Ask five inspection companies what their \"written practice\" is, and you'll get five different answers ranging from a genuine, current, method-by-method qualification document to a stack of forms nobody's updated since the last time a client asked to see it. That gap matters, because when an EPC or refinery client's quality team requests your written practice during a supplier qualification audit, they're not asking for a formality — they're asking for the single document that proves your NDT personnel are qualified to do the work they're certifying, and that the qualification process itself is defensible.\n\nThis is one of the most common and most misunderstood engagements an ASNT Level III consultant handles. It's worth being precise about what a written practice actually is, how it differs from ASNT's other governing documents, and what a real engagement delivers — because \"written practice review\" gets used loosely enough in the industry that buyers often don't know what they're actually purchasing until the deliverable lands.
\n\nASNT publishes two distinct governing documents for NDT personnel qualification, and mixing them up is one of the most common mistakes in the industry.\n\nSNT-TC-1A (Recommended Practice No. SNT-TC-1A) is exactly what its title says: a recommended practice, not a certification standard. It provides guidelines — training hour tables, experience hour tables, examination recommendations, vision testing requirements — that an employer uses to build its own written practice. Under SNT-TC-1A, the employer is the certifying body. The employer's Level III (in-house or contracted) establishes the actual qualification requirements, administers or arranges the exams, and signs the certifications. This is why two companies can both be \"SNT-TC-1A compliant\" while having meaningfully different training hour requirements for the same method and level — because SNT-TC-1A intentionally leaves room for the employer's written practice to set the specifics, guided by (but not locked to) the recommended tables.\n\nANSI/ASNT CP-189 (ASNT Standard for Qualification and Certification of Nondestructive Testing Personnel) is a true standard, not a recommended practice. It's more prescriptive than SNT-TC-1A and is often invoked when a client contract or code case specifically requires a \"standard\" rather than a \"recommended practice\" — the distinction matters in procurement specifications that quote ASME Section V or API codes referencing personnel qualification. Some employers build their program to CP-189 directly instead of SNT-TC-1A; others maintain a written practice that meets or exceeds both.\n\nA Level III consultant's first job in a written practice engagement is almost always to identify which of these two documents (or which hybrid) the client's contracts, code obligations, and customer base actually require — because that decision drives every table and requirement that follows.
\n\nA complete written practice isn't a policy statement; it's an operational reference document that a Level III, an auditor, or a new hire's supervisor can open and answer specific qualification questions from. The core components:
\n\nFor every NDT method the company offers — commonly UT, RT, MT, PT, VT, and ET, plus specialized methods like TOFD or phased array UT where applicable — the written practice needs its own qualification table covering Level I, II, and III requirements. This isn't boilerplate copied from SNT-TC-1A's recommended tables; it needs to reflect the actual training courses the company runs or contracts, the actual experience-logging process technicians use, and any method-specific nuances (phased array and TOFD, for instance, often carry additional specific training and experience expectations beyond conventional UT, since they're treated as advanced techniques under many client specifications).
\n\nSNT-TC-1A's recommended training hour tables vary meaningfully by method and level — methods like RT, UT, and ET typically carry higher recommended initial training hours than MT or PT, reflecting the greater technical complexity of interpretation. A written practice needs to state the specific hour minimums the employer has adopted for each method/level combination, not just gesture at \"per SNT-TC-1A,\" because an auditor checking your personnel records will cross-reference actual logged hours against whatever number your own document commits to.
\n\nSeparate from training hours, experience hours track actual job-related, hands-on time performing the method under qualified supervision. These accumulate progressively — Level I experience counts toward the cumulative total needed for Level II, and Level II experience (plus the additional criteria discussed in the Level III hiring decision) feeds Level III eligibility. Methods differ significantly here too: volumetric methods like RT and UT generally carry higher cumulative experience hour recommendations than surface methods like MT and PT, reflecting the greater interpretive skill volumetric methods demand. The written practice has to specify these numbers precisely enough that a personnel record can be audited against them line by line.
\n\nEvery certified NDT technician needs a documented vision exam — near-distance acuity (commonly tested to a Jaeger J1 or equivalent standard at a specified reading distance) and a color contrast test where the method requires distinguishing color-coded indications — administered annually, with results filed in the technician's certification record. This sounds like a minor administrative item until an auditor finds a technician whose annual vision test lapsed eight months ago and is still signing off inspection reports; that's an immediate, easily avoidable finding that undermines confidence in the whole program.
\n\nA defensible qualification exam structure covers three components: a general exam testing fundamental knowledge of the method (principles, equipment, applicable theory), a specific exam testing knowledge of the equipment, procedures, and materials actually used at that facility, and a practical exam requiring the candidate to actually perform the method on representative specimens and correctly detect and characterize known indications. The written practice needs to define minimum passing scores for each component, who's authorized to administer and grade them, and how exam records are retained and protected from disclosure to future candidates.
