NDT Crew Dispatch and Technician Scheduling Software

Assign qualified technicians and crews to jobs by method, level and availability. Request a demo. Affordable. Accessible. Fully customizable. Quote on request.

The scheduling problem every NDT company knows

It is 4 p.m. on a Thursday. A client calls: they need two UT Level IIs and a PAUT technician on site on Monday for a weld campaign. Your operations manager opens the whiteboard, the shared spreadsheet and three WhatsApp groups, and starts ringing round. One technician looks free but is actually booked on a refresher course. Another is free, but the phased array set he usually takes is already promised to a different job. The third is available, and so is the flaw detector, until someone notices on Monday morning that its calibration lapsed last week.

None of this is unusual. NDT dispatch is hard because three things have to line up at once: the right people, holding the right certifications, carrying the right calibrated equipment, at the right site on the right dates. Most companies keep those three things in three different places, and the dispatcher is the only person who joins them together, usually in their head.

When that person is on leave, or when a turnaround pushes you to thirty jobs a week instead of ten, the gaps show. Technicians get double-booked. A probe goes to two sites on paper and one site in reality. A client audit asks who was on a job three months ago and nobody can say for sure. Team Assignments exists to take that joining-up out of people's heads and put it in one system that says no when something does not fit.

What Team Assignments does

Team Assignments is the dispatch and scheduling app inside Atlantis NDT ERP, our fully customized ERP pre-configured for inspection companies. Each job becomes a team assignment: a record that ties together the client work, the site, the dates, the technicians and the equipment serial numbers going with them.

Out of the box it gives you:

• A dispatch workflow that moves every assignment through planned, dispatched, in field, submitted and closed, so anyone can see where a job stands.
• Site details including GPS coordinates and mobilisation and demobilisation dates, so travel and site time are planned, not guessed.
• A technician availability calendar with assigned, leave, training, sick and unavailable entries. Overlapping entries are blocked.
• Double-booking protection for both technicians and equipment serial numbers. If a person or an instrument is already committed for those dates, the system stops the second booking.
• A calibration warning when an assigned piece of equipment is out of calibration.
• Technician status at a glance: current assignment, utilisation percentage and next available date.
• Calendar, kanban and list views so dispatchers, managers and supervisors each see the jobs in the way that suits their work.

It is not a separate tool bolted onto your ERP. The technicians are the same employee records your HR and certification data sits on, the equipment is the same serial-numbered inventory your calibration records sit on, and the hours booked on site flow into the same timesheets you invoice from. That is the point: one record of who went where, with what, and when.

How a job moves from planned to closed

Every NDT company has its own habits, but the path of a field job is broadly the same. Team Assignments follows it with five stages.

1. Planned. The job is won or scheduled. The coordinator creates the assignment, enters the site, its GPS coordinates and the mobilisation and demobilisation dates, and starts picking technicians and equipment. At this stage the availability calendar and the clash checks are doing their work: a technician on leave or already assigned cannot be added, and an instrument serial already out on another job cannot be booked twice.
2. Dispatched. The crew is confirmed and told to go. Moving the job to dispatched is the signal that people and kit are committed, travel is arranged and the site has been informed.
3. In field. The crew is on site doing the inspection. The assignment now shows as their current assignment and their status reflects it, so anyone asking where a technician is gets an answer without phoning round.
4. Submitted. The field work is done and results and paperwork are handed in for review. For many companies this is where the NDT report goes to a Level II or Level III reviewer.
5. Closed. Reports are approved, equipment is back, timesheets are in and the job is ready for billing. Closing the assignment gives you a clean history of who did the work and with which instruments.

The kanban view shows these stages as columns, so on a Monday morning the operations manager can see at once how many jobs are still waiting to be dispatched, how many crews are in the field and which submitted jobs are holding up invoicing. Stuck jobs become visible, rather than sitting in someone's inbox.

A technician availability calendar that tells the truth

Most scheduling mistakes come from an availability picture that is out of date. The technician told the office about his leave, but it went into an email, not the plan. The training department booked three people onto a refresher week and nobody told dispatch.

Team Assignments keeps one availability calendar per technician with five kinds of entry: assigned, leave, training, sick and unavailable. Assignments add themselves to it. Leave approved in the standard Time Off app feeds the same picture, so an approved holiday blocks that person from being dispatched without anyone copying it across. Training weeks, sick days and general unavailability, such as a medical appointment or a visa renewal trip, go in the same place.

