NDT Crew Dispatch and Technician Scheduling in the USA

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

Why NDT dispatch in the US is its own problem

Running NDT crews in the United States means working across huge distances with a workforce that travels. A Houston inspection company may have technicians on a refinery unit in Pasadena, a tank farm in Corpus Christi, a pipeline spread in West Texas and a fabrication shop job in Louisiana in the same week. Many of those technicians are travellers on per diem, some are local hands who go home every night, and some are contract Level IIs who will take the best offer on the day.

Clients add their own layer. Refiners and chemical plants want named, qualified personnel, current site orientations and contractor prequalification before anyone reaches the gate. Pipeline operators want operator qualification records and drug and alcohol testing under DOT rules. Radiography work brings NRC or Agreement State licensing into the picture. And almost everyone wants the crew there on Monday.

Most US inspection companies still run this on a whiteboard, a spreadsheet and a lot of phone calls. That works until a turnaround season arrives and the jobs double. Team Assignments, part of Atlantis NDT ERP, replaces that patchwork with one scheduling record: the job, the site, the dates, the crew and the equipment serial numbers, with the system blocking double-bookings and warning about out-of-calibration kit before anyone gets in a truck.

What Team Assignments gives a US inspection company

• A dispatch workflow for every job: planned, dispatched, in field, submitted, closed.
• Site GPS coordinates plus mobilisation and demobilisation dates, useful when the site is a pipeline right-of-way or a remote compressor station with no street address.
• A technician availability calendar with assigned, leave, training, sick and unavailable entries, with overlaps blocked.
• Double-booking blocked for technicians and for equipment serial numbers.
• A warning when assigned equipment is out of calibration.
• Technician status, current assignment, utilisation percentage and next available date.
• Calendar, kanban and list views for dispatch, operations and management.

The rest of this page is about how those features meet the realities of US field work: turnaround peaks, pipeline hitches, radiography licensing, employer certification and the paperwork it takes to get through a plant gate.

Spring and fall turnaround seasons on the Gulf Coast

Gulf Coast refiners and petrochemical plants tend to schedule major turnarounds in two windows: late winter into spring, and early fall. Owners try to finish maintenance before the summer driving season pushes gasoline demand up, and many avoid the peak of hurricane season, which runs from June to November. The result is predictable. Between roughly February and May, and again from September into November, every inspection company from Beaumont and Port Arthur to Lake Charles, Baton Rouge and Corpus Christi is chasing the same pool of UT, RT and PAUT technicians.

That is exactly when scheduling breaks down. Turnaround contracts get awarded late, scopes grow once units are opened, and the owner asks for extra crews with a day's notice. A dispatcher who is holding availability in their head will overcommit.

Team Assignments helps in three ways. First, the availability calendar shows real commitments weeks ahead, so when a planner asks whether you can supply six more technicians for a unit that opens in April, you can see who is actually free, not who you hope is free. Second, the next available date on each technician tells sales when a named person can start. Third, the clash checks stop a coordinator from committing the same PAUT set or the same RT Level II to two plants in the same week, however frantic the phones get.

When a storm shuts a plant or delays a start, the mobilisation dates can be moved and the knock-on is visible: if the new dates overlap later jobs for the same people or instruments, the overlap is blocked, so you deal with it now rather than finding out when two clients expect the same crew.

Pipeline spreads, PHMSA and long hitches

Pipeline work runs to a different rhythm. On a construction spread the weld inspection crew moves with the welding crews along the right-of-way, often working long hitches of six or seven days a week on ten- or twelve-hour shifts, with a rotation home after several weeks. Integrity digs on existing lines are shorter, scattered and often in rural locations with no useful address.

Site GPS coordinates on each assignment solve a small but real problem: the crew and the office both know exactly which dig site, valve station or tie-in point the job refers to. Mobilisation and demobilisation dates put travel days in the plan, so the technician driving from Houston to the Permian Basin is not shown as available on the day he is on the road.

Pipeline operators regulated by PHMSA under 49 CFR Parts 192 and 195 also expect contractor staff to meet operator qualification requirements for covered tasks and to be in a DOT drug and alcohol testing programme under 49 CFR Part 199. Team Assignments does not manage those programmes, but it does give you one place to see who is on which pipeline job and when. Recording OQ evaluations and testing status against each technician, and checking them at dispatch, is something we configure as part of your implementation scope if you need it.

