NDT Equipment and Calibration Management in the USA

NDT equipment by serial number: issue and return, reservations, calibration and maintenance history. Request a demo. Affordable. Accessible. Fully customizable. Quote on request.

Equipment control for US inspection companies

If you run an NDT company in the United States, your equipment works hard and travels far. A flaw detector might spend spring on a turnaround in Pasadena or Deer Park, summer on a pipeline spread in West Texas, and autumn in a fabrication shop in Louisiana. Crews move between Houston, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Beaumont and Port Arthur and Corpus Christi, often in company trucks packed with kit that was signed out by one person and used by three. Somewhere along the way, a probe goes missing, a certificate lapses and a client auditor asks a question nobody can answer quickly.

The Asset Management app in Atlantis NDT ERP is the register that keeps up with that. Every instrument, probe, calibration block, exposure device and survey meter is tracked by serial number, with its holder, condition, lifecycle stage, calibration status and history. It is built for your equipment, not your clients' plant. It does not hold refinery piping circuits, wall-thickness history or inspection intervals for the owner's vessels. It answers the questions that land on an NDT operations manager's desk: what do we own, where is it, who has it, and can it legally and technically go to work tomorrow?

The app is part of Atlantis NDT ERP, a pre-configured and customised Atlantis ERP system for inspection companies, set up for you by Atlantis NDT.

What the app tracks

Each serialised item carries equipment type, serial number, asset tag, firmware version, accessories, assigned person, condition and a lifecycle stage: new, active, in calibration, in repair, rented out, retired or disposed. Calibration frequency and status sit on the same record, and rental rates can be recorded where you hire kit out.

Around that record the app adds the workflows a US inspection company runs every week:

Issue and return against specific serials, with supervisor and manager approval and condition recorded at both ends.
Reservations with clash prevention, so two project managers cannot book the same phased array unit for overlapping dates.
Inbound and outbound movements to site, to calibration labs, to the manufacturer and to rental customers.
Maintenance log entries typed as preventive, corrective, repair, cleaning, firmware update or probe replacement, with condition before and after.
Calibration records with provider, certificate number, standard, range, stated uncertainty, accredited-lab flag, pass, fail or conditional result and next due date.
Calibration certificate register with lab accreditation number, PDF, valid, expiring or expired status and expiry alerts.
Consumables such as couplant, penetrant, developer, cleaner, MT ink and PPE, with reorder levels, low-stock flags and a movement ledger.

Calibration evidence US clients and auditors ask for

In US refining, petrochemical and fabrication work, equipment calibration is checked by more people than most companies expect. The owner's inspection group, the API 510, 570 or 653 inspector on the job, the authorized inspector on code fabrication and your own QA auditor all want proof that the instrument used for a report was in calibration on that date.

ASME Section V sets much of the expectation. For ultrasonic examination, Article 4 calls for periodic instrument linearity checks, screen height and amplitude control, alongside calibration against the specified blocks, and many written practices and client specifications add their own calibration intervals on top. The calibration record in the app captures what those audits look for: the lab or provider, the certificate number, the standard used, the range, the result and the next due date. Your Level III sets the frequency per equipment type, and the register shows status without anyone doing date arithmetic.

Accreditation is the second question. Most US NDT companies send instruments to labs accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 by A2LA or ANAB, and some reference NVLAP-accredited labs, with traceability to NIST stated on the certificate. The app records the accredited-lab flag on each calibration and the lab's accreditation number on the certificate register. In Purchase, calibration labs are typed vendors with the accreditation number and accreditation expiry, so you notice if a lab's scope lapses before you send it another UT set.

When the auditor asks, you open the serial and show the certificate PDF, not a folder search.

Aerospace shops: NAS 410 and equipment checks

US aerospace NDT shops live with a different rhythm. Personnel are qualified to NAS 410, work is done to prime contractor specifications, and Nadcap auditors look closely at equipment control. Magnetic particle work to ASTM E1444 and penetrant work to ASTM E1417 depend on a lot of small instruments being right: UV-A meters, visible light meters, ammeters on wet horizontal benches, shot timers, magnetic field indicators and the like.

Each of those can have its own serial record, calibration frequency and certificate history in the app, so the black light meter used at the start of the shift is provably in calibration. Periodic equipment performance checks that your procedures require can be recorded against the item, and the results sit in the same history the auditor sees. If your shop needs a particular daily check sheet laid out the way a prime or Nadcap checklist expects, that layout is configured during implementation as part of the agreed customisation scope.

The certificate register's expiry alerts are what make the difference in an aerospace shop. A UV-A meter drifting out of calibration unnoticed can put a whole batch of fluorescent penetrant inspections in question. Alerts sent ahead of the due date, to the people you choose and repeated at the interval you choose, keep that from happening quietly.

