2018 strategy event

BINDT has held its 2018 strategy event, I live in a historical coal mining area plus the February 2018 issue of Insight is open next to me and, surprisingly, all of these are linked.

At the BINDT strategy event, one of the presentations was from the power generation sector and part of the focus was on existing coal-fired power stations. There is a policy to abandon this technology in the UK and to rely on other forms of power generation. The need for NDT inspection has changed and will continue to change with different technologies.

In Yorkshire, the mining industry has virtually disappeared, with all of the deep mines closed, and this has impacted on the need for NDT. The mines have gone and the coal-fired power stations are on borrowed time.

Then there is the paper in the February issue of Insight, in which Wang Hong-Yao, Tian Jie and Meng Guo-Ying from China University of Mining and Technology study wire rope testing in the coal mining industry. The paper explains how a novel approach can detect more wire breaks than the traditional approach. It appears this innovation came too late for the UK’s coal mining sector, but as engineers are striving to improve products and performance, there is a strong possibility that this innovation will be used elsewhere.

Another potential inspection growth area discussed at the strategy event is the use of small unmanned aircraft (SUA), also known as drones. In the UK, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has a list of approved commercial SUA operators and currently the listing has 3714 entries; probably only a few of these are currently involved directly in our sector.

At a recent Yorkshire Branch meeting, one of the members recalled a time when he had to get one of his staff trained to land a helicopter (as ground crew). He also stated that there is a drive to stop entry into tanks (usually associated with the petrochemical industry) and that remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) will be deployed in the future. More skills are required, but assisting a helicopter to land and using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) could be exciting, especially in the beginning.

john.moody@bindt.org

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