The Safety Net You Never See: Inside Non-Destructive Testing NDT

Have you ever wondered who ensures the safety and integrity of the materials and structure of everyday objects like roller coasters to airplanes, oil rigs, wind turbines and more? If you’re curious about a career in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT), this episode is for you. Join our guest, experienced Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) technician and SAIT instructor Brandon Hansen, as he discusses his journey and successes in the NDT sector. Explore the crucial role that NDT plays in maintaining safety across many industries and how evolving technologies keep the industry at the forefront of innovation.  

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Best Careers You Never Knew Existed podcast to learn how you can be part of this high-demand specialized field. 

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Transcript

ANNCR: [00:00:00] The Best Careers You Never Knew Existed Podcast's energy series, brought to you by SAIT, the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. This podcast serves as your guide to careers in Alberta's landscape. In this season, we're focusing on the energy sector. Join us for conversations with experts, leaders, and individuals who have insights into Alberta's evolving energy industry. Together, we'll discover invaluable insights to help you chart a path toward a brand-new career.  

LORA: Hi, I'm Lora from the Continuing Education and Professional Studies department at SAIT 

PAT: And I'm Pat, a partner with Creative Links focused on talent for energy.  

LORA: And in this episode, we're thrilled to have Brandon Hanson with us to delve into the world of NDT. 

Thanks for joining us. Could you please introduce yourself and share a fun fact?  

Branden: Hi, my name is Brandon Hanson. I work as a non-destructive testing technician. And a fun fact would be I'm [00:01:00] a father of three and now turned into a non-destructive testing trainer or instructor.  

LORA: Awesome, so, Brandon, can we start with just what is NDT or non-destructive testing? 

Branden: Non-destructive testing essentially is inspecting the materials that create the world around us, the infrastructure, as well as the components that go into manufacturing and automation.  

LORA: So, what sorts of things would you test?  

Branden: I started in aviation. That's how I found my way into the industry. And so, aircraft get cycled every three to six months through a maintenance cycle and they need to be inspected every three to six months. 

And when those airplanes come down for a landing, they go through a series of impact forces. And every time those impact forces get implemented, there's a risk of damage. And so, we need to be able to test for those damages at regular intervals. Moving on from aviation, it got me into oil and gas, and then the same idea, oil and gas is a lot of the infrastructure around Alberta has been welded together and also cycled through, pressure events or weather events, and those cycles could result in damage or fatigue. 

And so, we need to be testing those regularly. So really, non-destructive testing in a nutshell is just all of the materials that make up the world need to be tested and for failures or for defects.  

LORA: I imagine, especially in industrial situations or like you mentioned aviation, thank God you're testing those materials when we get on a plane. 

Branden: Yeah, a lot of the time it could turn into a catastrophic failure, even if it's oil and gas equipment or mining equipment or construction equipment. Yeah. And then the aircraft as well. The aircraft, obviously, that would be loss of life. And whether it's loss of life or loss of profit, a loss is a bad situation for the client. And so, our job is to prevent those losses from happening.  

LORA: So how did you get into it?  

Branden: Long story short, when I got out of high school, I wasn't really sure about what I wanted to get into. My father was working in aviation at the time, and he had seen these technicians coming into the hangar all the time working on the aircraft that he was dismantling. 

And these technicians came in with this idea. Extremely clean coveralls and funds, aviator sunglasses and cool little gadgets and he asked the questions before I ever could and upon further investigation thought maybe that would be a really good way for me to get in, my brother was a aircraft maintenance engineer and my father was an aircraft components technician and so I wanted into aviation, but not really the same way they wanted. 

So, I guess when I got into it, I found the information from SAIT and that it was a 15-week program and that was quite surprising. Given the technical depth of the inspections, 15 weeks seemed awfully short. I was expecting maybe a two-year mechanical engineering technologist program or something like that, but the non-destructive testing foundation is only 15 weeks at the time, so that was also an added benefit of getting in, finding something very quickly, and then navigating my career after that, but at least I would get a couple of trades under my belt. 