Radiography: NRC, Agreement States and DOT transport

Industrial radiography in the US runs under 10 CFR Part 34, administered by the NRC directly or by Agreement State programmes such as the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. Among other things, the rules expect survey instruments to be calibrated at intervals not exceeding six months and exposure devices, associated equipment and transport containers to be inspected and maintained at intervals not exceeding three months. Transport of sources falls under DOT hazardous materials rules in 49 CFR.

The Asset Management app gives your radiation safety officer a clean equipment side of that picture. Exposure devices, guide tubes, collimators, survey meters, alarm ratemeters and source containers each get a serial record. Survey meter calibrations go in as calibration records with certificate, result and due date, and the register flags them before they expire. Quarterly inspection and maintenance of exposure devices can be logged in the maintenance history with condition before and after. Issue requests for cameras and survey meters go through supervisor and manager approval, and movements show where each item has been.

Source-carrying vehicles sit in the Fleet app, which records whether a vehicle can carry radioactive sources, its transport licence number and expiry, and which project and driver it is assigned to.

What is not built in: licence-format utilization logs, quarterly source inventories and leak test records as your regulator prescribes them, or source activity calculations. If you want those in the ERP, they are scoped with your RSO during implementation.

Pipeline spreads and travelling crews

Pipeline construction and integrity work, whether welds shot to API 1104 on a new spread or excavation inspections for an operator's PHMSA-driven programme, spreads kit across hundreds of miles. Crews rotate, trucks swap, and equipment changes hands in motel parking lots.

Issue and return is designed for exactly this. When kit moves from one technician to another, it is returned and re-issued on the record, with condition at each step and approval where you require it. Reservations stop the spread superintendent and the shop manager from promising the same crawler or the same UT set to two jobs. The dashboard KPI for issued equipment overdue shows kit that should have come back when a job closed and has not.

Many US companies also rent in equipment from rental houses for peak periods and rent out their own spares. Rented-in kit can be recorded with its serial and calibration certificate like any other item, and your own rented-out units carry the rented-out stage and rental rates so the equipment manager and finance see the same picture. On the planning side, Team Assignments blocks double-booking of an equipment serial and warns when an assigned instrument is out of calibration before the crew leaves the yard.

Consumables, OSHA and the equipment room

Consumables are where margins leak on US jobs. Aerosol penetrant, developer, cleaner, MT prep and ink, couplant, film-room stock and PPE all get used faster than planned when a job grows. The app gives each consumable a reorder level and a low-stock flag, and the movement ledger shows which jobs drew what.

OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard means your chemicals come with safety data sheets that must be available to workers. Keeping the SDS alongside each consumable record, or tying PPE issues to a technician, can be set up during implementation if you want it; it is part of the customisation scope rather than an assumed feature.

The maintenance log earns its keep in Gulf Coast conditions. Heat, humidity, salt air near the coast and hurricane-season downpours are hard on connectors, battery packs and screens. Cleaning and drying entries, cable replacements and firmware updates each go against the serial, so a recurring fault shows up as a pattern and not as a surprise on the next turnaround.

Billing, dashboards and reporting

Equipment is a real line item on many US inspection invoices, whether it is a day rate for a phased array unit or a charge for a crawler on a pipeline job. Invoice lines in the ERP can carry the equipment serial, method, technician, rate type and days or hours, with separate subtotals for labour, equipment and consumables. Timesheet lines can carry the equipment serial too, so what you bill matches what was actually on site. Sales tax is configured for the states you work in during implementation.

Managers get NDT KPIs on their dashboard: calibration due and overdue, certificates expiring, issued equipment overdue. The same daily alert engine that warns about technician certifications also covers calibration certificates.

Inspection results live in the NDT Reports app, where UT reports carry a probe calibration table. If your clients want those results on a 3D model of their unit or tank, that is Atlantis's companion product, Digital Twin Reporting Software, which works alongside the ERP. Want to see it with your own register? Book an Asset Management demo.

Setting it up for a US company

Implementation starts with the spreadsheet you already have. We clean and import your serials, equipment types, asset tags, firmware, accessories and current holders, then load current calibration certificates with PDFs, lab accreditation numbers and due dates. Your Level III agrees calibration frequencies per equipment type, and your managers agree who approves issue requests for controlled and high-value items.

If you run more than one yard, say a Houston base and a Louisiana branch, stores and consumable reorder levels are set per location. Alert recipients, look-ahead days and resend intervals are configured for your QA manager, RSO and equipment coordinator. Anything regulator- or client-specific is agreed as customisation scope before work starts, so there are no surprises.

