Writing, Approving, Administering and Grading NDT Qualification Examinations
SNT-TC-1A 8.1.1 states that in no case shall an examination be administered by oneself or by a subordinate. That single sentence decides the architecture. The Level III responsible for the method approves every question, the general, specific and practical parts are separately prepared and graded, each part requires 70 percent and the composite 80 percent, and the papers themselves are retained, not just the scores.
Certification examinations fail audits in a predictable order. The score sheet exists and the papers do not. The composite is recorded and the three part scores are not. The practical was administered by the shift supervisor who also trained the candidate and signs the candidate's timesheet. The specific examination cites a procedure at a revision superseded two years earlier. None of these are competence problems, and all four are written up. The structure that survives scrutiny separates four roles shops routinely collapse into one person: who writes the questions, who approves them, who sits with the candidate, and who grades the result. A contracted Level III separates them by construction, because that person supervises nobody in the building and reports to nobody the candidate outranks. That separation is an audit argument before it is ever a commercial one.
Source: ASNT Recommended Practice No. SNT-TC-1A (2024), Section 8 Examinations, para 8.1.1 (no examination administered by oneself or by a subordinate), approval of examination questions by the NDT Level III, the 80 percent composite with no individual examination below 70 percent, and paras 5.1, 5.5 and 5.6 on the written practice; ANSI/ASNT CP-189 (2024); AIA NAS 410 Rev. 6 (December 2025) and Rev. 5 (September 2020), including the sequencing of the specific examination after 75 percent and the practical after 100 percent of required experience hours, and the vision examination requirements.
| Examination element | Who prepares it | Who approves it | Who may administer it | Passing rule | What is retained |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General (method knowledge) | Level III for the method, or an outside agency working to your written practice | The Level III responsible for that method | Level III or a documented, trained designee; never the candidate, never a subordinate of the candidate | 70 percent minimum for this part | Question set, answer key, the candidate's marked paper, part score |
| Specific (your procedures, equipment and techniques) | Level III, drawn from the employer's current procedures and equipment | The Level III responsible for that method | Level III or a documented, trained designee under the same restriction | 70 percent minimum for this part | Paper, key, marked responses, and the procedure revision the questions were drawn from |
| Practical (hands-on with specimens) | Level III, with specimens controlled and characterised | The Level III responsible for that method | Level III or a designee competent in the method, independent of the candidate's reporting line | 70 percent minimum, with detection and reporting of discontinuities graded | Checklist, specimen control numbers, discontinuity sheet, instrument and settings, candidate's written results |
| Composite result | Calculated from the three part scores | The Level III signs the qualification recommendation | Not applicable | 80 percent composite with no individual part below 70 percent | The composite calculation showing all three part scores, not a single figure |
| Vision examination | Eye care professional, or a person the Responsible Level 3 designated and trained | Responsible Level 3 designates the administrator | The designated examiner; never the candidate testing themselves | Near vision to Jaeger 1 or equivalent; colour contrast differentiation pass | Signed report: date, chart or plates used, distance, eye tested, corrected or uncorrected, examiner name |
| Level III's own examination | Outside agency, ASNT, or a NANDTB where one exists | The employer's written practice defines the accepted route | Outside agency or NANDTB; never the candidate, never a subordinate of the candidate | Set by the administering body | Certificate plus the score report from the administering body, held in the employer's file |
One Sentence Sets the Whole Architecture
SNT-TC-1A 8.1.1 states that in no case shall an examination be administered by oneself or by a subordinate. It is the shortest requirement in the examination section and the one with the widest consequences, because it forces a separation of duties that small NDT departments have no natural way to produce. A shop with one Level III, two Level IIs and four technicians has a single technical authority who trains everyone, supervises everyone, and would otherwise write, administer and grade every examination in the building.
The rule exists because a qualification examination is a control, and a control administered by the person whose work it validates has stopped being a control. The examination result feeds a certification record that a customer relies on when they accept an inspection report on a pressure vessel or a turbine disc. Removing the conflict of interest is not an administrative nicety; it is the reason the certification carries weight outside the company that issued it.