LORA: So, you mentioned the gadgets. I'm curious because I've looked at the program and I know there's a number of different methods. What kind of tools do you use and what are the actual different types of methods that you use to test materials?  

Branden: To start with the different types of methods, across all jurisdictions in the world, there's typically about five, five main methods of non-destructive testing. 

Those five methods get broken up into two different categories, whether they're surface, so anything that's broken is open to the surface that we can see with our eyes. And just using a couple of techniques to help. Or there's volumetric testing, so anything below the surface. So, the two surface methods are liquid penetrant testing and magnetic particle testing. 

And so, we use either a penetrating oil that has been pigmented very bright colours, so it just makes our job a lot easier to find out where this oil is leaking from. And magnetic particle testing is the same idea just adding the benefit of magnetism pulling in iron particles. And so those are the surface methods of the volumetric methods would be very similar to medical applications of x ray or ultrasonics. So, we can apply the exact same principles of those two, just like we would go to the doctor and get diagnosis, we can also use on steel.  

PAT: Very interesting. I certainly didn't know that about NDT. Are there any examples or do you have any stories about where NDT prevented a catastrophic event and really demonstrates the impact of the work you do? 

Branden: Sure, it's actually an everyday occurrence that we come across defects that if they went undetected would spell catastrophe for the client and for any users of that equipment. One really good example would be finding broken bolts on amusement park rides. Obviously, that would spell disaster for the children that are riding those rides. 

And I have come across situations very similar to that or even on aircraft or really any mobile equipment. You come across broken fasteners, broken nuts, bolts, welds, and you can obviously use your imagination to see where that would go if it went undetected for any extended period of time.  

LORA: So, I've been in situations where I've been looking at park ride or something like that and I've thought, I wonder who tests this? And now I know. So, it's actually really reassuring that it's something that's done by these organizations regularly to make sure that we're safe.  

Branden: And that's one over me because I never really thought about it prior to getting into the industry. I just took a lot of it for granted. And once I got into the industry and started testing certain items and moving through different sectors of testing, I didn't quite realize at the time just how much needed to be tested regularly. 

Even things like bridges and train lines that I got to inspect, never really thought it needed to be inspected as often as it does, until I started doing it and realizing, wow, it's a good thing there are technicians out there doing the tests.  

PAT: What does a typical day look like for an NDT technician?  

Branden: That really depends on which sectors or which industries you're serving. 

Here in Calgary, if we're talking local in the local manufacturing markets or something like that, it would be a typical eight to five moving around from the various manufacturing facilities. But then also in Alberta, we do have a lot of field work, obviously up in Fort Mac. Or even in the foothills, there's a lot of gas sites and transmission sites and refineries and stuff like that. 

And if you're getting into the field work, those are going to be very long shifts, about 12 hours, 10 to 12 hours. A lot of travel. You have your suite of tickets that you might be certified under. You don't need to have them all, but you can be a technician in one to five of them. And depending on what certifications you have, that will dictate exactly where you go for that day. 

PAT: Do you actually work for the company that, you know, the industrial or manufacturing site that you're inspecting? Or is it specialized companies that offer that service to the different industries?  

Branden: Yeah, so it actually falls into both camps. A lot of the time you can be directly hired by the manufacturer, or a lot of times you can work for the service provider. 

It really comes down to bias. If they need to have an unbiased opinion on, for maybe insurance reasons or something like that, they would bring in a third-party inspection unit. Or if they can handle it in house, they can definitely hire in house.  

LORA: What other industries would utilize NDT? So, we've mentioned aviation, we've mentioned oil and gas, we've mentioned amusement parks, construction, I imagine for bridges, but are there any we wouldn't normally think of that leverage to NDT? 

Branden: Actually, the very first was the train industry. When they started creating these train cars and rail segments, the best way that they could prevent any catastrophic failures from happening was let's start testing the materials before we actually fabricate them and put them on the rails. We don't want to find any accidents later on. 

And so, train is the, or rail I guess would be the first one. I have had my share in wind generation, wind power generation, as well as paper and pulp and lumber mills. Mining up north, even in the hard rock mines, coal mines and stuff like that, all that heavy machinery constantly working needs to be inspected. 