Because the utilisation figure counts real assignments, it also shows when a spread has tied up most of your RT crew for weeks, which is the moment to turn down other radiography work or bring in subcontract help rather than overcommit.

Radiography crews, NRC licensing and the two-person rule

Field radiography in the US is licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or, in Agreement States such as Texas and Louisiana, by the state radiation control programme. Under 10 CFR Part 34 and the state equivalents, radiography outside a permanent facility needs at least two qualified people present: a radiographer plus at least one other radiographer or radiographer's assistant. Personal dosimetry, radiation safety training and source security all come with it.

For dispatch, that means an RT job is never one person and one camera. It is a pair of qualified people, an exposure device with a specific serial number, survey meters, and a vehicle allowed to carry the source. Team Assignments lets you book all of them on the same assignment. Double-booking protection covers the exposure device and meters by serial number just as it covers technicians, so the same camera cannot be on two jobs at once, and a warning appears if a survey meter or other instrument on the job is out of calibration.

The employee NDT profile, held alongside the Certificates app, records radiation safety training and the radiation badge number for each technician, so the coordinator can see who is set up for RT work. The Fleet app records whether a vehicle can carry radioactive sources, with its transport licence number and expiry, and assigns vehicles to projects. Making sure every RT assignment has two qualified people remains the coordinator's call; if you want the system to enforce it, that rule can be added during implementation.

SNT-TC-1A, CP-189 and the certifications clients audit

Most US NDT companies certify their own technicians under an employer written practice based on ASNT SNT-TC-1A, and some work to the stricter ANSI/ASNT CP-189 standard. ASME Section V points back to these documents for personnel qualification, so any job built to ASME Section VIII or B31.3 can have an owner's inspector or Authorized Inspector checking that the technicians on site hold current certs for the method they are using. On API 510, 570 and 653 work, the API-certified inspector relies on your technicians' qualifications being in order too.

A dispatcher who sends a UT Level II whose certification lapsed last month has created a problem that shows up in an audit, often after the report has been issued. That is why Team Assignments works hand-in-hand with the Certificates app. Certificates holds the scheme, level, method, certifying body and expiry for each technician, calculates status automatically as active, expiring soon, expired or revoked, and creates warning tasks 90 days before a cert or vision test expires. Daily email alerts go to the people you choose. Timesheets then warn when a technician's cert is not valid, so a lapse is caught when hours are booked, not when the client disputes the invoice.

Aerospace shops working to NAS 410 have similar needs, with an emphasis on documented examinations and regular vision checks; both are recorded in Certificates, with exam scores against a passing score and vision tests with their own expiry.

Atlantis NDT also runs training built on ASNT SNT-TC-1A. Training weeks go into the availability calendar as training, so dispatch always knows who is off the plan.

TWIC cards, site orientations and contractor prequalification

Getting through the gate at a US plant is its own job. Facilities regulated under the Maritime Transportation Security Act, including many Gulf Coast refineries, chemical plants and marine terminals, require a TWIC card for unescorted access. Plants in the Houston and Louisiana corridors commonly require a regional basic safety orientation plus a site-specific orientation. Most owners also require contractors to be prequalified through a third-party platform such as ISNetworld or Avetta, and they want OSHA training records for the crew.

These requirements change what available means. A technician who is free but has no TWIC is not available for a marine terminal job. One whose site orientation has expired needs time for orientation before starting, and that should show in the mobilisation date.

The Project app already carries safety induction and work permit fields for each job, so the requirements of a specific site are written down where the coordinator will see them. On the scheduling side, orientation days can be booked in the availability calendar so they are not lost. Tracking the expiry of TWIC cards and site orientations per technician, and flagging them at dispatch, is typical of the customization we agree during implementation for US clients, because every company's client mix and document list is different.

The aim is simple: the crew that turns up at 6 a.m. gets through the gate, rather than spending the morning in the badging office while the client's clock runs.

Equipment across multiple yards and branches

Many US NDT companies run more than one yard: a main shop in Houston, a branch in Baton Rouge or Lake Charles, maybe a satellite office in the Permian. Instruments drift between them. A PAUT unit goes out from Houston, comes back through Louisiana, and ends up on a truck that nobody has logged.

In Team Assignments every piece of equipment is booked by serial number, the same serial held in the Asset Management app. If that serial is already committed to another job for the same dates, the booking is blocked. If its calibration has lapsed, the assignment shows a warning. Asset Management adds the issue and return workflow, with condition recorded both ways and supervisor or manager approval, plus calibration certificates with next due dates and expiry alerts.