NAS 410 carries the same prohibition into aerospace and applies it to the Level 3 candidate specifically: the examination shall not be administered by the candidate or by a subordinate. So the aerospace shop and the general industry shop reach the same conclusion by different routes. Somebody outside the reporting line has to run the examination, and once that is accepted, the rest of the design follows from it.
Four Documents, Four Distinct Roles
A qualification examination is not one event. It is a general examination on the method, a specific examination on your procedures and equipment, a practical examination with real specimens, and a current vision examination, plus a composite calculation that combines the first three. Each has a different author, a different administrator and a different retention profile, and shops that treat the set as a single pass or fail lose the ability to demonstrate any part of it under scrutiny.
The four roles worth separating are: who writes the questions, who approves them, who sits with the candidate, and who grades the result. SNT-TC-1A requires the NDT Level III responsible for the method to approve every question, which fixes the second role. The 8.1.1 restriction fixes the third. Writing and grading can sit with the same person as approval, but the further they are distributed across independent parties, the less an assessor has to probe.
Vision is the role most often forgotten, because it feels medical rather than technical. It is neither: it is a designated act. The Responsible Level 3 designates who administers vision examinations and trains them, or the examination goes to an eye care professional. A vision result recorded without a named examiner is an orphan record, and it appears in personnel files far more often than any other kind of gap because nobody owns it.
The General Examination
The general examination tests method knowledge independent of your shop: physics of the method, equipment principles, variables affecting sensitivity, and the interpretation fundamentals for the level being examined. Its question set is stable across years, which makes it the easiest part to build once and maintain, and the easiest part to buy from an outside agency working to your written practice. What is not optional is Level III approval of every question, method by method, and that approval has a date attached.
The retention obligation is where general examinations quietly fail. Shops keep a score and discard the paper, or keep a paper and lose the answer key, at which point the score is unverifiable. Retain the question set as issued, the key, the candidate's marked responses and the part score. Where the examination is delivered electronically, retain a printable record of the questions presented, the answers given and the key applied, because a system screenshot showing a percentage proves nothing about which questions were asked.
Question banks need a review cycle for the same reason procedures do. Equipment changes, methods evolve, and a general examination written a decade ago tests knowledge nobody uses. Treat the bank as a controlled document with an owner, a revision history and a scheduled review, and record the Level III's re-approval each cycle. That single control also protects you against the failure where all examination material lived on the laptop of a Level III who has since left.
The Specific Examination
The specific examination tests what the candidate needs to know to work in your building: your written procedures, your equipment, your techniques, your acceptance criteria, and the codes and specifications your customers flow down. It is the examination an outside agency cannot supply off the shelf, because the source material is your procedure set. That dependency is exactly what makes it useful evidence, and exactly what makes it go stale.
Every specific question traces to a procedure at a revision. When the procedure is revised, the questions drawn from it must be reviewed and the traceability updated. An assessor reading a specific examination that cites a procedure revision superseded two years ago concludes that the examination bank has never been reviewed against the current document set, and that conclusion reaches beyond the one file in front of them. Record the procedure revision on the question set itself so the check takes seconds.
NAS 410 sequences this examination against experience: it is administered after at least 75 percent of the required experience hours have accumulated. That sequencing is auditable only where the experience log carries dated entries. A retrospective log signed on certification day cannot demonstrate that the specific examination came after 75 percent, because there is nothing to compare the examination date against. Hours logging and examination scheduling are therefore the same problem, handled by the same tracker.
The Practical Examination: Where Files Are Thinnest
The practical examination is the strongest evidence of competence in the file and the weakest record in most shops. It should identify each specimen by control number, state the discontinuities present in that specimen by type and location, record what the candidate detected and how they reported it, capture the instrument and settings used, and carry the checklist the examiner scored line by line. Where the practical required the candidate to write or interpret a technique, that work product belongs in the file too.
Specimen control is what makes the record reconstructable years later. Specimens need unique numbers, characterised flaw sets, controlled storage and a log of who examined which set and when. Shops that rotate a single well-known set through every candidate produce results that are indistinguishable from a memorised answer, and experienced assessors ask how the specimen set is controlled precisely because the answer is diagnostic of how seriously the whole programme is run.