Overlaps are blocked. You cannot put a technician on a job for dates they are already on leave, and you cannot book leave over dates they are already committed to a site without dealing with the clash first. That sounds simple, and it is, but it removes a whole class of Monday-morning surprises.

The calendar view is where most coordinators live. It shows who is out, who is on which job, and where the gaps are. When a client asks whether you can put three more technicians on a turnaround next month, you can look at real availability instead of making a guess and hoping the crew agrees later.

Equipment clash checks and calibration warnings

Technicians are only half the booking. A UT crew without a calibrated flaw detector, or a PAUT technician without the right probe and wedge, cannot start work. And equipment is where many NDT companies lose track, because instruments move between sites, get borrowed between crews and come back to the store at odd hours.

In Team Assignments, equipment is booked by serial number, the same serial numbers held in the Asset Management app. If a specific flaw detector, yoke, exposure device, probe or thickness gauge is already assigned to another job over the same dates, the second booking is blocked. You find out at planning time, not when two crews both turn up at the store asking for the same instrument.

The app also warns when an assigned piece of equipment is out of calibration. Calibration records live in Asset Management, with the provider, certificate number, next due date and certificate status. When a coordinator attaches an instrument whose calibration has lapsed, the assignment flags it. That gives the office a chance to swap the unit or send it for calibration before it leaves, instead of a client's inspector spotting an expired sticker on site and stopping the work.

For NDT companies audited against their own quality system, this matters. A report issued with an out-of-calibration instrument is a report you may have to withdraw, followed by a re-inspection you pay for yourself. Catching it at dispatch is far cheaper than catching it afterwards.

Utilisation, status and next available date

Owners and operations managers ask the same questions every week. Who is sitting idle? Who is being run into the ground? When is the next person free who holds RT Level II?

Each technician record in Team Assignments shows the current status, the current assignment, a utilisation percentage and the next available date. Utilisation tells you how much of each person's time is committed to jobs, so you can spot the technician who has been on standby for three weeks as easily as the one who has not had a day off in a month. Next available date answers the most common question a salesperson asks dispatch: when can we start?

This is useful beyond the daily plan. When utilisation is high across the whole team for weeks at a time, that is evidence for hiring or for bringing in subcontract technicians. When it is low for a particular method, it may be time to push that service harder in sales, or to cross-train people in a method that is in demand. And when a client asks for a named technician, you can see straight away whether that person is free or when they will be.

Because the data comes from real assignments and real leave, not from a spreadsheet someone forgot to update, it holds up when you use it to make decisions.

Who uses it, and how

Team Assignments is built for the people who actually move crews around, with views that suit each role.

• Dispatchers and operations coordinators work mainly in the calendar and kanban views. They create assignments, pick technicians and equipment, and push jobs through the stages.
• Operations managers use the list and kanban views to see the whole week or month: jobs waiting for crews, jobs in the field, jobs submitted but not closed.
• Level IIIs and QA/QC managers care about who is qualified for what. They work alongside dispatch through the Certificates app, which tracks each technician's scheme, level, method and expiry, and warns 90 days before a cert or vision test lapses.
• Sales and account managers check next available dates and utilisation before promising a start date to a client.
• Owners look at utilisation across the team to judge whether the business is over- or under-staffed.
• Technicians see their own assignments, and field staff using the NDT Reports offline app can pull the jobs and equipment assigned to them.

Access rights are set during implementation, so a technician sees their own jobs, a supervisor sees their crew and management sees everything. You decide who can create assignments, who can dispatch and who can close.

How Team Assignments connects to the rest of the ERP

Dispatch is the middle of an NDT job. Before it come the quote and the project; after it come the report, the timesheet and the invoice. Team Assignments sits between them.

• Project holds the NDT job type, site, client PO, methods, codes, acceptance criteria and the safety induction and work permit fields your clients ask about.
• Certificates tracks each technician's certifications and vision tests. Timesheets warn when a technician's certificate is not valid, so an expired cert does not quietly get billed.
• Asset Management holds equipment serial numbers, issue and return, and calibration records, which is where the calibration warning comes from.
• Timesheets record inspection, travel, standby and setup hours by method, site and equipment serial, with a billable flag and a rate multiplier.
• Fleet records which vehicles may carry radioactive sources, with transport licence expiry, and assigns vehicles to projects.
• Expenses captures field expenses and per diems for re-billing to the job.
• Invoicing picks up billable hours and splits labour, equipment and consumables.

