{"slug":"/training/certification-requirements-port-arthur","title":"NDT Certification Requirements in Port Arthur, Texas","description":"Hours, experience and examinations for ASNT SNT-TC-1A and ISO 9712 certification, and what a written practice must state for Port Arthur refinery work.","h1":"Qualifying technicians on the Sabine-Neches: hours, exams and the written practice","answer":"NDT certification in Port Arthur is employer-based. Under ASNT SNT-TC-1A the employer's written practice, not ASNT, sets the training hours, experience hours and examinations, and the employer's Level III certifies the technician. ISO 9712 works the other way: an independent body examines and certifies, and the certificate follows the individual between employers.","expansion":"That single difference decides what happens when a technician changes employer on the Sabine-Neches. An SNT-TC-1A certificate does not travel. A UT Level II leaving one turnaround contractor for another arrives with documented training and experience hours, and those hours are transferable evidence, but the new employer's Level III must review the file and issue a fresh certification under that employer's written practice, including a practical examination on that employer's procedures and equipment. Technicians who assume otherwise turn up to a shutdown expecting to work and spend the first two days in an examination room. The second difference is the audit exposure. Client audits at Port Arthur refineries and LNG sites rarely fail a technician on skill. They fail the paperwork: a written practice citing an edition nobody works to, missing practical examination records, vision checks out of date, or experience logged in days rather than hours.","source":"Written against ASNT SNT-TC-1A Personnel Qualification and Certification in Nondestructive Testing, ANSI/ASNT CP-189 Standard for Qualification and Certification of Nondestructive Testing Personnel, ASNT CP-105 topical outlines, ISO 9712 Qualification and Certification of NDT Personnel, NAS 410 for aerospace work, and the personnel requirements referenced by ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section V Article 1 and by API 510, API 570 and API 653 inspection codes.","table":{"caption":"Recommended initial training and experience by method and level, SNT-TC-1A basis","columns":["Method","Level I organised training","Level I experience in method","Level II additional training","Level II additional experience in method"],"rows":[["Ultrasonic testing (UT)","40 hours","210 hours","40 hours","630 hours"],["Radiographic testing (RT)","40 hours","210 hours","40 hours","630 hours"],["Eddy current testing (ET)","40 hours","210 hours","40 hours","630 hours"],["Magnetic particle testing (MT)","12 hours","70 hours","8 hours","210 hours"],["Liquid penetrant testing (PT)","4 hours","70 hours","8 hours","140 hours"],["Visual testing (VT)","8 hours","70 hours","16 hours","140 hours"]],"note":"These are the figures SNT-TC-1A tabulates for a candidate holding a high school diploma or equivalent; the document also tabulates reduced figures for candidates with engineering or science study beyond high school. They are recommendations. The controlling numbers are whatever the employer's written practice states, and the written practice must list any deviation from the recommended values. A separate minimum of total experience across all NDT methods applies in addition, and an hour worked can be counted once only."},"facets":[{"q":"Does an ASNT SNT-TC-1A certificate transfer to a new employer?","a":"No. Certification under SNT-TC-1A is granted by the employer, so it ends when employment ends. What transfers is documented evidence: training records, examination results and logged experience hours signed by the previous employer. The new employer's Level III reviews that file and decides how much of it credits toward certification under the new written practice, then administers whatever examinations that practice requires, which almost always includes a practical on the new employer's own procedures."},{"q":"Who is allowed to certify a Level III?","a":"It depends which document you are working to, and this is where the three schemes genuinely diverge. SNT-TC-1A permits an employer to qualify its own Level III against the criteria in its written practice. ANSI/ASNT CP-189 does not: it requires the NDT Level III to hold a current ASNT NDT Level III certificate in the applicable method. ISO 9712 requires a Level 3 certified by an accredited independent certification body. A contract that names CP-189 therefore quietly rules out a home-grown Level III."},{"q":"What score does a technician need to pass?","a":"SNT-TC-1A recommends a minimum of eighty percent on each examination and a composite grade of at least eighty percent across the general, specific and practical examinations. The practical is not a formality: it is graded against defined checkpoints covering equipment setup, calibration, technique application, detection of the specimens' actual discontinuities, evaluation against the acceptance criteria, and the written report. Failing to complete the report correctly loses points as surely as missing a flaw."},{"q":"How often must near-vision and colour vision be re-checked?","a":"Near-vision acuity is checked annually, with the usual criterion being the ability to read Jaeger Number 1 type, or equivalent, at a distance of not less than twelve inches, in at least one eye, corrected or uncorrected. Colour contrast differentiation is demonstrated by showing the ability to distinguish and differentiate the colours actually used in the methods performed. The written practice states the frequency and the examiner, and out-of-date vision records are one of the most frequent audit findings."