SNT-TC-1A Training and Certification, Delivered Inside Your Written Practice

Why the employer, not a school, issues the certificate

In the United States there is no national NDT certificate for Level I and Level II. ASME Section V, the API inspection codes and AWS D1.1 send the auditor to the employer's written practice, and SNT-TC-1A is the document the written practice is modelled on. The employer decides the training hours, the experience, the examinations and the vision requirements — within the recommended practice's guidance — and the employer signs the certificate. A course completion certificate from a training school is evidence that training hours were delivered; it is not a certification, and an auditor who finds a school certificate standing in for an employer certificate will write it up.

This is the fact that changes what an employer should buy. What you need is not a place to send technicians but a programme that produces a signed certification record for each person, method and level, inside a written practice your customers will accept. Atlantis NDT is built around that: the ASNT NDT Level III who signs is the same person who authored or reviewed your practice, delivered the training and set the examinations, so the file is coherent from the first page to the certificate.

It also changes where training happens. Because the certificate is yours, the training can be delivered at your plant, yard or shop, on your equipment and against your procedures — which is what the specific examination is meant to test. Atlantis NDT mobilises instructors and examiners from Houston for the duration of the engagement. The technicians stay on site, the practical examination is run on the components they will actually inspect, and the employer keeps the specimens and the records.

What SNT-TC-1A 2024 asks of an employer

The recommended practice is organised around a written practice (Section 5) that the employer must have before it certifies anyone. The practice states the levels the company uses, the education, training and experience required for each method and level, the examinations and their grading, the vision requirements, the certification and recertification rules, what happens when service is interrupted, and who holds which responsibility. Everything else in SNT-TC-1A — the training-hour table, the examination structure, the recertification interval — is guidance that the written practice either adopts, adjusts with a documented reason, or exceeds. See the SNT-TC-1A requirements and the 2024 edition for a clause-by-clause reading.

Training hours are recommended per method and level in Table 6.3.1A, with experience expressed as hours in the method and total hours in NDT. Using the figures most employers cite from the 2020 tables, ultrasonic testing runs 40 hours of training at Level I and 40 more at Level II, with 840 cumulative hours of experience to reach Level II; magnetic particle runs 12 and 8 hours of training with 280 hours of experience; liquid penetrant 4 and 8 hours with 210. The 2024 edition should be read for the current values before a practice is revised, and the practice must cite the edition it follows. Atlantis delivers the classroom hours in short intensive blocks so the employer's experience log — which is the employer's to keep — carries the remaining weight.

Examinations are three: a general examination on the method's principles, a specific examination on the employer's procedures, equipment and codes, and a practical examination on flawed specimens graded against a checklist. The recommended practice describes a composite grade with a minimum in each part, and it expects the Level III to have prepared and graded the papers or to have delegated that under documented conditions. Vision is examined annually — near-vision acuity and colour discrimination — and a lapsed vision examination invalidates the certificate on the day it lapses, which is the single most common finding in a records audit. Recertification is recommended on a five-year cycle, by continued satisfactory performance or by re-examination, as the practice states.

The Level III's role, and what Atlantis supplies

SNT-TC-1A Section 4 places the technical responsibility for the programme on an NDT Level III: authoring and approving the written practice, establishing the training and examinations, approving procedures, and signing the certifications. An employer may use its own Level III or designate an outside agency Level III in the written practice. Most small and mid-sized inspection companies, fabricators and plant maintenance groups do not employ a multi-method Level III, and that is the gap Atlantis fills — as the designated Level III for the programme, or alongside your own Level III for the methods they do not hold.

What Atlantis brings to an engagement is the Level III, the course material built to the SNT-TC-1A body of knowledge for each method and level, the calibration blocks, reference specimens and flawed practical-examination specimens, the examination papers written against your procedures, and the record templates. What the employer provides is the candidates, the site, the equipment they will be certified on, the procedures the specific examination must cover, and the experience log that the practice requires the employer to keep. The engagement is scoped that way deliberately: the certificate has to be defensible as the employer's.

After the course, the Level III relationship can continue as outsourced ASNT Level III consulting — procedure approvals, technique reviews, recertification examinations, audit support and the annual review of the written practice. Employers who prefer to keep the Level III function inside the company use the course to develop their own candidate toward the ASNT NDT Level III examinations; the Level III requirements guide sets out that route.

How an on-site cohort runs

A single-method Level I or Level II cohort of four to twelve technicians typically runs three to ten days on site, depending on the method's training-hour requirement and how much of the theory has been delivered online beforehand. The Level III arrives with the specimens and the examination set; the first morning is spent confirming the equipment, the procedures and the written practice against which the certification will be issued, because the specific examination is written to those documents and any gap has to be closed before the papers are sealed.