The administration restriction bites hardest here, because a practical requires someone physically present with the candidate for an extended period, and the person most naturally available is the supervisor who trained them. That is the arrangement 8.1.1 exists to prevent where the supervisor is also the candidate's reporting line. Assign a designee outside that line, document their competence and their instruction in administering and grading, and record the designee's name on the practical record itself.
Grading: 80 Composite With No Part Below 70
The grading rule is arithmetic and unforgiving: a composite grade of at least 80 percent, with no individual examination scoring below 70 percent. NAS 410 applies the same structure to the general, specific and practical parts. A candidate scoring 95, 90 and 68 has a composite above 80 and still fails, because one part fell below the floor. A file that records only the composite cannot demonstrate compliance with the second half of the rule, which is why the composite calculation showing all three part scores is the record, not the composite alone.
Grading criteria for the practical need writing down before the examination, not decided afterwards. Define what counts as detection, what counts as correct characterisation, what counts as correct location and sizing within tolerance, and how a missed indication is weighted against a false call. Then score against that written scheme. An examiner scoring a practical from experience produces a defensible result and an indefensible record, and the audit reads the record.
Failures need documenting as thoroughly as passes. Where a candidate fails, the file shows the result, the retraining or additional experience required before re-examination, the waiting period your written practice specifies, and the second examination as a distinct event with its own paper. Shops that quietly re-examine the same day and file only the passing result create a gap between the certification date and the evidence supporting it that surfaces the moment anyone counts the papers.
Designees: Delegation That Survives an Audit
SNT-TC-1A allows the Level III to delegate administration and grading to a designee, with a condition attached: the designee has received documented, appropriate instruction from the NDT Level III in the proper administration and grading of qualification examinations before conducting them independently. That documented instruction is a record. It states who was instructed, by whom, on what date, covering what content, and it lives in the designee's file rather than in the Level III's memory of having explained it once.
Choose designees for independence as much as for competence. The useful test is whether the designee has any influence over the candidate's pay, shift, assignments or performance review. Where they do, 8.1.1 is in play regardless of how carefully the examination is run. Where they do not, the examination stands on its own. In small departments this often means the designee sits in quality rather than production, which is a structural answer to a structural problem.
Record the designee on every examination they administer, not just in the delegation letter. The assessor reading a candidate's file asks who administered this examination and what authorised them to do so, and the file should answer both questions without anyone leaving the room. A name on the paper plus an instruction record in that person's own file closes the loop, and it closes it for every candidate they ever examine.
Retention: Keep the Papers, Not the Summary
The retained record set for one certification is larger than most shops expect: the general paper, key and marked responses; the specific paper, key, marked responses and the source procedure revision; the practical checklist, specimen identification, discontinuity sheet, instrument and settings and the candidate's written results; the part scores and composite calculation; the current vision report with its examiner named; the dated experience log; and the certification record signed by an officer of the employer. Each element answers a question the others cannot.
Retention duration follows two rules that operate together. Your written practice states the retention period you commit to, and that commitment is what an auditor holds you to. NAS 410 requires the employer to maintain certification records while the certification is in effect, which means a five-year certification carries a five-year floor on the supporting evidence at minimum, and recertification history extends the useful life further. Where a customer contract specifies longer, the contract governs.
Custody matters as much as duration. Records held only on an individual's machine, or only at an outside agency, are records you cannot produce on audit day. Hold them in a system the employer controls, with the agency holding working copies, and write that into the service agreement. This is the single clause that turns a Level III transition from a rebuild into a handover, and the recovery sequence when it was never written is at /consulting/ndt-level-3-resigned-what-to-do.
Why Independence Argues for an Outside Level III
Read 8.1.1 as an organisational design constraint rather than a compliance line and the case for outside oversight writes itself. The prohibition requires an examiner who is neither the candidate nor anyone reporting to the candidate. In a department of six, the pool of people satisfying that test while also being competent to grade the method is frequently empty. A contracted Level III is outside the reporting structure entirely: they supervise nobody, they report to nobody the candidate outranks, and they carry no interest in the outcome.
