Hello.

I was recnelty looking at this and have a mate who does it and he speaks very highly of it.

If anybody has any information about the type of work/wages/prospects associated with this line of work I would like to hear your views.

Cheers

Matt.

 

NDT as in non destructive testing???

we have a whole department where i work, we do it mainly for our welding stuff, and to cover our customers requirements


Mart

 

Two levels of certificat. PCN 1 is simple thickness measurement. PCN 2 is the more advanced stuff. The money is in offshore inspection work.

Steve

 

I`m a level 2 qualified Technologist in all NDT disciplines , UT , EC , MPI . You need to be more specific in what you want to do (test ) before you go any further. Have a look here:

http://www.ndtcabin.com/

 

We use NDT but the last two firms we used are no longer trading, is the market shrinking?

Cheers
Lee

 

I did it for a while. Lots of unsociable hours because if you use radiation you have to do it when everyone else has gone home.

 

depends where you work,

we have the facilities to do x ray and rad if needs be, although we prefer to get the rad work done at a local company who do this all the time


Mart

 

Also depends on what you're doing. I've had teams of NDT people work for me on power stations (generally testing welds in boilers etc). Pretty rare that anyone there does any "bombing" (radiography). Mostly MPI/Visual, with some U/T of known/identified defects, and a few bits of fancy U/T (phased arrays/automated scanning etc) to get a proper map of significant defects.

Can't comment on off-shore, but the market in power generation industry will be shrinking a little as there tends to be a move towards the modern CCGT power stations and some of the older sites (which tend to require more testing) shut down. However, one of those things where I think there will always be some demand.

 

Were doing decommisioning stuff at the mo, so everything has to be NDT,d as well as gamma and u/s testing too

Mart

 

There is a shortage of NDT technicians world wide with experience which is the important bit and many small NDT contract firms are struggling because large companies are now employing their own NDT people instead of hiring them in. Although there are still many many NDT firms with more work than they can cope with allover the world . There are more jobs than people to fill them. NDT technicians tend to do a bit of contract work then settle down as they get sick of all the travelling. There are many different types of job for NDT technicians and some pay mega bucks , some don`t . The 3/5 yearly re-certification exams put some people off. But once you have the experience under your belt you can earn as much as you want by taking on the amount of and type of work you want . The retainers and wages are good because employers know you can easily find another job if your CV is OK. Every industry needs NDT nowadays and as the HSE, ISO , environmental and product specifications tighten up this will increase as does product quality.