Benefits of NDT Consulting
How does Level III Consulting Services benefit your company?
Let’s address the issue of having an ASNT Level III employed or on retainer in order to meet the recommendations of ASNT (The American Society for Nondestructive Testing). What’s the reason?
Quick answer: It’s the law of the land, Codes of Federal Regulation, the building blocks of the Rule of Law which is the foundation of life and business as we know it in these United States.
Quick answer #2: Because it is so stated in SNT-TC-1A, the ASNT document that has been used since 1966 (now in its 10th edition) to guide and direct an effective path of training, qualification and certification for NDT personnel. This document was originally published to produce agreement and guidance in the development of highly skilled and ethically motivated NDT technicians. It is reviewed and published again on an average of once every four years to meet the challenges of modern technology.
An important statement contained in SNT-TC-1A is that all personnel performing NDT per the codes we use, such as AWS, API and ASME, “shall be certified according to the guidelines found in the document SNT-TC-1A”. (In other words, Codes of Federal Regulations, to which the codes are tied back up the SNT-TC-1A document that tells us how to properly handle the NDT technician candidate from his/her beginning as a trainee through his/her certification and beyond.)
SNT-TC-1A makes some other important points clear:
1. Employers of the NDT personnel shall be the Certifiers of NDT personnel.
2. A representative (Certifying Authority) of the employer shall sign all certifications.
3. An ASNT Level III, employed or contracted, shall sign all certificates.
All of these to establish the fact that the Certification process is (1) very important, (2) worthy of serious attention by serious people, and (3) the culmination of an honest process performed with an expectation of excellence.
According to SNT-TC-1A, an ASNT Level III shall be employed or retained to provide guidance and oversight for the training, qualification and certification of the NDT level I and II candidates being trained for certification to level II status.
In many other countries, such as Canada and most of the European Union countries, a government agency has control of NDT certifications. In the USA we have always preferred to have the employers certify their own people. The idea is that nobody should be more concerned with making sure that the NDT is carried out correctly than the folks who will be legally responsible for any screw-ups on the part of their people.
Speaking directly to the owner of a company: The final tests prior to having an assembly loaded onto a truck or rail car for shipment to your client will often be made by NDT personnel who were trained and guided through qualification to certification by your ASNT Level III. Your company’s reputation (and the jobs of everyone in the plant) is on-the-line, and in the hands of the NDT personnel who have been trained for their work of assuring contractual quality standards have been met.
So How does Level III Consulting Services benefit your company?
Most of the answer is provided by the serious, skilled and honest work performed by the technicians that the Level III has trained to understand how important their work is to the health and safety of the hundreds or thousands of people who will be working on or near the products you build and install in busy industrial facilities around the world.
Faithful application by the ASNT Level III of the SNT-TC-1A precepts make the difference between long term repetitive success and reputation destroying failures that would not have happened if the NDT technician had been properly trained, qualified and certified according to SNT-TC-1A.
