. The past winners are:

2002   Mr A Raine
2003   Mr P Stephens
2004   Mr J Pouncy
2012   Mr D Breeze and Mr B Webb
2013   Mr B Murray, Mr D Betts and Mr M R Dawson
2014   Mr B Shannon
2015    Mr A Hunscott
2019    Mr B Naylor
2020 Dr Mike Farley BSc PhD FInstNDT FInstEnergy
2021    Pete Burrows MInstNDT
2022    Fraser Hardie
2023    Raymond J R Wilson

A nomination form can be downloaded here.

Details of Branch awards can be found here.

Details of all Institute awards can be found here.