NDT Written Practice Development by an ASNT NDT Level III

What a written practice is, and why every certifying employer needs one

SNT-TC-1A is a recommended practice, not a certification. It tells an employer how to build a programme for qualifying and certifying its own NDT personnel, and Section 5 requires that programme to be set down in a written practice — the employer's document, approved by an NDT Level III, that turns the recommended practice's guidance into the company's rules. ANSI/ASNT CP-189 does the same as a standard, with mandatory language. Either way, the certificate a technician carries is issued under the written practice, and its validity depends on the practice existing, being current, and being followed.

The codes that govern the work are what make this unavoidable. ASME Section V, Article 1 requires personnel to be qualified and certified in accordance with the employer's written practice and names SNT-TC-1A and CP-189 as the documents it should follow; the API inspection codes, API 1104 and AWS D1.1 take the same route. When a customer's auditor, a third-party inspector or an Authorized Inspector reviews an NDT report, the first question is whether the person who signed it was certified, and the second is under what written practice. A company that cannot produce the practice cannot answer the first question either.

The practice is also where the employer decides. SNT-TC-1A recommends training hours, experience, examination structure and recertification intervals; the written practice adopts them, adjusts them with a documented reason, or exceeds them. A company that copies the recommended practice's tables into a document without deciding anything has a practice that is technically present and practically useless — it will be audited against numbers nobody planned to meet. The SNT-TC-1A requirements page explains what each recommendation means; this page is about turning them into a document your company can live under.

The sections SNT-TC-1A 2024 and CP-189 expect, and what goes in each

The scope section names the methods and, where relevant, the techniques the company certifies — ultrasonic thickness and shear-wave are not the same certification if the practice separates them — the levels used, and the edition of SNT-TC-1A or CP-189 the practice follows. It should also say what the practice does not cover, because an auditor who finds a method in use that the practice never mentions has found an uncertified activity. The levels-and-responsibilities section defines Level I, II and III for the company and states who holds Level III authority: an employee, an outside agency Level III named in the practice, or both by method.

Education, training and experience carry the numbers. The practice states, per method and level, the training hours and the experience hours in the method and in NDT overall, and it states the rules for crediting prior training, prior experience under another employer, and post-secondary education. It then says how those hours are documented — which is the part most practices omit and most audits find. Examinations follow: the general examination on the method, the specific examination on the company's procedures, equipment and applicable codes, and the practical examination on specimens, with the number of questions, the minimum grade in each and the composite minimum, and who prepares, administers and grades them.

Vision, certification, recertification, interruption of service and records complete the document. Vision states the near-vision and colour-discrimination requirements, the interval and who may administer the examination. Certification states what the certificate records and how long it is valid; recertification states the route — continued satisfactory performance, re-examination, or both — and interruption states what happens after a break in service. Records states what is retained and for how long. CP-189 adds qualification requirements for the NDT instructor and the examiner as roles in their own right, which SNT-TC-1A leaves to the practice; a practice written to CP-189 has to name and qualify those people too. The CP-189 requirements page reads the standard clause by clause.

The audit findings that recur, and how the practice prevents them

The same findings appear in written-practice audits across refining, fabrication, pipeline and aerospace work, and almost all of them are document problems rather than competence problems. An expired vision examination is the most frequent: the practice states an annual interval, the technician's last examination is fourteen months old, and every report signed in the last two months is questioned. The prevention is a vision calendar owned by someone, referenced in the practice, and checked before assignments — not a better technician.

A superseded edition is next. The practice cites SNT-TC-1A 2016 or 2020, the customer specification calls for the current edition, and the auditor asks what changed and whether the programme accounts for it. Training hours below the table with no justification follow: the practice reduced ultrasonic training on the strength of a degree the candidate does not have on file, or it quotes the table but the training record shows fewer hours delivered. Then the practical examination with no record of the specimens or flaws used, which makes the examination unrepeatable and therefore unverifiable, and finally certificates signed by a Level III the practice does not name, or whose own certification lapsed.

A written practice prevents these when it is written with the audit in mind: each section names the record that evidences it, the person responsible for that record, and the interval at which it is checked. That is the difference between a practice authored by a Level III who has sat through the audits and a template with the company name typed in. The free written practice template is the right starting point for a small shop with one or two methods; the service on this page is for the company whose customers, methods or history mean the template is not enough.

Tailoring the practice to your methods, codes and customer specifications

A practice for a pressure-vessel fabricator working to ASME Section VIII and Section V is not the practice for a pipeline contractor working to API 1104, and neither is the practice for an aerospace supplier whose customers require NAS 410. The methods differ, the specific examinations differ because the procedures and codes differ, and the customer specifications that sit on top differ most of all. The Level III's first task is to collect those documents — the codes the company inspects to, the procedures it uses, the customer specifications it has signed up to — and read the practice against them.

Customer specifications are where most tailoring happens. An operator's specification may require SNT-TC-1A with no reduction in training hours, a five-year recertification by re-examination, a specific examination that includes the operator's own procedures, or CP-189 outright. Aerospace primes require NAS 410, which has its own Level 3 and its own written-practice expectations. A company that serves several of these customers needs one practice that satisfies the most demanding of them for each method, with the others documented as also met — not a different practice per customer, which is unmanageable and is itself an audit finding.

