What a Nadcap NDT Assessor Pulls From Your Personnel Files First
Nadcap AC7114 findings concentrate on records, not on technique. Assessors sample personnel files and write nonconformances for a lapsed annual vision test, on-the-job hours logged as one summary line, examination papers discarded once the score was transcribed, and a written practice that never names the Responsible Level 3 as a person. Fix the paperwork and the audit shortens.
AC7114 is the Nadcap audit criteria for nondestructive testing. The baseline covers the quality system, personnel and process control; the slash sheets carry method detail, with AC7114/1 penetrant, /2 magnetic particle, /3 ultrasonic, /4 film radiography, /5 eddy current, plus sheets for ultrasonic inspection of rotating components, remote interpretation of film and digital images, and digital radiography using detector arrays and computed radiography. Suppliers rehearse the slash sheets because those read like technique. The nonconformances land somewhere else. An assessor working a fixed number of days pulls a personnel list, samples files, and compares each file against two things at once: your own written practice, and the NAS 410 floor beneath it. The four highest-frequency defects are all clerical. A missing date, a missing signature, a missing paper, a missing name. Technician competence has no bearing on any of them.
Source: PRI Nadcap audit criteria AC7114 for nondestructive testing and slash sheets AC7114/1 (penetrant), /2 (magnetic particle), /3 (ultrasonic), /4 (film radiography), /5 (eddy current), /7 (ultrasonic, rotating components), /9 (remote interpretation) and /10 (digital radiography), published on eAuditNet; PRI Nadcap Supplier Audit Guide (1 August 2023) for nonconformance response timing and merit status; AIA NAS 410 Rev. 6 (December 2025) and Rev. 5 (September 2020), para 4.5 and the training, experience, examination and vision requirements; ASNT Recommended Practice No. SNT-TC-1A (2024), paras 5.1, 5.5, 5.6 and 8.1.1.
| Record type | What the assessor asks to see | What NAS 410 requires | The defect that gets written up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vision examination | A dated, signed vision report for every name sampled from the personnel list, plus the colour record | Near-vision acuity to Jaeger 1 or equivalent, administered annually; colour contrast differentiation on initial certification and at five-year intervals | Near-vision current but the colour contrast plates never repeated after hire; or an annual test that slipped from 14 March to 2 April |
| On-the-job experience hours | A dated accumulation log showing hours by method, work performed and the certified individual supervising | Minimum trainee experience hours per method and level; the specific examination after 75 percent of hours, the practical after 100 percent | One retrospective line reading "requirements met", signed on certification day, which cannot demonstrate examination sequencing |
| Examination papers | The general, specific and practical papers, the answer keys, the candidate's marked responses and the part scores | Minimum 70 percent on each of general, specific and practical, and a composite of at least 80 percent | Only the composite score retained; papers and keys lived on the departed Level 3's laptop and no longer exist |
| Written practice | The controlled document, its revision history, the approval signature and the page naming the Responsible Level 3 | The employer identifies a Responsible Level 3 in writing (para 4.5) | A job title named instead of a person, or a named Level 3 who resigned two revisions ago and was never replaced in the text |
| The Level 3's own qualification file | Certification in each covered method, the examination evidence behind it, current vision record, and the written designation | The Responsible Level 3 is qualified to the standard and the employer holds the supporting records | "Our consultant keeps those" — the contracted Level 3's records sit at the consultancy and cannot be produced during the audit |
| Certification records | The signed certification record showing training, experience, examination results, vision status and the signing authority | The employer certifies its own employees and maintains the record while certification is in effect | Certification record signed by the outside agency rather than an officer of the employer |
| Procedures and technique sheets | Approval signature and date from a Level 3 qualified in that method, on every document in the audited scope | Procedures approved by the applicable Level 3, internal or external | A technique sheet revised by engineering and issued without re-approval; revision date later than the approval date on the same page |
| Personnel list | A current list of all NDT personnel including trainees and suspended individuals, with method, level, certification expiry and vision due date | Records that substantiate every entry on the list | The list does not reconcile to the files or to the signatures on inspection reports from the accreditation period |
The Assessor Samples Files Before Watching a Single Shot
The AC7114 audit runs against a personnel list you supply. The assessor picks names from it, pulls the corresponding qualification files, and reads each file against two documents at once: your written practice, and NAS 410. A file that satisfies NAS 410 but falls short of your own written practice is still a nonconformance, because the written practice is the commitment your primes flowed down and accepted. Shops lose points here by writing an ambitious written practice, promising more hours or a tighter recertification interval than the standard asks, then certifying people against the standard instead of their own text.
