Finding qualified technicians

In the USA, non-destructive testing (NDT) practitioner companies are composed of NDT technicians who are employees of the company requiring the NDT services and other technicians are provided as contractors from companies that provide these services. All of the technicians are required to be certified, either through the employees of the company or through the certification process of the contractor.

Oil refineries are an example. Most oil refineries contract with service companies to provide qualified technicians in all the NDT methods required to maintain confidence in the integrity of the refining equipment. Thus, there may be as many as five different companies providing technicians on a single site. These contractors have an investment in training technicians and maintaining their certifications. Inevitably, these technicians interact on sites and can be recruited by another contractor and even by the contracting company.

Some of the contractors providing NDT services are large companies with branches in several locations and a requisitely large pool of technicians. Other companies have a much smaller number of technicians and may be limited to fewer branches and often only one location. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the pirating of technicians was relatively uncommon, pay rates for technicians were comparable and there was no great emphasis on the pirating of technicians.

The pool of technicians diminished during the COVID-19 outbreak and there was an immediate reduction in the number of technicians and the number of hours required. NDT companies and their clients were slow to regenerate their pool of employees after the outbreak occurred.

With the gradual restoration of pre-COVID requirements, there was a commiserate reduction in the number of available and certifiable technicians. Finding qualified NDT technicians with the requisite training and experience is now a current issue for employers. When their needs became apparent once again, they found that the pool of qualified technicians had become significantly reduced. This led to a situation where technicians were being headhunted and could demand higher wages. Thus, there was a lessening of loyalty to the employer and technicians were able to job shop for better conditions.

There is a disparity in the ability of smaller companies to absorb higher wage costs without a commensurate increase in the fees they have to receive from their clients. The large oil companies have a history of resisting payment of higher rates. Thus, the larger contractors are more able to absorb the higher wages and there is a technician movement to the companies offering higher wages, at the expense of the smaller inspection contractor.

There is a shortage of new blood! One of the effects is the need to fill the gaps created by employee movement. New employees require training and experience prior to qualification. This provides the temptation to rush the qualification process. The snowball effect is the potential for less effective inspections and the potential for missing the timely detection of dangerous defects.

This situation is not limited to the NDT market and many technical activities are being confronted with similar issues.