Yeah, it's pretty much every single type of material that you come across in your day needs to be inspected at some point.  

PAT: The role and, and just the inspection is evolving, say with the evolving energy industry as we look to new sources of energy, say hydrogen or some of the emissions technologies that we're using, like carbon capture and storage. 

How do you see NDT evolving with some of the way our economy and energy system is evolving?  

Branden: Well, with really any advancements in energy, it's still a matter of infrastructure being constructed and anytime that infrastructure needs to be built, we're involved on the testing process. So, it really doesn't matter if we're going to evolve into wind or solar or any other type of alternative energy sources. 

Things still need to be built. Things still need to be inspected.  

PAT: Must mean great sort of career resiliency and opportunity for growth for people who choose this career.  

Branden: Absolutely. In the 10 years that I've done it, I've had my fair share of brand-new construction work as well as facilities or even equipment that's been around for 80-some-odd years, still needs to be inspected regularly. 

So, it's great in that aspect that you have kind of career longevity.  

LORA: What type of person makes a good NDT technician?  

Branden: Highly technical. There's a lot of interpretation, especially with the volumetric aspects of our industry. When we're dealing with ultrasonics and radiography, there are our medical brothers and sisters. 

They go to school for two, three, four years to get those specific tickets. We do it in a couple of weeks sometimes. And so, we need to be very technically apt. Yeah, very technical, I think is the biggest thing that you need.  

PAT: What about, yeah, when you said 15 weeks training, I thought you've got to come into this career with some foundational aptitudes, technically minded, that kind of stuff. 

What about math or anything else in terms of some of those qualities that people would need to bring to the table?  

Branden: With our current certification system, grade 10 math is all that's required to actually get into the door. And because it is so specific and so technical, a lot of the math you learn right in the course, a lot of the application of that math, so it's very applied math, and not so much theoretical. 

LORA: So, by technical, do you mean having an understanding of how things work and are connected together or how to interpret results?  

Branden: The interpretation side of the results is actually more experience based. It's going to be at least a year before you can start moving on to a level one or level two in each of the methods. 

And so, it's like an apprenticeship model. Where you start off as a trainee, you take the courses, and you start moving your way in through the industries and start learning about it, mostly learning how things are manufactured, learning how things are made or used and how they can break, is actually part of the requirements of the courses as well. 

You need to take a Materials and Processes course, which is about a two week, give or take, about 60-hour course. Just on the materials and processes of the world.  

LORA: So, Brandon, SAIT has a 15-week certificate, but we've also got a number of courses in continuing education that are just distinct courses. What would be your recommendation for someone who's interested in doing this or wants to follow a career path or wants to even explore if this is something for them? 

Branden: Typically find technicians that are approaching the continuing education with already a little bit of a background in the industry, whether they're coming from construction directly, maybe they're an ex-welder, maybe they're a pipe fitter. Somebody that has a little bit of experience with that side of the industry. 

So, the continuing education portion is really good for those technicians. For somebody that's coming in directly from a totally separate industry that has nothing really, they don't know too much about this side of things, usually the certificate program is much, a much better fit. They get a much broader view of what NDT is, all of the required training for all five methods in those 15 weeks, and then they can pick and choose after which one they actually want to specialize in. 

LORA: And so, I heard you say that there is a requirement for a grade 10 math, but are there any other prerequisites for taking the program?  

Branden: No, grade 10 math is the basic prerequisite and then anything else in order to get certified, we give you in that 15-week course. If you do go with the continuing education portfolio, all of those prerequisites are offered with continuing education. 

LORA: So, it's a great option for someone who maybe is not really interested in doing a full diploma or degree to explore their career that it's an option. And it sounds like it's a great option for people who are already in the trades who might want to do something a little bit different.  

Branden: Absolutely. A lot of the welders and pipe fitters that we work with regularly, they are always asking questions because maybe after 15 years of welding, they want to get into something different and they want to get into maybe the inspection side of it. 

And I always suggest maybe taking the two-week individual courses, and that usually sets them off on a different career path.  

