The enabling actions detailed in the report are expected to assist in the avoidance of a spectrum of obstacles the NDT sector may face if preventative actions are not put into place. The required actions are detailed in four primary sections: new business engagement, people, technology, and research and development. Each of these plays a major role in the fight to secure a brighter future for the NDT industry.

Although the need to increase awareness of the NDT and CM industries has been apparent for some time, the idea for the Landscape report was raised about three years ago. Steve Lavender MBE (co-MD at Lavender International and former BINDT president) had meetings in 2012, with his MP, Angela Smith, who arranged a BINDT visit to Portcullis House, where the contingent met MPs from a committee of science and industry. They suggested that BINDT should obtain more quantitative information about the NDT industry in order to appreciate its strategic importance for the UK economy. Meanwhile the UK Research Centre for Non-Destructive Evaluation (RCNDE) attempted to engage with the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to develop a more cohesive technology transfer plan. The TSB then started to raise questions about the scale of the NDT community and business impact in order to understand the priorities for investment in the field – including factors such as how much of the economy depends on NDT, what NDT means to the gross national product, how many people are employed and so on.

This prompted the formation of an NDT Working Group, comprising experts from the NDT industry along with RCNDE, the Materials KTN (Knowledge Transfer Network) and National Physical Laboratory’s Product Verification Programme. This Group compiled the Landscape report, based on a series of sector reports produced in 2012, to highlight the prospects for the NDT industry in the UK over the next 20 years, improve awareness of the role NDT plays within the UK infrastructure and to overcome the barriers that are holding back future developments that advance the use of NDT as a proactive asset management tool, as opposed to a reaction to a failure or disaster.

The NDT Working Group selected Tony Dunhill – BINDT immediate past president – as chair and a cross-sector workshop was arranged by the Materials KTN to identify the opportunities and barriers for NDT to help set the objectives for the Landscape report. Robin Young, member of the Materials KTN advisory board and technology expert for the Materials KTN transport sector at the time of the report, suggested that NDT become a topic that the Materials KTN should address: “I was aware of how well-matched the NDT themes are with the strategic agenda of the TSB. I felt that it was the right time to raise awareness in the community and this report was an important part of that process.”

The need to be able to demonstrate the national importance of NDT and how it underpins many different sectors and technologies, as well as finding a way to help secure funding for technology transfer activities, were all agreed as priority issues, as was the need to gain more information on how the NDT community fits within the UK economy. 

Common issues

Within the Landscape report is a section highlighting the main sectors within the NDT industry – the sector review. The data on these pages are provided for the insurance, aerospace, rail, marine, civil infrastructure, power, oil & gas, advanced manufacturing and defence sectors. To obtain this information, a survey was produced for representatives from each sector to complete. Obtaining quantitative data proved to be one of the most challenging tasks – for example, there was no national register for NDT qualifications. “It suddenly became apparent that there were a lot of things we didn’t know, like how many inspectors there are in the various sectors, because there are numerous qualification schemes, such as PCN, ASNT, CSWIP, company schemes and the like,” declares Tony Dunhill.

The working group found that the figures for the actual UK market size were difficult to quantify. Dunhill continues: “We can make qualitative assessments, but NDT is performed in most tiers of a supply chain, which may be global, making UK numbers difficult to uncover. NDT does, however, underpin all the sectors surveyed, with parts being inspected many times during their service lives.”

Despite the difficulties, it became obvious that there were many common strategic issues, although there were some variations in detail due to the diverse range of sectors under examination, the overall drive was the same – training and R&D. 

Training of new NDT inspectors is an example of how the key enabling actions detailed in the Landscape report are intended to work. In the UK, training and certification in NDT is seen as the international gold standard. This achievement currently is being overshadowed by an ageing workforce and limited external awareness of the significance of NDT in respect of economic growth and public safety. Training an NDT inspector can be expensive and so of particular concern for some organisations. It is, therefore, of paramount importance to raise the profile of NDT throughout the education system by building schemes to encourage enrolment on new programmes, such as apprenticeships, industrial placements and engineering doctorates, in order to resolve the skills shortage currently being faced in NDT, and in turn increase the knowledge and awareness of those who may have previously been oblivious to its existence.

Tony Dunhill comments: “NDT is a career that uses every type of physics you can imagine. Magnetics, heat, light, sound; I can point you to a place that uses them all. There is even a place for the use of radioactive gas, which I wouldn’t recommend – but it is a technique! So, if you have a remote interest in science and you are interested in doing slightly daring stuff, then this may well be the right career for you. It requires a whole range of skills and so, even if you are not academically gifted, there is still plenty of opportunity.”