The second reconciliation is the list against reality. The list shows every certified technician, every trainee, and everyone suspended or lapsed, with method, level, certification expiry and vision due date. Assessors compare that list to the people working the floor during the audit and to the signatures on inspection records from the past accreditation period. A technician who signed a penetrant report in March and does not appear on the list produces a finding that touches product, which is a heavier category to answer than a records gap.
This is why AC7114 preparation that opens with technique demonstrations opens in the wrong place. The technique portion is defended by procedures, technique sheets and a competent operator, and most shops already have all three. The personnel portion is defended by paper generated over years by people who have since left the company. Rebuild that paper first. Ordering the work this way also frees your Level 3's audit-week hours for the job audits, which is the one part of the assessment where their physical presence changes the outcome.
Vision: The Finding That Writes Itself
NAS 410 requires near-vision acuity to Jaeger 1 or equivalent, administered annually, and colour contrast differentiation on initial certification and at five-year intervals after that. Both are administered by an eye care professional or by a person the Responsible Level 3 designates and has trained to administer the test. The annual cadence is what breaks. A technician tested on 14 March one year and 2 April the next has a gap on the face of the record, and the assessor reads dates rather than intentions. Scheduling drift of three weeks produces the same finding as forgetting entirely.
The colour contrast record is the one most often missing outright. Shops treat vision as a single annual event, run the near-vision chart every year, and never repeat the pseudo-isochromatic plates after the hiring physical. Five years later the record does not exist. Penetrant and magnetic particle files carry the highest exposure, because contrast and colour perception are the sensory basis of those methods, and an assessor reading a fluorescent penetrant file looks for that record specifically rather than incidentally.
Two controls close this permanently. Put vision due dates on the same tracker that carries certification expiry, and drive each date off the individual's own last test rather than a company-wide anniversary. Then keep the actual signed report: chart or plates used, distance, eye tested, corrected or uncorrected, result, examiner name, signature and date. A spreadsheet cell reading "vision current" is a management aid, not a record. The signed report is the record, and it is what gets handed across the table.
On-the-Job Hours: The Log Nobody Kept Until the Week Before
NAS 410 sets minimum experience hours per method and level, and Rev 5 sequenced the examinations against those hours: the specific examination after at least 75 percent of the required experience is accumulated, the practical after 100 percent. That sequencing is only auditable if hours accumulate on dated entries. A single line stating the technician met the requirement, signed on the day of certification, cannot demonstrate that the specific examination came after 75 percent, because there is no dated accumulation for the examination date to be compared against.
A defensible log carries the date, the hours, the method, the type of work or part family, and the name of the certified individual who supervised. It is signed periodically, not reconstructed. Assessors test the log against other evidence in the building: timesheets, job travellers, shift records, inspection reports. Hours logged for ultrasonic inspection on a day the plant was shut, or four hundred hours accumulated by a technician who spent that quarter on another contract, converts a records finding into a question about integrity, and that question has a different escalation path.
Trainees are the population most at risk, because their files stay open longest and the person supervising them changes with the shift pattern. Assign one owner for trainee logs, in most shops the Level 3 or a designated Level 2, and review them monthly rather than at certification. Our method-by-method breakdown of the formal training and experience minimums sits at /nas-410-certification-requirements, which is the figure set your written practice must meet or exceed before any of this logging matters.
Examination Papers: Retention Is the Requirement, Not the Score
The file contains the examinations, not a transcription of their outcome. That means the general, specific and practical papers or their controlled equivalents, the answer keys used, the candidate's marked responses, the individual part scores and the composite calculation. NAS 410 grading requires a minimum of 70 percent on each of the general, specific and practical examinations and a composite of at least 80 percent. A file recording only "82 percent" cannot demonstrate that no individual part fell below 70, and the assessor has no route to that conclusion other than the papers themselves.
The practical examination file is the thinnest one in most shops and the one assessors read hardest. It identifies the specimens by control number, states the discontinuities present in each, records what the candidate detected and how they reported it, captures the instrument and settings used, and carries the checklist the examiner scored. Where the practical included writing or interpreting a technique, that work product belongs in the file as well. A practical recorded as a single pass mark on a certification form is not an examination record.