PAT: You know, people are always interested in salary range associated with occupations that they're considered. What is the salary range NDT roles?  

Branden: Salary is a little hard to define, mostly with the style of work that we end up offering here. 

With NDT, it's very hourly based. Sometimes you're doing 12 hour shifts, sometimes you're doing 8 hour shifts, so if we're dealing with salary, you enter the market as a trainee, and you're sitting at about 21, 22 an hour, and then upon your first level 1 ticket in a volumetric or a level 2 ticket in a surface method, you bump up to about 36, 37 an hour, And then once you get a level two volumetric, you move on to about 45 an hour as a fully ticketed personnel. 

LORA: So, is there a body that certifies the various methods? I know it's a SAIT certification that we give, but is there another association or is there another certifying body associated with NDT?  

Branden: Sure. I mentioned jurisdictions and across the globe, we have a bunch of different jurisdictions for certification and in Canada, it's under a CGSB certification system. 

Okay. That's governed by NRCan, or Natural Resources Canada. And they're the ones that govern the training requirements, the prerequisites, how many hours you need to be working in the field as an apprentice before you can move on to another ticket. But in other areas of the world, that CGSB ticket sometimes is transferable, and you just have to do an equivalency test, and then you can become American certified. 

So, with the ASNT programs, with the PCN systems, C SWIP systems all across the globe.  

LORA: That's so interesting. It's a great career path. 

PAT: It is. I'm just very surprised by, yeah, just the whole process and such an important role in terms of being everybody safe. What, what do you find is the most challenging aspect of being an NDT technician? 

Branden: Probably the first couple of years is the most challenging. I think that's the same with a bunch of different careers, but this one is probably, the most challenging. The most uniquely different because we have to be on the road so much and even as a trainee, as somebody just entering the workforce, especially the NDT workforce, you're going to be traveling all across Alberta, usually all across BC, but you're not making as much money as maybe your colleagues. 

Sometimes it's all out of pocket. You're going to have to force pay for your gas out of pocket. At least that was my experience. So, I think that can be very challenging just finding trainee work, but then once you get certified in level one or level twos, then the work almost finds you. There are days where I still have my phone ringing off the hook, even though I'm busy doing something else or busy on another job, the phone is always ringing. 

So, the first couple of years is usually the most challenging, and the road work at whatever level it happens to be, that's probably the most challenging part, at least for a senior technician like myself. I want to be at home, I want to be enjoying my kids, I want to be at home with my wife, but the work is in Fort Mac, where the work is on the road somewhere. 

LORA: What's the most interesting project you worked on?  

Branden: For me personally, it was probably the mining equipment up in Fort Mac, the oil sand mines, because this is some of the largest equipment in the world, largest mining trucks, largest mining shovels. And so going from aircraft to pipeline to pressure vessels, and then all of a sudden seeing these 800 ton rolling haul trucks that I get to climb in, climb on, crawl through, and inspect. 

That was probably some of the most interesting work I've ever done.  

LORA: Yeah, it would be. What do you think is the most important skill? Is it attention to detail? Is it how you interpret them? Is it working with others to really understand how the equipment's being used? I'm just so curious.  

Branden: Sometimes it's really difficult for the technicians to become well rounded technicians. 

Normally when we're interpreting the data, we're harvesting the data or we're creating the reports. Sometimes we can't get that data to the client in an effective format where technicians were very technical in our, in our communication. And sometimes the clients speak in a totally different language than we do. 

Maybe they're more on the quality assurance side of things, maybe they're purchasers or something like that. And so usually that's one of the biggest challenges that we see with new technicians is they get into the field, and they know the technical stuff really well. But then it's also the soft skills dealing with clients afterwards. 

A lot of the time, even your own employers won't be directly dealing with the clients. You as the technician will be dealing with the client.  

LORA: Yeah, for sure. And I imagine just conveying the results in a way that they can understand could be really interesting. For folks that are not technical.  

Branden: Yeah, absolutely. 