},{"q":"Is API 510, 570 or 653 inspector training part of this offer?","a":"No, it is not. API 510 pressure vessel, API 570 piping and API 653 tank inspector certifications are individual credentials examined by API against their own bodies of knowledge and experience prerequisites, and Atlantis does not deliver that training. What Atlantis does is train and certify technicians in the NDT methods those inspection programmes depend on, and provide ASNT Level III consulting. Atlantis is not the API inspector of record for any client."},{"q":"What makes a written practice fail a client audit?","a":"Most commonly, a practice that says it complies with SNT-TC-1A without naming the edition, or names an edition the certification records were not written to. Close behind: no documented list of deviations from the recommended values, no training course outlines, no defined examination composition or grading, no stated recertification interval, no interruption-of-service rule, and a certifying Level III whose own qualification evidence is missing or expired. Each of these is a documentation fix, not a competence problem."}],"sections":[{"heading":"Certification is issued by an employer, not by ASNT","paragraphs":["This is the sentence that most often surprises technicians and QA managers alike, and getting it wrong is the single most common error on competitor pages about NDT certification. ASNT SNT-TC-1A is a recommended practice. It is guidance an employer adopts, and the moment the employer adopts it, the employer's own written practice becomes the controlling document. ASNT does not certify a Level I or Level II technician against it. The employer does, through its designated Level III.","ASNT does certify individuals directly under its own central programmes, notably the ASNT NDT Level III certificate and the ASNT 9712 scheme, and it examines industrial radiographers under IRRSP. Those are separate from SNT-TC-1A and should never be conflated with it. A technician who says they are ASNT certified as a Level II under SNT-TC-1A has described something that does not exist.","ISO 9712 inverts the model entirely. Under ISO 9712 an independent certification body, accredited to ISO/IEC 17024, examines the candidate and issues the certificate, and that certificate belongs to the individual. It stays valid when they change jobs. What the new employer still has to do is authorise the person to work on its own procedures, which is a shorter step than a full re-certification. On the Gulf Coast the employer-based model dominates, so the rest of this page follows it while flagging where ISO 9712 differs."]},{"heading":"What the written practice must actually state","paragraphs":["A written practice is not a policy statement. It is an operating document, and an auditor reads it looking for specific content. It must state its scope and the methods and levels covered, and it must name the edition of SNT-TC-1A or CP-189 it is written to. It must define the education, training and experience required for each level in each method, and where those requirements differ from the recommended values it must say so explicitly rather than silently.","It must describe the training course outlines used, the composition and grading of the general, specific and practical examinations, who administers and grades them, and who the certifying authority is. It must state the qualification route for the Level III, the vision requirements and their frequency, the recertification interval, the rule for interruption of service, the technical performance evaluation used at recertification where applicable, and the record retention arrangements.","It should also address the awkward cases that come up constantly on the Gulf Coast: how outside or subcontracted personnel are handled, how limited certification is granted where a technician is qualified for a specific technique rather than a full method, and what happens on suspension, revocation and reinstatement. A practice that is silent on these does not fail on the day it is written. It fails the first time a client auditor asks how the contract technician standing in the unit was authorised."]},{"heading":"Training and experience hours, and how they are counted","paragraphs":["The tabulated hours are where most of the confusion lives. Organised training means structured instruction with a defined outline, an instructor and a record, not time spent watching someone work. Experience means hours actually performing or directly assisting with the method, logged and signed. The two columns are counted separately, and the training hours do not count as experience hours.","For a candidate with a high school diploma, SNT-TC-1A tabulates forty hours of organised training and two hundred and ten hours of method experience for ultrasonic, radiographic and eddy current Level I, with a further forty hours of training and six hundred and thirty hours of experience for Level II. The surface methods are much lighter: magnetic particle Level I at twelve hours of training and seventy hours of experience, penetrant at four and seventy, visual at eight and seventy. The document also tabulates reduced figures for candidates who have completed engineering or science study beyond high school, and the written practice states which column the employer applies.","Two counting rules trip people up. First, there is a separate minimum for total experience across all NDT methods, in addition to the in-method figure, so a technician cannot reach Level II in a surface method on surface-method hours alone if the total requirement is not met. Second, an hour worked counts once. A technician who spends an eight-hour shift doing penetrant and magnetic particle cannot log eight hours against each. Experience logs that total more hours than the person was on site are the fastest way to lose an audit."]