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

2023 winner: Raymond J R Wilson

The Tony Lager Award for 2023 is awarded to Raymond J R Wilson.

Ray serves as the Managing Director of Array Training Ltd. He has a career spanning over 35 years in non-destructive testing (NDT), initially working as a radiographer, leading into all other NDT methods, weld inspection onshore and then into offshore, taking care of major North Sea projects covering both topside and subsea operations, including rope access and underwater inspection in lieu of dry-docking (UWILD)/special periodic surveys (SPS).

Since 1996, Ray has dedicated the past 28 years to developing and establishing various NDT Training Centres in the North East of Scotland as a British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing (BINDT) Approved Training Organisation (ATO)/Authorised Examination Centre (AEC) and Authorised Qualifying Body (AQB)/NDT facility, lecturing in all conventional methods (MT, PT, UT, RT, RI, ET, VT, ACFM and ISI-UT) and many other bespoke courses developed, covering Intro to NDT, Radiation Safety, Source Recovery, RPS, Hardness Testing, Ship Hull Gauging and Offshore Structures.

During his time in the oil & gas, power and renewable industries, Ray has also administered NDT training courses and examinations in over 27 countries, dealing with both client bespoke requirements and development of nationalisation training programmes intra-state with the cooperation of major inspection companies and in conjunction with prime industry suppliers. The most recent chapter in this continuing ambition to provide industry with the modern inspection services required in a changing world has been piloting the advancement of the Inspection Engineering discipline, leading to approval as an AQB/ENG providing inspection engineering examinations since 2022.

Ray’s commitment and dedication extends far beyond his professional responsibilities and he has a huge passion for the industry and for many inspiring students and candidates around the world. As an NDT Level 3 in various PCN/ASNT subjects, he supports many of the NDT inspection companies with NDT consultancy and Level 3 services, as well as mentoring many of the NDT technicians through their personal continuous professional development in the onshore/offshore industry, both nationally and internationally.

Ray has been an active member of the North East Scotland Branch of BINDT and has fulfilled the position of Chair, for a second time, for the last five years. The Branch has been very active during that period and, in particular, during the pandemic, to ensure that progress and developments in NDT continued through BINDT webinar presentations, leading to the hybrid meetings commonly used today.

Ray continues to support the Branch as Past Chair and the new Programme Secretary, taking care of the social activities and supporting the new Chair and office bearers with Branch events.

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

A nomination form can be downloaded here.

Details of Branch awards can be found here.

Details of all Institute awards can be found here.