That's actually been some of the most rewarding work that I've gotten to do is just honing my skills at paperwork and attention to detail and writing procedures and writing written instructions now into training and instruction. So that's all helped me. And I've picked up a lot of skills with just dealing with clients and making sure they get the information in a meaningful format. 

Now I can ensure students get the information in a meaningful format.  

PAT: Are the tools and technology's evolving in the field?  

Branden: Yeah, since I've gotten into it, a lot of the ultrasonic equipment, because that is my specialty, is ultrasonics inspection, I can speak to the ultrasonic equipment being massively advanced since I even started. 

And it was about 12 years ago that I got into the industry, and we've seen differences of just single crystal or single sound generators to phased array sound generators, where we're dealing with 64 crystals instead of one. And now with Industry 4. 0, we're dealing with a lot of more AI driven inspections, a lot of procedural based inspections that AI can now follow. 

We can do a lot of remote inspections using drones or 3D scanning, LiDAR scanning, so we don't even need to go into the worksites anymore.  

LORA: Wow, that's super cool. So, what would, like, a day in an NDT technician's life look like?  

Branden: A typical day for a non-destructive testing technician would be usually meeting at the shop, getting your work orders. 

Sometimes it's cleaning equipment. A lot of our equipment needs to be regularly calibrated to make sure it's working properly, [00:19:00] or maybe some performance checks, making sure the equipment is working properly. After that, we start looking through the work orders for that day or the job scopes for that day. 

If it's in town, like I mentioned, you'd be moving around from manufacturing shop to manufacturing shop. If you're working up north or if you're working out in the field, typically you'll get the job scope from your primary contractor or your client, and you'll just go, start going through the list, making sure all of these items that need to be inspected do get inspected. 

LORA: Back to the 15-week program, I'm assuming, because we're SAIT, that there is a lot of hands-on practice that you're spending time testing various things. Tell us a little bit about what that looks like. Do you go into our labs and start testing the trucks in the heavy-duty program or?  

Branden: The certification tests are very practical based. 

So, in order to get your certifications, you have two written exams, then you have a practical exam. And so, our courses that we've designed are almost mimicking those practical exams perfectly. And so, we just have a small test [00:20:00] pieces of different weld configurations, different bolt configurations, different pins, different shapes and sizes, different materials. 

As for practical to theory hour ratio, I've heard that the program is quite unique in the sense that we have to max our practical labs to only 10 students instead of maybe 20 or 30 students. So very small lab group sizes that allows for a lot of one-on-one mentoring and coaching from the instructor directly, a lot of, a lot more time. 

And then there is quite a large theoretical component as well, and that usually gets broken up morning to evening, so they're very condensed courses. Morning is usually theory, and then that practical stuff right in the afternoon.  

PAT: And does SAIT have, say, relationships with industry? Like, what is that sort of job search or starting a career after somebody has wrapped up their training? 

Branden: So, SAIT does quite a bit to help with that right away, before the students even graduate the 15-week program. We usually have some industry representatives come in and talk about their company. Because it's such a broad industry, there's a lot of different avenues you can go, different industries you can [00:21:00] inspect. 

And so, we have a lot of industry representatives to come in and talk to the students about different directions they can go. After graduation, we try to keep a very close network of our students, our alumni, as well as our instructors and other industries just to keep that loop closed.  

PAT: I knew what it was but didn't know how you got into that career. 

Branden: That's usually the most challenging part of my life is to explain it to other people because the first question I get after I explain non-destructive testing, they say, well, that means there must be destructive testing, right?  

LORA: Yeah.  

Branden: Yes, there is. It's not as exciting as it sounds. You're probably imagining TNT or some sort of explosive. 

It's not that exciting. Actually, the non-destructive side is a lot more exciting. We don't want to destroy the component before we can even use it. We want to make sure it's still in good operating condition.  

LORA: Yeah, that's pretty interesting.  

Branden: It's interesting that we get to work so closely here at SAIT with the Artsmith Center and the AME programs, the aircraft structure programs. 