Methods and techniques need the same care. A practice that certifies ultrasonic testing without separating thickness measurement, shear-wave weld examination and phased array leaves the employer either over-training technicians who only take thickness readings or under-certifying the ones who examine welds. The Level III sets the technique boundaries so that the training hours, the specific examinations and the practicals match what each technician actually does. Where the company later adds a method, the practice is revised — and the revision is dated and signed, because an auditor reads the revision history before the content.

When a customer specification invokes SNT-TC-1A as a requirement

SNT-TC-1A's own text says it is a guideline and that its recommendations become requirements only when a specification, code or contract makes them so. Many do. When a purchase order, a quality plan or an operator's engineering standard says personnel shall be certified in accordance with SNT-TC-1A, the recommended practice's guidance becomes contractually mandatory, and the employer's written practice is audited for compliance with it rather than for reasonableness against it. The training-hour reductions the practice permits, the credit rules and the recertification-by-performance route may all become unavailable under that contract.

This is the situation in which a company most often discovers its practice does not fit its work. The practice was written to give the employer flexibility; the contract removed the flexibility; nobody revised the practice. The fix is a practice that states, per customer or per contract type, which of the recommended practice's options the company uses, and that is written so the stricter path can be followed without a new document. Where a customer names CP-189, the same logic applies with the standard's clauses; SNT-TC-1A vs CP-189 sets out where the two diverge.

The practical test is to hand the practice and one technician's file to someone who has never seen the company and ask whether they could confirm, from the documents alone, that the technician was certified in accordance with the specification for the job. If the answer needs a conversation, the practice is not finished.

Revising an existing practice to the 2024 edition

Most companies asking for this service already have a practice — written years ago, edition unknown, revised by hand when someone noticed a problem. Revising it is often better than replacing it, because the existing document records decisions the company made and customers accepted. The Level III starts with a gap analysis: the current practice against the 2024 edition section by section, against the customer specifications in force, and against the records the company actually keeps. The output is a list of clauses to change, clauses to add, and records that do not exist yet.

The revision itself keeps what works and rewrites what does not. Edition references are updated throughout; training and experience tables are reconciled to the current edition and to what the company can evidence; examination sections are rewritten where the company's procedures have changed; the vision, recertification and interruption clauses are checked against the calendar the company keeps. Every certified person is then mapped to the revised practice — certified under the old edition, and either carried forward under a documented transition rule or re-examined where the revision requires it.

The transition rule is the part companies miss. Certificates issued under the previous edition do not become invalid when the practice is revised, but the practice must say how they are treated, and the Level III must sign that treatment. A revised practice with no transition clause leaves every existing certificate in doubt until its next recertification, which is exactly the doubt an auditor will exploit.

How Atlantis delivers the written practice service

The work is done by an ASNT NDT Level III — multi-method, with API 653 and ISO 9001 lead-auditor credentials — from the Houston, Texas base, with the client's documents shared under a non-disclosure agreement. It runs in four steps: intake and document collection, gap analysis against the current edition and the customer specifications, drafting or revision with a review cycle in which the client's quality manager and any in-house Level II or III comment, and sign-off with the records package. Most engagements are delivered remotely; on-site work is added where an audit is scheduled, a practical-examination regime has to be set up, or the client wants the Level III present for a customer review.

Where the company needs training and examinations under the new practice, the same Level III delivers them — SNT-TC-1A training and certification for employers describes that engagement — so the practice, the training, the examinations and the certificates are all consistent. Where the company needs a Level III of record after sign-off, the practice names Atlantis as the outside agency Level III and the relationship continues as outsourced ASNT Level III consulting: procedure approvals, technique reviews, recertification examinations and the annual review of the practice.

Companies in Canada are served on the same basis, with the practice written to respect where CGSB certification is mandatory for code work and where employer-based certification applies — US-owned corporate practices, aerospace under NAS 410, and in-house non-code inspection. Atlantis is not a CGSB examination centre and does not issue ISO 9712 certificates; the written practice is drawn so those schemes and the employer's own certification do not conflict. Delivery is affordable, accessible and fully customizable, with a quote on request after the intake call.

The records package, and what happens after sign-off

The deliverable is the signed written practice with its revision history, the gap analysis, and the record templates the practice refers to: the training record, the experience log, the examination record with the practical checklist, the vision record, the certification register with expiry and recertification dates, and the interruption-of-service record. Each template names the section of the practice it evidences, so the person filling it in knows why it exists. Companies running Atlantis NDT ERP load the register and the calendars into the system; others receive the package as documents for their own quality system.

After sign-off the practice needs an owner. SNT-TC-1A expects the Level III to review it, and customer specifications and editions change; a practice that is not reviewed annually drifts out of date within two editions. The service includes a first annual review where the client wants it, and the outside-agency Level III arrangement covers the years after that. What it does not include is any certification of API 510, 570 or 653 inspectors, which are individual certifications administered by API and outside the scope of an employer written practice.

To start, send the methods you certify or intend to certify, the codes and customer specifications you work to, and your current practice if you have one. An ASNT NDT Level III reads them and returns a scoped proposal — for a review, a revision, or a practice written from the beginning. Request a written practice review.

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