Two structural defects recur. Examination material lives on one person's laptop, so when that person leaves, neither the papers nor the keys survive; the resignation sequence and how to recover from it is set out at /consulting/ndt-level-3-resigned-what-to-do. And the specific examination cites a procedure at a revision superseded two years earlier, which tells an assessor the examination bank has never been reviewed against the current procedure set. Both close by treating the bank as a controlled document with an owner, a revision history and a review cycle.
The Written Practice That Never Names a Person
AC7114 audits the written practice as the governing document, then audits everything else against it. The recurring defect is that the document names a role, "the NDT Level III", where NAS 410 para 4.5 requires the employer to identify a Responsible Level 3. An assessor asks who that is, and the answer must be a person, in writing, with the covered methods stated and an effective date. A written practice naming a Level 3 who resigned eighteen months ago is worse than one naming nobody, because it proves the document is not maintained.
The second defect is drift between promise and practice. The written practice commits to annual technique reviews, a defined recertification interval, a specified examination structure and a designated examination administrator, and then the shop operates on a different rhythm. Each of those commitments is an audit question waiting to be asked. Read the document as an assessor would, sentence by sentence, and for every "shall" identify the record that proves it happened in the last twelve months. Where no record exists, produce one or change the sentence.
Approval is the third. The written practice carries the Responsible Level 3's approval signature and date, and every procedure and technique sheet in the audited scope carries approval from a Level 3 qualified in that method. Engineering revisions issued without re-approval are common and are always caught, because the revision history and the approval block sit on the same page and the dates contradict each other. Reviewing approval dates against revision dates across the whole document set takes an afternoon and removes an entire finding category.
Your Outside Level 3's Records Belong in Your Building
NAS 410 permits the Responsible Level 3 to be contracted, and AC7114 recognises an external Level 3 approving procedures. What the audit does not accept is an empty folder. The supplier holds the contracted Level 3's qualification evidence: certification in each method being covered, the examination evidence behind that certification, a current vision record, and the written designation naming them for your facility. Assessors ask for this file early, and "our consultant has that" reads as a nonconformance because responsibility for the records rests on the employer, not the agency.
The service agreement carries audit weight of its own. State the methods covered, the activities delegated, written practice approval, procedure and technique sheet approval, examination preparation, administration and grading, internal NDT audits, the response time for approvals, and the requirement that the Level 3 be available on site for the audit. Nadcap audits are scheduled well in advance through eAuditNet, so contract availability for those specific dates rather than assuming a consultant with several clients will be free during your window.
The boundary between what the outside Level 3 approves and what your company signs is the single most misread part of the arrangement, and we set it out in full at /consulting/outside-ndt-level-3-can-and-cannot-do. The agency qualifies; the employer certifies. An officer of the employer signs the certification record. Certification records signed by the consultancy are a finding under NAS 410 and under SNT-TC-1A alike, and correcting them after the fact means reissuing every affected record.
Job Audits: The File and the Floor Must Agree
Part of the AC7114 assessment is watching work performed. The assessor selects a job, reads the applicable procedure and technique sheet, then observes a certified technician run it and compares every step against the written instruction. Failures here rarely involve skill. They involve a technician doing something entirely reasonable that the procedure does not say: a dwell time carried over from a previous employer, an emulsification step performed from habit, a calibration block chosen because it is the one that lives on the bench.
Prepare by running the job audit yourself, first. Have your Level 3 observe each method being performed against the current procedure, procedure in hand, and record every deviation. Each deviation resolves one of two ways: the technician changes, or the procedure changes. Both are legitimate outcomes, and both must be closed before the assessor arrives. A deviation found internally, root-caused and corrected is evidence that your internal audit system works, which is itself an AC7114 subject area.
Cross-check the technicians you plan to have demonstrate against the personnel files you have just rebuilt, because the person the assessor watches will have their file pulled the same day. Vision current, hours logged with dates, examinations retained with papers and keys, certification record signed by an officer of the employer. That is the sequence for every name on the list. Choose demonstration technicians on that basis rather than on who is most comfortable working with an audience.
Twenty-One Days: What Happens After a Nonconformance
PRI allows the auditee 21 calendar days from the close of the audit to submit the initial response to findings, then 7 calendar days for each subsequent response, across a limited number of response cycles before the file escalates. Lateness carries a direct cost: merit status is tracked in cumulative late days, and suppliers on the longer accreditation intervals hold the tightest allowance. Missing response dates costs the interval, and losing the interval costs an entire audit cycle in fees and disruption.
