Non destructive testing career advice?

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  • Dblb

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    Jul 14, 2014
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    What's up guys/gals. Just thought I would tap our great community for some info if anyone has some experience in this field. Very long story short....
    I know this is likely a broad question, but it's a jumping off point for me. I'm looking to start down a new career path and I'm trying to break into the Non-destructive testing field. I've worked as an Operator at a chem plant for 7 plus years, and currently hold a facility managers position at a smaller plant. I have a solid resume and I'm, Let's just call it Very seasoned in the plant type environment. Lol.
    I guess the simple question I'm trying to get answered is where do I start? And how? Are their classes to take, ground floor type positions? Etc?
    Any and all info shared will be much appreciated.
     

    Cajun Camper

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    It may be an apprenticeship type of training. I know a few guys that do NDT/NDE & they all hired on & worked their way up thru the ranks. There isn't much to it (that I can see), nothing like x-ray inspection.
     

    sandman7925

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    NDT can be visual, x ray, mag particle or any other form of inspection as long as it's non destructive. I've been in the field for 8 years.
    Why on earth would you want to do that if you've been an operator for as long as you have? You have it made.
     

    Dblb

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    Lol.... Just looking at some options. Not in operations anymore, decided I wanted a normal life for awhile and took a banking hour (8-5) facility manager position at a really small pant but the dinero just isn't there. Looking to get back into something offshore or the NDT route? It just seemed interesting to me. You've had bad experiences in that field it sounds like?
     

    sandman7925

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    Not neccasarily bad experiences but if you want to do it offshore it's a tall totem pole to climb. As you would either be on call all the time or have a crappy schedule. I work 21 and 21 now but there are few people with that luxury. If you're physically capable I would suggest getting a rope access level 1 and ultrasonic level 1 course under you're belt and hen you can get a job. Those course aren't cheap though. It's possible to get hired on and they pay for training but if you can swing it on you're on it's better as you own the cert.
     

    Armed Mage

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    If you're willing to go to school out of state for a few weeks I know the tech school I went to in Kansas has an excellent NDT program, I went through about a week of it as part of my A&P certification. I'm not sure about how apprenticeship programs would work.
    http://watc.edu/nondestructive-testing/

    I see help wanted for NDT jobs all over South LA, so definitely a wise choice to get into.
     

    Kraut

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    I hired on as a shop hand at a company in New Iberia in '97, they sent me to a 40 hour radiation safety course the first week to get it out of the way so I could help in the field if needed, and once I did a little bit of that and picked up the skills pretty quick, they sent me to take the state test to be a level II radiographer. I picked up a little bit of magnetic particle testing, but was never called on for that very much.

    Having a level II license, at that time and in that area, meant you could get mad at the manager and drag up to go down the street and work for a different company until they pissed you off, then go back to the other place and get your job back, and repeat the cycle several times before they might even consider not taking you back. It was that difficult for them to get people who could pass the test, and large jobs for large oil companies had requirements for a level II on site. There was one guy who contracted with them occasionally, he was an ex con who had done federal time for running drugs, bitched about everything, had a pitiful attitude, but they would call him up to fill jobs because he had a license and always needed money. There was one guy that they KNEW (because he openly boasted about it) sold crack on the weekends in a park in Opelousas, but he had a license and they kept him on.

    If you have 7 years of plant experience you should be an easy sell to a company that does lots of work in plants or offshore. The skills for x-ray and magnetic particle testing aren't difficult to pick up, I never got my hands into ultrasonic testing or heat stress. The licensing is the key, and if you have a reasonable capability for math the testing isn't overly hard with some preliminary studying. Diversify, get into ALL the testing methods. I learned on the job, but if there are tech schools that teach the skills in advance, and you have the money to take classes and cover your bills while doing so, being able to demonstrate the basics when applying might make for a more appealing candidate. I know that there's lots of safety talk throughout the industry, but then I know there's lots of shortcutting, too. I fell into bad habits when working alongside those that were teaching me, and pushing to finish, pushing to move to the next job, pushing to get another job ticket for the day to make more money. It's either dangerous on its own, such as the x-raying, or it's being done in dangerous environments. Be conscious of what you see from companies coming into the plant you work at now, you might be able to eliminate some from the list of prospective employers.