\n\nCertifications aren't permanent. A written practice specifies recertification intervals by level — commonly a matter of a few years for Level I and II, longer for Level III — and the criteria for renewal, which typically include continued satisfactory job performance, an updated vision exam, and either a re-examination or documented continuing experience, depending on the employer's chosen renewal path. Lapsed recertification is one of the most common findings in supplier audits, because it's easy to lose track of dates across a growing technician roster without a system actively tracking expiry.
\n\nWhen a Level III consultant is retained for written practice work, the tangible outputs typically include:
\n\nFor most fabrication shops and inspection companies, the written practice doesn't stand alone — it's a controlled document referenced by the broader ISO 9001 quality management system. That connection matters practically: if the written practice is a controlled document under your QMS, it's subject to the same document control requirements as any other procedure — revision tracking, approval signatures, distribution control, and periodic review. An auditor checking ISO 9001 conformance will often pull the written practice specifically as a test case for whether document control is actually functioning, not just documented as a policy. A Level III consultant doing this work well coordinates directly with whoever owns the client's QMS, so the written practice isn't qualified in isolation and then orphaned from document control the moment the engagement ends.
\n\nPicture a mid-size fabrication shop that's been doing solid work for regional clients for a decade, with an informally maintained written practice that's technically on file but hasn't been substantively revised since a Level III who's no longer with the company put it together years ago. A new EPC client, bidding a refinery turnaround package, sends a supplier qualification questionnaire that asks for the current written practice, a sample of procedure qualification records for the methods being bid, and personnel certification records for the technicians who'd be assigned to the job.\n\nThe shop's QA manager pulls the written practice and finds it still references an outdated edition of SNT-TC-1A, doesn't cover phased array UT (which the shop added capability for three years ago but never formally incorporated into the qualification structure), and has experience hour tables that don't match what's actually being logged in technician files. None of this means the shop's inspectors are doing bad work — it means the paperwork trail doesn't support the work, which from an auditor's perspective is functionally the same problem, because unsupported qualification is unqualified qualification no matter how good the technician actually is in the field.\n\nThis is the exact scenario where bringing in outside ASNT Level III consulting pays for itself quickly: a focused engagement to update the written practice, reconcile it against current SNT-TC-1A and CP-189 references, formally incorporate the phased array capability with its own qualification table, and true up personnel records — ideally completed before the EPC's audit team shows up, not in response to a finding. Shops that treat their written practice as a living document, reviewed and revised on a defined cycle rather than only when a client asks, consistently sail through these questionnaires instead of scrambling.\n\nKeeping personnel qualification records, procedure qualification history, and certification expiry dates in a system that's actually queryable — rather than scattered across binders and old spreadsheets — is what makes that questionnaire a ten-minute export instead of a two-week fire drill. Companies running Atlantis NDT ERP tie technician certifications, training hours, and vision exam schedules directly to project assignments, so an expiring certification flags before it becomes an audit finding rather than after. And where the underlying training itself needs strengthening — new methods, new technicians, or gaps the qualification records review surfaces — a structured NDT training program built to SNT-TC-1A gives you a documented, consistent training hour record from day one, instead of the ad hoc mix of courses and informal instruction that makes written practice audits painful in the first place.
\n\nAcross engagements, the same handful of issues surface repeatedly, and recognizing them ahead of time is often enough to fix them without an outside audit forcing the issue:
\n\nNone of these findings are difficult to fix individually. What makes them costly is discovering them simultaneously, under audit pressure, with a client's qualification decision waiting on the outcome. A periodic self-review — ideally annual, and always ahead of a known client audit — catches these while they're a quiet afternoon of document cleanup instead of a scramble.
\n\nThe written practice is one of the few documents in an inspection company that sits at the intersection of legal defensibility, client trust, and actual field competence. Get it wrong, and you're not just risking an audit finding — you're risking a client relationship built on the assumption that your certifications mean what they say. Get it right, proactively, and it becomes a competitive advantage: EPCs and refineries qualifying suppliers move faster with companies that can produce a clean, current written practice and matching personnel records on short notice, because it signals a quality culture that extends past the paperwork into how the program is actually run day to day.
\n\n\nAtlantis NDT pairs field expertise with software: NDT inspection management software — Atlantis ERP, a digital twin platform for asset integrity, and NDT reporting software. Build your team with NDT training & certification (ASNT SNT-TC-1A) and ASNT certification pathways, or bring in ASNT Level III consulting. Affordable, accessible, fully customizable — book a free consultation.
\n