Responses are rejected for content more often than for lateness. Each nonconformance requires a stated root cause, the immediate correction, the action taken to prevent recurrence, an evaluation of product impact where applicable, and objective evidence attached. "Retrained the technician" is not a root cause. "The vision tracker was driven off a company anniversary date rather than each individual's test date, so eleven technicians drifted past twelve months" is a root cause, and it points directly at a systemic fix an assessor will accept.
Product impact is the element suppliers underestimate. Where a certification lapsed on paper, the assessor asks what that person inspected during the lapse and what happened to those parts. Have the analysis assembled before writing the response, because the answer decides whether this stays a records finding inside your building or becomes a customer notification. Pull the inspection reports signed in the window, list the part numbers and customers, and document either the technical justification or the disposition taken.
How Atlantis Prepares an AC7114 Audit
Atlantis works the personnel side of AC7114 as a records project with a Level 3 attached. We reconstruct the personnel list and reconcile it against inspection records, audit every sampled file against your written practice and NAS 410 in parallel, rebuild examination material as a controlled bank with question sets, answer keys and retention rules, place vision and certification expiry on one tracker driven by individual test dates, and rewrite the written practice so it names a Responsible Level 3 and asserts only what your records can prove.
Where you need the Responsible Level 3 designation itself, we hold it under contract, approve procedures and technique sheets in the methods we cover, prepare, administer and grade examinations, run the internal NDT audit, and attend the assessment. Your company retains the certification signature, because that authority never moves. The scope of that retainer is described at /consulting/ndt-consulting-level-iii. Ask for a readiness gap assessment or a quote for outsourced Level III support and we will scope it against your methods, your headcount and your audit date.
How far ahead should AC7114 personnel file preparation start?
Ninety days before the audit date. Rebuilding an examination bank with question sets, answer keys and retained papers takes six to eight weeks on its own, and vision gaps can only be closed by scheduling actual examinations. Shops that start four weeks out end up closing findings after the audit instead of before it. The order that works: personnel list first, then vision and certification tracker, then examination material, then the written practice rewritten to match what the records now prove.
Does Nadcap accept an external Level 3 as our Responsible Level 3?
Yes. AC7114 recognises an applicable Level 3 who is internal, external, or qualified and approved by the Nadcap user, and NAS 410 para 4.5 permits the Responsible Level 3 to be contracted. Two conditions attach. The individual is named in writing for your facility with the methods stated, and copies of their certification, examination evidence and current vision record live in your personnel files. An empty folder with a consultant's phone number is a nonconformance.
Which AC7114 slash sheet applies to our scope?
The one matching each method you are seeking accreditation for: AC7114/1 penetrant, /2 magnetic particle, /3 ultrasonic, /4 film radiography, /5 eddy current, with additional sheets covering ultrasonic inspection of rotating components, remote interpretation of radiographic film and digital images, and digital radiography using digital detector arrays and computed radiography. The AC7114 baseline applies to every supplier regardless of method, and that baseline is where the personnel and written practice questions sit. Current revisions are downloaded from eAuditNet.
What vision records does an AC7114 assessor ask to see?
The signed report itself, not a tracker entry. It states the date, the chart or plates used, the distance, which eye was tested, whether acuity was corrected or uncorrected, the result against Jaeger 1 or equivalent, and the name and signature of the examiner. The examiner is an eye care professional or a person the Responsible Level 3 designated and trained. Near vision is annual. Colour contrast differentiation runs on initial certification and at five-year intervals, and that second record is the one most often missing entirely.
Can we be audited on a method our Level 3 is not certified in?
No. Every procedure and technique sheet in the audited scope carries approval from a Level 3 qualified in that specific method, and every certification in that method traces back to examinations that Level 3 approved. A shop accredited for penetrant, magnetic particle and ultrasonic with a Level 3 certified only in PT and MT has an unapproved ultrasonic programme. The fix is a second Level 3 for the uncovered method, which is the most common reason a shop contracts a Level 3 alongside an employed one.
What happens if a certification lapsed during the accreditation period?
The assessor asks what that technician inspected while lapsed and what became of the parts. That converts a records finding into a product impact question, which is the heavier category and the one that reaches your customer. Run the analysis before the audit: pull inspection reports signed in the lapse window, identify the part numbers and the customers, and document the technical justification or the disposition. Arriving with that analysis complete keeps the finding inside the records category.