International standards for qualification and certification of NDT personnel

摘要

The qualification and certification of nondestructive testing operators has been a subject for discussion in virtually every national and international forum for the past twenty years as vendors, purchasers and engineers grapple withthe need to assure the competence of the individual whose performance is critical to any test application.Several international organizations, including the International Committee for NDT, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Organization for Standardization, and the European Committee for NDT have addressed the problem of harmonizing existing national qualification schemes with the objective of eliminating wasteful duplicated effort.Seeking a target against which to measure the effectiveness of training programmes, seventeen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean agreed to unify their qualification and certification standards and training schemes within the framework of internationally accepted guidelines. The results of this cooperation within one region have been so impressive that identical initiatives are now underway in Asia, Africa and the Arab countries.Recent progress toward an ISO standard for the qualification andcertification of NDT personnel has provided a focus for training organizations in both industrialized and developing countries.This paper describes the proposed ISO standard and details its significance to vendors, purchasers and training organizations.