Next cohort of NDT Engineer apprentices

The next tranche of NDT Engineer apprentices in my company will start in January, when they will enrol on the University of Northampton’s BEng NDT degree course and attend their first EN 4179 NDT training courses with the South West School of NDT. This will take my company’s numbers up to 28 in total. Five are now in their final year and are based in Bristol, Derby and Barnoldswick. It is a busy time to make sure they all have the relevant NDT Level 2s and have waited the required extra year of experience before becoming Level 3s. Their technical projects are being worked on for the university course and End-Point Assessment (EPA) and they are very much on the ‘home run’. It has been a quiet period of time in terms of new news (despite the fact we are busy participating in Zoom meetings with BINDT and other employers to discuss apprenticeships). The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) wants an independent Professional Engineering Institute (PEI) to represent NDT apprenticeships on its quality panel and it would be a conflict of interest for BINDT to do this as it conducts EPAs. To that end, provisional conversations have taken place with the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3).

Please note that the views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not represent the views of Rolls-Royce.

Iain Baillie is with Lead Employer Rolls-Royce and is involved with the NDT apprenticeships scheme. He is also BINDT President Elect.

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