    The company I worked for in New Iberia did mostly machine processing of x-ray jobs, and did most of their work in fab and vessel shops in the port there or nearby surrounding areas. They did occasional pipeline jobs and a fair amount of offshore jobs that required hand processing of the x-ray film in portable or truck mounted darkrooms. I worked for them for 10 months, with a salary range between $6.00/hr. starting as a shop hand to $7.50/hr. running my own truck to do jobs with a hand, and in that 10 months I made over $25K, my best two week check when my rate was $6.50/hr. topped $1,900 AFTER taxes, and at the end I was about to have to step down to a tiny $250/mo. one-room apartment just to MAYBE afford to stay there because of the work drying up. Before signing the lease, I got a referral to a different company in Marrero that would start me at $8.50/hr. and bump me to $10.00/hr. once I got the hang of their procedures (ALL hand developing) and their work environment, which was mostly in plants. They bid/billed differently, it was good for a while but again, after 8 months, weeks with only 10 hours of work billed weren't gonna cut it and make the half of the rent I had to come up with living back in Slidell. I moved on to other work, but the license was good for 5 years I think, so I figured if I needed a fall-back or the workload picked back up I could go back if I needed.

    The friend who got me the job there in the first place, his dad worked for a large contractor at Stennis and eventually got him on there with a company on site that did lots of the testing around the test stands, good pay and benefits that stood him good for a couple of years. His dad was also the one who gave me a referral to the company in Marrero because he had started out there. When working out of Marrero, I had to go do a job at the test stand and he had to do the safety oversight for our shots. NO shortcutting there like what happens out in the port or offshore. I met some great people working in that industry, and I met some real idiots and a$$holes. I got to fly in several types of helicopters, ride lots of big waves on crewboats, hang in baskets from tall cranes, bounce around to numerous types of rigs, race through swamps in boats that looked like metal garden sheds with twin 50s on the back, and learn, since it was New Iberia, that those airy things they sell in sealed bags in convenience stores everywhere else are NOT real cracklins. I was underneath a rig deck on 18" plank scaffolds when storms blowing ahead of Tropical Storm Francis blew the rain in SIDEWAYS, and watched twin waterspouts come within about a half-mile of the jack-up I was on before blowing themselves out. I vomited on job-sites more than once because of the heat, moved back to Slidell with a cough that persisted for more than two months after going inside a confined space that had not been adequately vented, and had to have plugs of accumulated metal dust removed from my ears from the amount of work done inside of large pipes and vessels. It was labor intensive work that was mostly outdoors in the heat or inside hot shops, or outdoors in the cold or inside cold shops. Same thing with the second company, the plant work was mostly outside in the heat or cold.

    The first company was kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, they had lots of shortcutting habits, but most of the guys there were real hard workers and genuinely good people. The second company had a bit more polished image, but I saw worse personal behavior among the employees there and way worse management skills than what the outward appearance suggested. In fairness, I saw lots of shortcutting by the inspectors in the shops and on some of the offshore jobs, too. "Aaahh, it's just a low-pressure line, we're not pulling the line back onto the barge for some porosity in the weld, I'll sign off on it." Hey, that's why he's a level III.

    Older and wiser, I wouldn't go back to working like I did back then, but it was my first on-my-own experience away from home besides bootcamp (I did have a roommate(s) most of the time), out of town away from family and friends. I got to take on responsibility for a crew on job sites and handling the interactions with clients, obtaining skills that went beyond retail or security jobs I'd had while in college, and the lead-in to those stand-on-your-own things like changing banks, renting an apartment, setting up utilities, scrounging classifieds for used furniture (or making use of a wooden wirespool, of which we had two to serve as an end table and a larger one for a bar - aren't guy apartments great?), being responsible for some serious equipment, and learning what it feels like to make those larger life decisions without a safety net. When I had to change companies and move back, there was a three week period that I had to move back in with family while lining up an apartment and roommate (the one who had earlier moved back to work at Stennis), and I almost went crazy in that three weeks. I knew that although I'd always be welcome, I could never really "go back home" after moving out.

    Well, a lot spilled out there, huh?

    Good luck with your transition, be safe, always point the collimator away and keep yourself behind good shielding. Especially your groin. Especially that.
     
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