Crew dispatch
When the same technician and the same kit are booked on two jobs
Double-booking happens when people, leave, training and equipment live in separate places and only the dispatcher joins them up. Put every technician's assignments, leave, training and sickness on one availability calendar, book instruments by serial number on the same assignment, and let the system refuse a clash at the moment of booking instead of on Monday morning.
This week by crew. Double bookings are flagged, and certification checks can be set up at assignment to suit your written practice.
- Weld RT, night shift: RT for J. Patel expires before this job.
- Pipeline girth welds: D. Chen is already booked on Tank floor MFL.
- Double bookings are flagged on the board; certification checks at assignment are configured to the written practice.
Panels in the preview: Certifications, Calibration, Reports, Jobs, Sales & cash. Names and statuses are sample data.
Why NDT dispatch produces clashes
A client rings late on a Thursday wanting UT Level IIs and a PAUT technician on site first thing Monday. The coordinator checks the whiteboard, the shared planning sheet and a couple of messaging groups. One technician looks free but is booked on a refresher. Another is free, but the phased array set he always takes is promised to a different job. Both facts were known to someone. Neither was in front of the person doing the booking.
Dispatch in an inspection company has to line up the right people, holding the right qualifications, carrying the right calibrated equipment, at the right site on the right dates. When those facts live in different places, the dispatcher becomes the integration layer and carries the joins in their head. That holds on a quiet week with an experienced coordinator. It fails during a turnaround surge, or in the week that coordinator takes leave.
Equipment clashes are sneakier than people clashes. A technician will tell you they are already booked; a TOFD scanner will not. Separate project managers can each plan around the only unit in the store, and the second one finds out when the crate is empty or the instrument is already on a truck to another state.
Leave by text message
Holiday requests arrive informally and reach HR, but never the plan the dispatcher is actually reading.
Training weeks off the radar
Refresher courses and recertification exams take people out of circulation without appearing anywhere operations checks.
The empty crate
An instrument is promised to two jobs on paper and found missing when the second crew arrives at the store.
Dispatcher as single point of failure
Only one person knows how the week fits together, and the plan wobbles whenever they are away.
Cannot say who was there
When a client later asks which technicians worked a job, the answer depends on old messages and memory.
What clashes cost when they surface late
Last-minute substitutes
Replacing a double-booked technician at short notice means overtime, extra travel and sometimes a subcontractor the client never approved.
Idle crews
A crew on site without its instrument, or waiting for one to be driven in, bills little and costs a great deal.
Broken promises to clients
Named personnel on a crew list who fail to arrive damage the relationship faster than almost any technical issue.
Exhausted coordinators
Schedulers spending weekends repairing the plan are the people most likely to leave, and they take the knowledge with them.
One calendar that refuses the second booking
In Team Assignments each job becomes an assignment that ties together the client work, the site with its GPS coordinates, the mobilisation and demobilisation dates, the technicians and the equipment serial numbers going with them. Every technician has one availability calendar with assigned, leave, training, sick and unavailable entries, and overlapping entries are blocked. Approved leave from Time Off lands on the same calendar, so a holiday blocks dispatch without anybody copying it across.
Equipment is booked by serial number from the Asset Management register. If a flaw detector, yoke, probe or exposure device is already committed for those dates, the second booking is refused, and an assigned instrument with lapsed calibration raises a warning. Each technician record shows current assignment, utilisation and next available date, and jobs move through planned, dispatched, in field, submitted and closed on calendar, kanban and list views.
There are honest limits. The system can only block clashes it knows about, so leave and training have to be entered. Certification checks at the assignment step are not standard out of the box. And it will not tell you whether a technician is the right person for an awkward nozzle or a high-temperature scan: that judgement stays with your supervisors and Level III.
Load people and kit
Technicians with their methods and levels, and equipment by serial with calibration dates, go in first so clash checks work immediately.
Connect leave and training
Approved leave flows in from Time Off and training weeks are entered as training, so availability reflects reality.
Plan in the calendar
Coordinators build crews where conflicts are visible, and a refused booking appears the moment it is attempted.
Move jobs through stages
The kanban board shows what is waiting to dispatch, what is in the field and what is submitted but not closed.
Read utilisation before promising
Owners and sales check utilisation and next available dates before committing a start date to a client.
Before and after
| Without a system | With Atlantis NDT |
|---|---|
| Whiteboard, planning sheet and chat groups consulted in turn. | One assignment record with people, site, dates and serials. |
| Leave known to HR but not to dispatch. | Approved leave blocks the technician on the calendar. |
| Two jobs promised the only TOFD unit. | The second booking of a serial is refused at the moment it is made. |
| Start dates promised from gut feel. | Next available date and utilisation read from real assignments. |
The modules doing the work
Each module is part of the same platform, so a certification, an instrument, a job and a report are linked records rather than files in different places.
- Team Assignments
Availability calendar, double-booking protection for technicians and serials, calibration warnings and staged dispatch.
- Time Off
Feeds approved leave into the technician availability calendar used for dispatch.
- Asset Management
Supplies the serial-numbered equipment and reservations that clash checks run against.
- Employees
Lets planners filter technicians by level and method and read their NDT profile while building a crew.
Questions owners ask
How do NDT companies stop double-booking technicians?
By keeping assignments, leave, training and sickness on one calendar per technician and letting the system refuse overlaps at booking time. The same rule applied to equipment serials solves the empty-crate problem.
Does it check certifications when I build a crew?
The technician's NDT profile and the Certificates app show qualification status while you plan, and a timesheet raises a warning later if the certificate behind logged time is not valid. A hard block at the assignment step is something we configure only when it is in your implementation scope.
Can subcontract technicians go on the calendar?
Yes. Freelance or subcontract technicians can be set up as records so their availability and assignments are tracked like staff. How their certifications and billing are handled is agreed during implementation.
Can technicians see their own jobs?
Yes. Through the NDT Reports field app a technician can pull the jobs and equipment assigned to them, and supervisors can use the ERP in a mobile browser.
What is the quickest way to judge it?
Send a rough picture of your crew, methods and typical week, and we will run a demo with that sample. Pricing is quote on request.
See it on your own records
Bring a sample of your certifications, equipment list or reports and we will show the workflow configured to how your company runs. Demo on request.
Speak to an ASNT NDT Level III
Discuss your inspection requirements with Atlantis NDT. Include the asset, method, location and documents you need reviewed.