Meeting 2 - Teleconference
July 2006

The second meeting of the NANDTB was held by teleconference in July. Most of the Board members could make it and some progress and changes can be reported.

The recognition of Aerospace NDT training is one of the primary activities of the Board and finalisation of a guideline document is approaching. Once developed, it will ensure consistent and accurate assessment of training and examination programs. Also the 2006 version of AS3669 requires organisations to have a written practice describing how they control all aspects of their NDT operations. A guideline document is already prepared and will be posted on the web site once this goes live. If anyone would like to obtain a copy of our guideline document, contact the NANDTB Secretary directly (chockings@qantas.com.au). On the subject of the web site, CASA staff Leanne Fogarty is working on this project and reports that it is taking shape nicely. It should be available soon. Other administrative procedures are also being fine tuned and good progress has been made in a relatively short time.

Mutual Recognition with other NANDTBs and Regulators is also important and it was reported that there was not much interest in Asia in NANDTB formation. The Europeans however are further advanced and active. Active enough to attach a European NANDTB meeting to the end of the EFNDT conference in Berlin in September. Hopefully, outcomes from that meeting will be reported as soon as practicable.

Membership changes were also a part of the discussions due to the change in employment of some members. Malcolm Oakey having taken up a position with ATTAR, retained his place on the Board because he continued to enjoy the nomination of Rosebank Engineering as their Level 3. The Board did lose the services of Trevor Jones who was previously nominated by Qantas Defence Services. He no longer works for QDS. Drawing from the other available nominees presented to the original meeting in March, Gavin Smith from Australian Aerospace was elected to replace Trevor for the remainder of his term. This change maintained the balance of representation and was in accord with our charter documents.

CASA was provided with NANDTB comments on the proposed changes to their NDT advisory documents and procedures. It is yet to fully consider these comments and respond. It was also noted that the Licensing Group within CASA, which manages their involvement in NDT, is to get a new section leader, but no appointment has been made at this time. Lastly, there was an inquiry from New Zealand that they would like to be kept informed of the work of the Board and this will be done directly and through the NDT Journal and web pages.