הדוח של ד"ר יוסי שואף, נשיא ISRANDT ואשר הוקרא בפני משתתפי האסיפה הכללית של ICNDT

 

Mr. Chairman, participants, friends.

 

16 years ago Mr Gabi Shoef and a few of the leading  NDT specialist in Israel established ISRANDT, The Israeli Society for NDT, WITH A lot of help and encouragement from the ASNT, the Italian NDT Society and our friend Dr. Nardoni, the Bulgarian Society with our friends Prof. Michovsky and Prof. Skordev, the British Society with Mr. Tompson and many others.

This is an excellent opportunity to tell in short about its activities, especially in the field of certification.

Shortly after the creation, the society established its certifying body – ISRACERT and this received its accreditation according ISO 17024 from Sincert, Italy.

Exams have been prepared in our language – Hebrew, while the level 3 remain in English.

The Israeli certifying body is recognized mutually with all the EFNDT certifying bodies and now by ICNDT as well.

The society with its some 150 members supports and encourages the education, training and certification of NDT personnel in Israel.

There is a revival of academic courses in Israel. Prof. Notea that was the head of QA and NDT department in the Technion, a prestigious university in Israel, established 2 academic courses last year, another course run by a Afeka college in Tel Aviv and in 2 weeks another one will start in the same place given by myself.

We, the society see this as the future of this profession, the same goals as Academia. 

The society also recognizes Israeli training centers. One of these training centers trained in the last 3 years 788 trainees in 87 courses.

In this occasion I want to inform that the Technion in Haifa has received an impressive grant to expand its activities. This is a good opportunity to establish the first academic program towards to B.Sc in NDT Engineering and we will need for that the assistance of experienced NDT societies. 

The society creates an annual technical conference with participation of some 250 people along with a short course and exhibition. It also publishes its bulletin with technical papers and news on the NDT in the country. All this information is accessible to the members and others in the Society web site.

 

Nevertheless, ISRACERT made examinations for some 50 people during the years.

There are 3 reasons

The country is small and main part of the technicians – especially the defense technicians do not need formal certifications. The same is for the academic and research members.

The main reason is that most of the projects in the country comply with American standards where the certifications are employer based. Here, there is no need for third party – the level 3 gives the certification and ISRACERT is not required.

Only when PED ( the European Pressure Vessels directive) in required, there is a need for third party but must be European and for that ISRACERT made agreements with such parties with the benefit that the exams are translated to Hebrew. Unfortunately the party that cooperated in the past no longer responds and we are looking for another one

 

It is not a secret that the NDT branch of the Israeli Engineers association ignores the possibility of using ISRACERT for certification and prefers to bring an examiner from abroad and all that from their own reasons. That leads that a part of the potential candidates do not arrive to us. Still, we  are going to have a common conference in June 2015 and hope that this may

 

All that, challenges ISRACERT to deal simultaneously with marketing, technical developing, finance and all that with very low resources. 

 

Maintaining the certification costs a lot of money only for the accreditation audits and payments. We try to broaden the activities of the Certifying body to more areas relating to QA in order to share the costs, but for the moment with no success.

 

ISRANDT is proud that Israel has its own certifying body, as many other NDT Societies did and will do all needed to develop it. I will appreciate any communication from other bodies that have experience dealing with such situations.

 

Dr. Yossi Shoef

President ISRANDT