In the field, the NDT Reports app captures method-specific results, with an offline field app that works without signal. Many clients now want more than a PDF, and that is where our companion product, Digital Twin Reporting Software, comes in: it places inspection results on a 3D model of the asset, so an asset owner sees where each finding is rather than reading a list of weld numbers. It is a separate product that works alongside the ERP.

For crews still building skills, our Practical NDT platform gives learners immersive 3D practice on virtual welds, pipes, vessels and castings across UT, PAUT, RT, MT, PT, VT, ET and TOFD, opened from the eLearning portal. Training weeks can be entered in the availability calendar as training, so dispatch always knows who is off the plan.

What implementation looks like

Atlantis NDT sets up the ERP for you. We do not hand you a blank system and a manual. For Team Assignments, implementation usually covers:

1. Loading your people. Technician records with their NDT profile, methods and levels, and current certifications in the Certificates app.
2. Loading your equipment. Instruments, probes and other kit by serial number, with current calibration dates, so clash checks and calibration warnings work from day one.
3. Agreeing your stages. The five dispatch stages cover most companies. If you need extra checkpoints, such as a site pre-qualification step or client approval of named personnel, that is part of the customization scope agreed with you.
4. Setting access rights for dispatchers, supervisors, managers and technicians.
5. Connecting Time Off so approved leave blocks dispatch automatically.
6. Training your coordinators on the calendar, kanban and list views, using your own live jobs rather than demo data.

Most companies run the old whiteboard alongside the new system for a short period, then drop it once the team trusts that the calendar is right. Because the ERP is fully customizable, views, fields and reports can be shaped around how your operation already works rather than forcing you into someone else's process.

Pricing depends on your team size, the apps you need and the customization involved. It is quote on request, and we keep it affordable for small and mid-sized inspection companies as well as larger ones. Book a Team Assignments demo and we will show it working with a sample of your own crew.

Frequently asked questions

Can Team Assignments stop me double-booking a technician?

Yes. If a technician is already assigned, or has leave, training, sick or unavailable time on those dates, the overlap is blocked. The same applies to equipment serial numbers: one instrument cannot be booked on two jobs for the same dates.

Does it check whether equipment is calibrated?

It warns you. When you assign an instrument whose calibration is out of date according to its record in Asset Management, the assignment shows a warning so you can swap the unit or send it for calibration before the crew leaves.

Does it check technician certifications?

Certification data lives in the Certificates app, which flags certs and vision tests expiring within 90 days and sends configurable email alerts. Timesheets warn when a technician's certificate is not valid. If you want a certification check built directly into the assignment step, that can be configured as part of your implementation scope.

Can technicians see their jobs on a phone?

Yes, through the NDT Reports offline field app, which can pull the jobs and equipment assigned to the logged-in technician and works without signal on site. Supervisors and coordinators can also use the ERP in a mobile browser.

Which views does it offer?

Calendar, kanban and list. Coordinators usually plan in the calendar, operations managers watch job stages on the kanban board, and the list view is handy for filtering jobs by client, site or status.

Can it handle subcontract technicians?

Yes. Subcontract or freelance technicians can be set up as records so their availability and assignments are tracked the same way as staff. How you handle their certifications and billing is agreed during implementation.

How is it priced?

Quote on request. The price depends on the number of users, the apps you choose and the level of customization. We keep it affordable and accessible for inspection companies of every size.

See your own crew in it

The quickest way to judge a scheduling tool is to see your own jobs in it. Send us a rough picture of your team: how many technicians, which methods, how many jobs a week and where you work. We will set up a demo with a sample of that data and walk your operations manager through a real week of dispatch, from planned to closed.

Request a quote for Team Assignments or ask for a walkthrough of the full Atlantis NDT ERP.

Team Assignments by region

• Team Assignments in United States
• Team Assignments in Canada
• Team Assignments in UK & Europe
• Team Assignments in Middle East
• Team Assignments in India

Works with

• Project: Inspection projects, tasks and milestones from award to final report.
• Timesheets: Technician hours per job, feeding payroll and client invoicing.
• Asset Management: NDT equipment by serial number: issue and return, reservations, calibration and maintenance history.
• 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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