As new material, designs and operating conditions are developed within the UK infrastructure, there is a marked need for new NDT solutions. Traditional NDT methods can be time-consuming and labour intensive so the demand is for faster and more automated systems. To support this the decision by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to launch RCNDE in 2003 has helped to rebuild the UK research base into a world-leading resource to deliver the advances needed.

The Landscape report details how more of UK business can benefit from NDT by establishing a PR programme – for example preparing and advertising case studies to demonstrate the successful use of NDT and promoting the benefits of increasing the use of NDT. 

Technology Transfer

However, one of the biggest and most costly barriers to getting new technology through to industry is the technology transfer process. “Technology transfer often requires major investment for validation, commercial prototypes and so on that will require samples, access to facilities and plant for trials,” claims Keith Newton. “It can be very expensive (often more expensive than the research itself), which only prolongs the process of validating techniques to move them into a commercial state.”

The slow-moving validation stage is described in the Landscape report using the classic example of the ultrasonic time-of-flight diffraction (TOFD) technique developed in 1985, which took over 20 years to become mainstream. The report speaks of seeking more ‘imaginative routes for funding’ in order to expose new commercial opportunities and to eliminate the risk from the transfer of new technologies. “Because it is expensive, small companies can’t afford to do it. We are trying to get more systematic approaches to funding validation. One of the outcomes of the Landscape report is the need for a national defects library to help significantly lower the costs, as well as shared-cost projects. There has also been some talk of looking for capital investment for a major structural integrity NDT centre, which would include things such as validation.”

The further maintenance and development of the level of the UK NDT capability and investment is fundamental in delivering new technology to meet the future industry challenges outlined in the 20-year vision of the report. To accomplish this, NDT requires recognition for the scope of its influence. “It is a world market,” says Dunhill. “Most of the large companies who rely on NDT have a clear view as to what their NDT requirements are going to be in five, 10 and 20 years’ time. We have written that down as a vision of the future and have provided that to our academic collaborators. They are working on material that meets what we need. This kind of collaboration is quite rare, so many diverse industries actually having the same requirements. If we can get good technologies into companies in the UK to inspect what our companies want, all the other companies in the world will want the same thing.” 

An example of what Tony speaks of emerged from the Hatfield rail crash case, one of several rail disasters that changed the face of safety in Britain’s rail infrastructure through NDT. On 17 October 2000, a passenger train de-railed just south of Hatfield. Four passengers were killed and about 70 were injured. The two main causes of the accident were revealed as ‘rolling contact fatigue’ and ‘head cracking’ (defined as multiple surface-breaking cracks on the gauge corner and rail-head)[2]. The recommendations following the crash investigation, carried out by HSE and the British Transport Police, included the evaluation of other methods for the non-destructive testing of rail (for example eddy current) and the need for increased technical and managerial competence for all employees with a responsibility for any aspect of track maintenance[3].

An explanation of the positive effect that NDT has had on the UK rail system since 1998 is detailed in the Landscape report. By using NDT techniques (in this case ultrasonic testing) as an asset management tool, the break rate on the UK rail network has been reduced from around 900/year (prior to the Hatfield incident) to 125/year in 2012[4]. Dunhill comments: “It is so rare to have the data of how many cracks are actually there. Network Rail knew that in 1998 they had 952 cracks. By putting an NDT inspection in place, they started clearing the cracks from the rails. Over time, the inspections improved, enabling detection of smaller cracks. Since then, they’ve gone even further and this figure has been greatly reduced. They also realised that they could license this management process out to others. The Indian railway network (to name just one) is now using the same management process.” 

Next level

The priorities and key enabling actions established from the Landscape report are the driving force behind the future of NDT. “We need to look for ways of working together to help the common agenda,” says Robin Young. As the engineering infrastructure ages and more complex systems are developed, the need for more dexterous NDT methods will grow; the speed at which these methods can be implemented must increase considerably and, consequently, we will need an up-skilled and new generation of NDT professionals.

“These are the things that are needed to take NDT forward to the next level, covering areas such as training, research, technology transfer and raising the profile of NDT with companies who don’t think about NDT already,” adds Keith Newton.

The TSB has developed 22 key competencies with the aim to ensure that high-value manufacturing is a key driver of UK economic success. The 22 competencies are grouped around five strategic themes and during the compilation of the Landscape report it was discovered that NDT had an invaluable impact on all of them.

The report concludes that the UK NDT industry and R&D base is already well positioned, but capable of delivering much more value to the economy in the UK and on a more global scale if it can be stimulated with cross-sector investment aimed at addressing improvements in technology transfer rates, increasing business performance and growth and better recognition of the value of risk reduction through the application of advanced NDT. 

To view the report, visit http://www.bindt.org/downloads/Materials-KTN-Future-of-NDT-in-UK-economy.pdf