},{"heading":"General, specific and practical: what the three examinations test","paragraphs":["The general examination covers the principles of the method and is drawn from the published topical outlines. The specific examination covers the employer's own equipment, procedures, techniques and the codes and acceptance criteria applied on that employer's work, which is precisely why a certificate from another employer is not portable. The practical examination requires the candidate to set up and calibrate the equipment, apply the technique to specimens containing real discontinuities, evaluate what they find against acceptance criteria, and write the report.","The practical is graded against checkpoints, and a well-run examination weights the report heavily. In a real Gulf Coast turnaround the technician's report is the only thing the inspector and the engineer ever see, so a candidate who finds every flaw and writes an ambiguous report has demonstrated a real deficiency. Specimens should contain a known set of discontinuities, some acceptable and some not, so that the candidate has to make evaluation decisions rather than simply find things.","For Level III, the structure changes: a basic examination covering materials, processes, other methods and the certification documents themselves, plus a method examination. Where the written practice is written to CP-189, the Level III must additionally hold the ASNT NDT Level III certificate in that method."]},{"heading":"Vision, recertification and interruption of service","paragraphs":["Vision is checked annually. The usual criterion is Jaeger Number 1 type, or an equivalent, at not less than twelve inches in at least one eye, corrected or uncorrected, plus demonstrated ability to distinguish and differentiate the colours used in the methods performed. The record needs a date, a result and a signature from whoever administered it. Expired vision records are among the most common findings precisely because nobody owns the calendar for them.","Recertification intervals are stated in the written practice. Current SNT-TC-1A guidance recommends a maximum of five years, while older editions used a shorter interval for Levels I and II, so what actually applies to a given technician is whatever their employer's practice says. Recertification is by examination or by a documented technical performance evaluation, again as the practice defines it.","Interruption of service is the rule nobody remembers until a technician comes back from a year on another trade. The written practice must define what constitutes an interruption and what is required to reinstate. On the Sabine-Neches, where technicians move between turnarounds, construction projects and offshore rotations, this clause gets exercised far more often than it does in a fabrication shop."]},{"heading":"SNT-TC-1A, CP-189 and ISO 9712 are three different animals","paragraphs":["SNT-TC-1A is a recommended practice. It gives the employer latitude, and everything hinges on the written practice. ANSI/ASNT CP-189 is a standard. It is more prescriptive, it removes much of that latitude, and it requires the Level III to hold ASNT NDT Level III certification rather than being qualified in-house. Contracts that specify CP-189 do so precisely to close that gap, and a supplier who has been running a home-qualified Level III has a real problem the day that contract is signed.","ISO 9712 is central third-party certification. An accredited body examines and certifies; the certificate carries the individual's name and travels with them. It sets its own training hours and industrial experience durations by level and method, expressed in months of experience rather than hours, and validity runs in five-year cycles with renewal on evidence of continued activity and vision, and a fuller recertification at the ten-year point.","Aerospace adds a fourth document, NAS 410, which governs personnel qualification for aerospace primes and their supply chains and again differs in its requirements. A Port Arthur employer working refinery, LNG and occasional aerospace-adjacent fabrication may need its written practice to address more than one of these, and the practice should be explicit about which work falls under which scheme."]},{"heading":"Who imposes these requirements in Port Arthur","paragraphs":["Port Arthur and the wider Sabine-Neches corridor concentrate an unusual amount of the demand. The Motiva refinery is the largest in the United States by crude capacity, and Valero Port Arthur and the TotalEnergies refinery sit alongside it. Petrochemical capacity runs from the BASF TotalEnergies complex through the Golden Triangle polymers investment upriver in Orange. LNG has added a second wave: Golden Pass at Sabine Pass and the Port Arthur LNG development have put large mechanical construction workforces on the ground alongside the existing operating plants.","Every one of those owners imposes personnel qualification requirements on its NDT suppliers through the contract, and most audit them. The audit is usually a documentation audit of the supplier's written practice and personnel files, sometimes followed by a witnessed practical. The service companies feeling that pressure are the turnaround and inspection contractors that staff the corridor, plus the mechanical contractors, tank and vessel fabricators, and the marine repair yards on the waterway.","There is a second layer for radiography. Texas is an NRC Agreement State, so industrial radiography is licensed and the radiographers themselves must be certified through a recognised certifying entity in addition to holding their NDT method certification. A supplier planning to shoot film or digital radiography in Jefferson County needs the licence, the written practice and the radiographer certifications all lined up, and they are three separate pieces of paper."]