It really opens up the students eyes a lot sooner than maybe my eyes were opened up to just how broad the industry is. When I got into it, I expected aviation. But the majority of our students come into it expecting oil and gas and welding and pipeline and stuff like that. When we get to introduce them to amusement park rides and trains and airplanes, they really start to see just where their career can take them and how many different avenues. 

Like for myself, I've touched 15 or 16 different industries in only 10 years doing the one job.  

PAT: If you think about, how do you build a resilient career? One of those options is to be able to move across industries. One industry is perhaps on a bit of a slump, being able to move into something else like that. That's the definition of career transferability and resiliency, I think.  

LORA: Yeah, that's a really good point. My other curiosity just popped into my mind is especially talking about aviation. And I know there's a lot of work being done on advanced materials and testing different materials type. How does that affect your industry? 

Branden: So, we have the core five inspection techniques for the inspection methods. And as we create new materials and new composites and develop those areas, we're always developing new inspection methods to match those new materials. And so just because you stop at the one to the five somewhere in there doesn't mean that you're not going to go and get specialty tickets that are focused solely on these new materials that are being created. 

LORA: Okay. Yeah, that's really interesting because I remember the last time I was up at Art Smith, they have A mini fabrication or a mini wing and they have it in, I think it's aluminum and then a composite material and then something that's like super light and their design totally different, but yeah, it's really interesting. 

Branden: Yeah, they're inspected totally different. And so that's always exciting on my point of, of the inspection process is now I have to try and figure out what the best inspection process is to still get the same results that I would have. If the wing was made out of aluminum, now it's made out of a different composite. 

LORA: Yeah.  

Branden: How could I inspect it differently?  

LORA: Yeah. Interesting. Continuously evolving as well as the different industries that you're testing evolve.  

Branden: Yes. To say that I've been bored in 12 years would be a complete lie. I've never been bored with this industry.  

PAT: It's just so important. Public education about what you do to keep society safe. 

Again, I think in the work that I do, looking at how do we reduce emissions? And we think about, Again, hydrogen is an option. Small nuclear reactors, all of those kinds of things, and safety is a huge concern when we look at some of those things that are a little less understood by the general public, and so again, it just is so interesting to know what's going on behind the scene to ensure that we're all safe.  

Branden: Yeah, when we have mechanical engineers that come in, they maybe get bored of sitting behind a desk and doing drawings and analysis. They get into an entity position, and they're blown away at just how much we jam into only 15 weeks. 

It's really a two-year program that we jam into 15 weeks.  

PAT: Seriously, as I think about, it's still, like I said, it blows me away. 15 weeks, get your foot in the door, and then obviously there's continuous learning and stuff. But for the right person, very cool.  

LORA: Thank you for sharing your insights with us. 

We'll post a number of links in the resources. So, a link to the program, a link to continuing education. I think we could also post some links to more information about the job demand and industry certification. Look for those in the resources.  

I don't know, Pat, I was really amazed by just how much NDT tests and does, and I feel so relieved that it's a thing, and I just think it's a really great option for some people who are looking for kind of more of Maybe a nontraditional path to a really interesting career. 

PAT: Yeah, I totally agree. You think of those people that have that technical background or have that technical mindset and approach to things and methodical and pay attention to detail and this is just another opportunity for them that may not be interested in, as you said, go doing a two year degree or a diploma or a four year degree, this is a fabulous option.  

LORA: Yeah, either 15 weeks or potentially part time through continuing education, so it's a great option for people.  

ANNCR: The Best Careers You Never Knew Existed Podcast, powered by SAIT, funded by the government of Alberta. Have a career suggestion or want to appear as a guest? 

Get in touch email careerspodcast@sait.ca or reach out directly to Lora Bucsis on LinkedIn. Rate and review this podcast. And you might find your review read on a future episode. Please subscribe to the best careers you never knew existed, wherever find podcasts are downloaded. The Best Careers You Never Knew Existed Podcast with Lora Bucsis and Pat Huffnagle-Smith. Produced by Terran Anthony Allen and Jenna Smith. Executive produced by Lora Bucsis. Special thanks to SAIT Radio for their support and the use of their studios. And most of all, thank you for listening.