The same independence solves the case that has no internal answer at all: qualifying a Level III. The candidate cannot administer their own examination and cannot have a subordinate do it, so a shop promoting its senior Level II into the Level III role must go outside for that examination regardless of what else it handles internally. Once an outside agency is engaged for that, extending the engagement across the examination bank costs less than maintaining two parallel systems.
There is a records benefit that shows up on audit day. An outside Level III delivers examination material as a controlled deliverable, with question sets, keys, graded papers and retention terms defined in the agreement, because that is how the engagement is scoped. The bank does not live on anyone's laptop, and it does not leave when a person does. The scope and boundary of that arrangement is described at /consulting/outside-ndt-level-3-can-and-cannot-do and the retainer structure at /consulting/ndt-consulting-level-iii.
How Atlantis Runs Examination Oversight
Atlantis builds and holds examination programmes for NDT employers under a written practice we review or rewrite first, because the examination structure must match what that document promises. We prepare general and specific question sets by method and level, approve them as the responsible Level III, characterise and control practical specimens, define written grading criteria before anyone sits the examination, and administer and grade on scheduled site visits. Your company signs the certification records, and the material stays in a system you control.
Where you need one examination rather than a programme, we run it as a discrete engagement: a Level II qualifying in a new method, a Level III candidate who cannot be examined internally, or a recertification cycle that fell due while you had no approving authority. Where you need the whole records position rebuilt ahead of an audit, that work is described at /consulting/nadcap-ac7114-audit-readiness. Ask for a demo of the examination and records structure, or a quote scoped to your methods, levels and headcount.
Can our Level III administer the examination for someone they trained?
Yes, provided the candidate is not the Level III themselves and is not the Level III's own subordinate in the sense SNT-TC-1A 8.1.1 addresses. Training and examining are separate acts, and the standard bars self-administration and subordinate administration rather than instructor involvement. The practice that draws scrutiny is a supervisor who trains the candidate, administers the examination, grades it and signs their performance review, because every check on the result runs through one person with an interest in it.
Who may administer a Level III candidate's own examination?
An outside agency, ASNT, or a NANDTB where one exists. Never the candidate, and never someone who reports to the candidate. This is where the rule bites hardest, because a shop's only Level III cannot examine themselves into a higher method and cannot have their own Level II run the paper. The route is a third party, and it is the same reason many shops contract Level III oversight in the first place: the independence is structural rather than asserted.
How many questions does each examination part require?
SNT-TC-1A publishes minimum question counts by method and level in its examination table, and your written practice states the counts you use. Those counts must meet or exceed the table, and the assessor compares the paper in the file against the number your own document promised. Where the written practice says forty general questions and the retained paper has twenty-eight, the finding is against your written practice rather than against the standard, which is the harder one to argue away.
Does recertification require a new practical examination?
Your written practice decides, within the bounds SNT-TC-1A sets, and it must decide explicitly. Recertification runs at intervals your written practice defines, with SNT-TC-1A recommending a maximum of five years, and the evidence route is either re-examination or documented evidence of continued satisfactory performance. Whichever route you choose, the record must exist for each cycle. The most common finding is a recertification date advanced on a tracker with no examination, no performance evidence and no Level III signature behind it.
Can an outside agency write our examination bank and also grade it?
Yes. SNT-TC-1A accepts an outside agency preparing, administering and grading qualification examinations, and CP-189 takes the same position. The boundary is the certification decision: the agency qualifies, an officer of the employer certifies, and the certification record carries the employer's signature. Using one agency across writing, administering and grading is the arrangement most likely to satisfy 8.1.1, because nobody involved sits in the candidate's reporting line. The full authority split is at /consulting/outside-ndt-level-3-can-and-cannot-do.
What identifies a practical examination specimen adequately?
A control number unique to that specimen, a record of the discontinuities present with their type and location, the material and configuration, and a controlled storage location. The examination record then states which specimens the candidate examined and what they detected and reported against what was actually present. A practical recorded as "passed practical, 85 percent" with no specimen identification cannot be reconstructed by anyone, which is precisely why assessors read the practical file before the written ones.