},{"heading":"The findings that recur in Gulf Coast client audits","paragraphs":["The same handful of findings appear year after year. A written practice that references SNT-TC-1A without stating an edition, so nobody can tell which set of recommended values the certifications were issued against. Deviations from the recommended hours applied in practice but never listed in the practice. Practical examination records that record a pass but not the specimens, the checkpoints or the grade breakdown. Experience logged in days or in weeks rather than in hours, which cannot be reconciled to the tabulated requirement.","Then the personnel-file findings. Vision records more than twelve months old. A certification signed by a Level III whose own certificate expired before the signature date. Technicians working a technique their certification does not cover, such as encoded corrosion mapping under a plain manual thickness certification, without a limited certification or an authorisation on file. Outside contract technicians on site with no documented acceptance route into the host's written practice.","None of these are competence problems and all of them are expensive. The technician stands down, the scope slips, and the client's confidence in the whole supplier takes a hit that outlives the finding. The fix is almost always a written practice that is honest about what the company actually does, plus one person who owns the records calendar."]},{"heading":"Getting a programme in place, or fixing one that just failed","paragraphs":["Atlantis works both ends of this. On the training side, we deliver Level I and Level II courses in ultrasonic, radiographic, magnetic particle, penetrant, eddy current and visual testing, along with phased array and time-of-flight diffraction, in classroom, on-site corporate and blended formats, with examinations structured as general, specific and practical and graded to the client's written practice. On the certification-programme side, we write and review written practices, build the training course outlines and examination banks, and provide the ASNT Level III who reviews qualification files and signs certifications where the client's practice allows an outside Level III to serve in that role.","If a client audit has just gone badly, the useful first step is a gap review of the written practice against the personnel files as they actually stand, because those two documents almost never match. Training and consulting are affordable, accessible and fully customisable to the site's procedures, codes and workforce. Contact info@atlantisndt.com for a consultation or a scoped quote."]}],"faq":[{"q":"Can a technician hold a certification limited to one technique?","a":"Yes, and it is often the honest answer. Limited certification covers a technician qualified for a defined technique or scope within a method, such as ultrasonic thickness measurement without weld flaw evaluation. The written practice must define how limited certification is granted, what the examinations cover, and what the certificate says. It is far better than certifying someone broadly and hoping the scope never comes up."},{"q":"How long does an ISO 9712 certificate stay valid?","a":"An ISO 9712 certificate runs in five-year cycles. It is renewed at five years on evidence of continued work in the method without significant interruption plus a current vision test, and a fuller recertification is required at the end of the second period, either by examination or through the structured credit route the scheme allows. Because it is issued by an independent body, it does not lapse when the holder changes employer."},{"q":"Does Atlantis certify our technicians, or do we?","a":"Under an employer-based scheme, the employer certifies. Atlantis delivers the training, builds and administers the examinations, and can supply the ASNT Level III who reviews qualification files and signs certifications where the client's written practice permits an outside Level III to act as the certifying authority. The certificates remain the employer's, issued under the employer's practice, which is exactly what an auditor expects to see."},{"q":"Do experience hours earned at a previous employer count?","a":"They count as evidence, not as certification. The new employer's Level III reviews the documented hours and decides how much credit to give against the requirements in the new written practice. Hours that are signed, dated and broken down by method survive that review. Hours summarised as a job title and a date range usually do not."},{"q":"Does a college NDT programme reduce the required hours?","a":"SNT-TC-1A tabulates alternative, lower training and experience figures for candidates who have completed engineering or science study beyond high school, and structured NDT programmes can supply a large part of the organised training requirement directly. Which column the employer applies, and how much programme content it credits, is stated in the written practice. The experience requirement is reduced, not eliminated."}]}