NDT engineer status

The digital world seems to move fast, but real-life adoption of change does not always happen very quickly at all. The implementation of new technologies can still require support from complementary established methods. People tend to assume that modern is good, so it takes time before they realise that a blend of old and new provides the robust solution.

Back in the mists of time before automotive electronics, our not particularly desirable car was stolen from a town centre car park by an opportunist. Luckily, we got it back quickly and relatively unscathed, but the experience meant that going forward I protected my vehicles with ironmongery in the form of a steering wheel lock. Although sophisticated security systems are now commonplace, I have persisted with my mechanical device despite being laughed at continuously, especially by my children as they reached car-owning age. Then they discovered that electronic keyless systems had weaknesses and realised that my approach did make sense after all. The steering wheel lock is not undefeatable, but it adds an extra layer of security and makes the car less attractive to thieves.

Whilst this is a trivial example, I am observing that my more serious, long-held view that the non-destructive testing (NDT) profession needs to formally recognise the role of the inspection engineer is slowly moving towards realisation. As with anything in NDT, it is taking a long time. In January this year, a couple of papers presented at the Scottish Branch’s ‘Educating the future NDT engineer’ seminar highlighted the need for NDT engineers now and in the future. David Gilbert, CEO of BINDT, presented on ‘New qualification requirements for the NDE 4.0 era’. He described the challenges (interdisciplinary thinking, collaboration and problem-solving and decision-making), the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)’s digital skills gap analysis and existing schemes and activities, including the knowledge and competences of the European non-destructive evaluation engineer.

In May 2022, at a workshop on structural integrity, NDT and condition monitoring (CM) requirements for Industry 4.0, one of the interpretations of likely future NDT roles provided listed ‘mathematical/statistical and interdisciplinary – across traditional engineering’ as new skills; and ‘cross-discipline working and understanding, problem-solving and creativity’ as new requirements.

New? The words in italics are the basic competences of a professional engineer. Engineers in general use science and mathematics to design new products and services and to analyse and solve problems. To do this they have to be creative, to collaborate with many other disciplines (not just science and engineering), make decisions and draw conclusions. Back in 2013 at the 5th European-American Workshop on Reliability of NDE, Ward D Rummel presented a paper, titled: ‘A path forward for NDE reliability’. He concluded that “The integration of new science, knowledge, practices, skills and proficiency extends beyond traditional non-destructive evaluation (NDE) practices and technology advancements. The required/integrated expertise may be classified as NDE engineering.”

In the June 2024 issue of Insight, A B Wooldridge described a number of developments from the 1970s and 1980s within the UK nuclear power industry. Take a look at the variety of developments that were made by NDT engineers from a number of organisations bringing together the necessary skills and disciplines to solve NDT challenges. One of the developments in the 1970s was the setting up of Personnel Certification in Non-Destructive Testing (PCN). The competence of NDT operators is crucial to the reliable application of NDT techniques and understandably the focus was on the status of practitioners. NDT engineers do not have any recognised status unless they also hold Level 3 certification, which many do. Going forward, I hope to see this change and it looks like it may happen soon.

A paper by Bertovic and Virkkunen in 2021 proposed four new future roles for the inspector: system developer; caretaker; decision-maker; and user experience (UX) designer. If you read the descriptions of these roles you will see that they include a lot of engineering competences. So, maybe, NDT operators with PCN certification will in future need to work more closely with recognised professional NDT engineers to address the challenges of the future. A look back at the history of NDT development may better prepare us for what is to come.

Please note that the views expressed in this column are the author’s own personal ramblings for the purpose of encouraging discussion within NDT News. They do not represent the views of Jacobs or BINDT.

Letters can be mailed to The Editor, NDT News, Midsummer House, Riverside Way, Bedford Road, Northampton NN1 5NX, UK. Email: ndtnews@bindt.org or email Bernard McGrath direct at bernard.mcgrath1@jacobs.com