Put together, the coordinator can answer three questions without leaving the screen: is this instrument free, is it in calibration, and who has it now. That matters when the owner's inspector asks for the calibration certificate of the unit used on a particular weld, and it matters more when the unit is needed for a job in two days and turns out to be at the lab.

Hours, overtime, per diem and utilisation

Field technicians in the US are usually paid hourly, and overtime on turnarounds is normal. Clients are billed on day rates, hourly rates, standby and travel, often with different multipliers for overtime and weekends. Getting the hours right is where margin is won or lost.

Team Assignments feeds that process. Once a crew is in the field, technicians record hours in Timesheets by work type (inspection, travel, standby, setup), method, site and equipment serial, with a billable flag and a rate multiplier for overtime or premium hours. Those hours flow into Invoicing, which splits labour, equipment and consumables, with sales tax configured for the states you work in during implementation. Per diems and field expenses go through Expenses and can be re-billed to the job.

Utilisation on each technician record gives owners a view of the business that most spreadsheets never do: who is fully booked, who has been on standby, and whether the RT crew is carrying the company while the MT and PT crew sits idle. When turnaround season ends, it shows how quickly the team is being redeployed, or not.

Reports, digital twins and technician skills

Once a job moves to submitted, the report takes over. The NDT Reports app captures method-specific data for UT, RT, MT, PT, PAUT, TOFD and more, and its offline field app lets technicians pull the jobs and equipment assigned to them and work with no signal, which matters inside a refinery unit or on a remote spread.

For owners who want more than PDFs, our companion product Digital Twin Reporting Software places inspection results on a 3D model of the asset, so a plant engineer can see where findings sit on a column or tank rather than reading a table of locations. It is a separate product that works alongside the ERP.

For technicians building hands-on skill between jobs, Practical NDT offers immersive 3D practice across UT, PAUT, RT, MT, PT, VT, ET and TOFD on virtual welds, pipes, vessels and castings. It opens from the eLearning portal, so a quiet week on the availability calendar can become useful practice time.

Setting it up for a US operation

Atlantis NDT deploys and configures the ERP for you. For a US inspection company, a typical Team Assignments setup covers loading technicians with their SNT-TC-1A or CP-189 certifications, loading instruments and radiography equipment by serial with current calibration dates, connecting Time Off so approved leave blocks dispatch, setting up branches and access rights, and agreeing any extra checks you need, such as TWIC, OQ or site orientation tracking. We train your coordinators on your own live jobs.

The system is fully customizable and pricing is quote on request, kept affordable for small shops as well as multi-branch companies. Book a Team Assignments demo and we will show it with a sample of your crew.

Frequently asked questions

Can it stop me sending the same technician to two plants during a turnaround?

Yes. Once a technician is assigned for a set of dates, any overlapping assignment or availability entry is blocked. The same applies to equipment serial numbers, so one PAUT set or exposure device cannot be booked on two jobs at the same time.

Does it track SNT-TC-1A and CP-189 certifications?

The Certificates app does. It records scheme, level, method, certifying body and expiry for each technician, flags certs expiring within 90 days and sends configurable daily email alerts. Timesheets warn if a technician's cert is not valid.

Can it enforce the two-person rule for radiography?

Not out of the box. You can book both people and the exposure device on the same assignment, and the employee profile shows radiation safety training and badge numbers. A rule that blocks a one-person RT assignment can be added during implementation.

Can it track TWIC cards and site orientations?

Site induction and work permit fields are on each project. Per-technician tracking of TWIC and orientation expiry is configured during implementation, as part of the customization scope agreed with you.

Does it help with overtime billing?

Yes, through Timesheets. Hours carry a work type, billable flag and rate multiplier, and they feed Invoicing, where labour, equipment and consumables are split out.

What does it cost?

Quote on request. Pricing depends on users, apps and customization. We keep it affordable and accessible for US inspection companies of all sizes.

Plan your next turnaround in it

If your next busy season is already filling up, now is the time to move dispatch off the whiteboard. Tell us how many technicians you run, which methods and which regions you cover, and we will show you a realistic week of Gulf Coast dispatch in Team Assignments. Request a quote or book a walkthrough with our team.

Team Assignments by region

• Team Assignments global overview
• 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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