Cost is quoted on request. The approach is affordable, accessible and fully customisable.

Frequently asked questions

Will this help us pass a client or Nadcap equipment audit?

It gives you the evidence quickly: each serial's calibration certificates, results, due dates and maintenance history in one place. Passing the audit still depends on your procedures and practice, but the paperwork hunt goes away.

Can it record A2LA or ANAB accreditation details?

Yes. Each calibration record has an accredited-lab flag, the certificate register stores the lab accreditation number, and calibration lab vendors in Purchase carry accreditation number and expiry.

Does it replace our NRC or Agreement State radiography records?

No. It manages the equipment side: serials, issue and return, survey meter calibrations and device maintenance. Licence-specific logs are scoped during implementation if you want them in the ERP.

Is it plant integrity software for our refinery clients?

No. It manages your company's NDT instruments and consumables, not the owner's process equipment or its inspection plans.

Can we track rental equipment?

Yes, both kit you rent in and kit you rent out, with lifecycle stage, rental rates and movements.

Does it work for a small shop?

Yes. A shop with one base and a few dozen instruments can run the same register, alerts and issue workflow as a multi-branch company.

Talk to us

Send us a rough list of your equipment and bases and we will show you how it fits. Request an Asset Management quote for your US operation.

Asset Management by region

Works with

Team Assignments: Assign qualified technicians and crews to jobs by method, level and availability.
Project: Inspection projects, tasks and milestones from award to final report.
Timesheets: Technician hours per job, feeding payroll and client invoicing.
Maintenance: Preventive and corrective maintenance requests for instruments, vehicles and site equipment.
Fleet: Vehicles, drivers and service records for field crews.
Calendar: Shared schedules for jobs, audits and client meetings.
To-do: Personal and team task lists linked to jobs and records.

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Built for any business that runs on operations

Most companies do not fail at their craft. They lose time, margin and goodwill in the gaps between the tools they use to run the place — a quoting spreadsheet that does not talk to the job sheet, a job sheet that does not reach accounts, and a compliance folder nobody can search when a client asks. Atlantis closes those gaps by putting the whole operation on one platform, so information is entered once and everything downstream stays in step.

What you can run on it

Sales and CRM — leads, quotes, follow-ups and the pipeline that tells you what next month looks like.
Projects and job costing — plan the work, track the hours and materials against it, and see the margin while the job is still live rather than at final account.
Field and service teams — dispatch, schedules, mobile capture that works with no signal, and sign-off from site.
Inventory and purchasing — stock, suppliers, reorder points and goods receipt, joined to the jobs that consume them.
People — records, qualifications and licences with renewal reminders, timesheets, leave and payroll.
Quality and documents — procedures and forms under revision control, with the audit trail an inspection or accreditation body actually asks for.
Accounts — invoicing, expenses, multi-currency and the reporting your accountant stops chasing you for.

Affordable, accessible, fully customizable — and we mean each word

Affordable because the whole suite is included rather than sold to you a module at a time, and because implementation is done by people who have run operations rather than by a chain of subcontractors. Accessible because it runs in a browser and on a phone, works for a small team on day one, and does not need a specialist on staff to keep it alive. Fully customizable because your process is the thing that makes you competitive — the software should bend to it, not the other way round.

Industries we configure for

Service businesses and contractors, manufacturing and fabrication, trading and distribution, laboratories and testing houses, engineering consultancies, construction and facilities, and asset owners across energy, marine, aerospace and infrastructure. Inspection and testing is where we started, and it remains the sector we go deepest in — but the platform underneath is general-purpose, and most of what it does has nothing to do with inspection at all.

What happens when you get in touch

A short conversation, not a sales sequence. We ask how the business runs today and where it hurts, show you the platform doing that work, and send a written quote shaped to your region, your team size and the scope you actually need. No obligation, nothing to install first, and no pressure to decide on the call. Reach out and tell us what you are trying to fix.

Compare the platform before you shortlist

Most companies arrive at a city page and actually want one of three things. If you are evaluating systems, start with NDT inspection software — what inspection companies actually need. If report turnaround is the pain, go to NDT reporting software compared. If the question is whether a generic system could work, read why generic ERP breaks on inspection work and the NetSuite comparison.

Request a demo or a tailored quote — tell us methods, levels, headcount and timing, and a consultant calls you back prepared.

Also useful: inspection management software for companies inspecting other people's assets, the full business management platform, and the evaluation checklist to run vendors against before you demo anything.

Speak to an ASNT NDT Level III

Atlantis NDT provides ASNT Level III consulting, NDT training to ASNT SNT-TC-1A, inspection management software and independent report validation. Request a free consultation and we will return a tailored quote — affordable, accessible and fully customizable to your programme.