Classroom hours are logged per technician per day and signed by the instructor, because the training record is the first thing an auditor reconciles against Table 6.3.1A. Practical work runs on the employer's own instruments and, wherever possible, on the employer's own components — a shop's pipe spools, a plant's exchanger bundle or a yard's plate — with Atlantis's reference specimens used for the graded practical so the flaws and their locations are known. Examinations are administered on the final day: general, specific and practical, each graded against the practice's minimum and the composite.

Multi-method or multi-level programmes are scheduled around the employer's calendar rather than a training-school timetable. A refinery running a turnaround may take MT and PT Level II before the outage and UT after it; an inspection company building bench strength may run UT Level I, then MT and PT Level II, then return for UT Level II once the experience hours are logged. Blended delivery — theory online through Atlantis's learning platform, practical and examinations in person — is used where a written practice permits online general examinations and the employer wants fewer instructor days on site. Fully online theory for Level I and Level II general examinations is available where the practice allows it; the practical examination is always in person.

The certification file an auditor will open

A customer's quality auditor, a third-party surveyor or an Authorized Inspector does not audit the training; they audit the file. For each certified person, method and level, the file must show the written practice edition the certification was issued under, the education and prior-experience evidence used at intake, the training record with hours and dates, the experience log with the supervising Level II or III's signature, the vision examination and its date, the three examination papers with scores, the practical checklist naming the specimens used, and the certification signed by the Level III with its expiry date.

Atlantis delivers that file in the employer's format or in a records package designed to be handed straight to an auditor. Employers running Atlantis NDT ERP keep the certification register, vision calendar and recertification reminders in the same system; employers with their own quality system receive the records as a signed package for filing. Either way, the point is the same — the question an auditor asks is not where the technician trained but whether the employer's certification record is complete and current.

The most common findings, in order, are an expired vision examination, a written practice citing a superseded edition, training hours below the table with no documented justification, a practical examination with no record of the specimens or flaws, and a certification signed by someone the practice does not name as Level III. Every one of these is a records problem before it is a competence problem, and every one is preventable at the time the programme is set up. A written practice review by an ASNT Level III before the first cohort is how they are prevented.

Where CP-189, ISO 9712 and CGSB change the answer

Some customers specify ANSI/ASNT CP-189 rather than SNT-TC-1A. CP-189 is a standard, so its requirements are mandatory rather than recommended, its training and experience minimums cannot be reduced in the practice, re-examination is required at recertification, and the Level III who signs must hold a current ASNT NDT Level III certificate in the method. A programme that satisfies CP-189 satisfies SNT-TC-1A; the reverse is not true. Atlantis writes practices that meet both where the customer base demands it — the differences are set out in SNT-TC-1A vs CP-189 and in the CP-189 requirements page.

ISO 9712 is different in kind: a central certification body examines and issues, and the certificate belongs to the individual. A US or Canadian employer that hires an ISO 9712 Level 2 still has to certify that person under its own written practice before they sign a report on the employer's behalf — ISO 9712 does not replace employer certification, though the practice can credit the training and experience behind it. Employers selling into Europe or the Middle East often run both, with the employer certificate for domestic code work and the ISO 9712 certificate for contracts that call for it; the trade-offs are covered in ISO 9712 vs SNT-TC-1A and ASNT vs PCN.

In Canada, code work — pressure equipment, pipelines, structural steel under the provincial safety authorities and CSA codes — requires CGSB certification issued through NRCan's NDT Certification Body, and no employer programme replaces it. Employer-based SNT-TC-1A certification is still legitimately used in Canada for US-owned facilities that run a corporate written practice, for aerospace organisations qualifying under NAS 410, for in-house inspection outside CGSB-mandated scopes, and as a supplementary employer certification that records the specific procedures and equipment a CGSB-certified technician has been trained on. Atlantis mobilises to Canadian sites from Houston on the same basis as US sites and writes the practice so the two schemes do not conflict; see NDT training in Canada. Atlantis is not a CGSB examination centre.

Scoping a cohort: methods, levels, head-count, calendar

The proposal starts from four facts: which methods and levels you need certified, how many candidates, what written practice and procedures exist today, and what the operating calendar allows. A fabricator certifying six technicians in MT and PT Level II before an ASME shop audit is a different engagement from an inspection company standing up UT Level I for a new crew of twelve, and both differ from a plant that needs its own maintenance team certified in VT and UT thickness so it can stop subcontracting routine surveys. Each of those has been the shape of a real engagement, and each is scoped, staffed and priced on its own terms — affordable, accessible and fully customizable, with a quote on request.

Head-count drives the practical: one Level III can examine a cohort of about a dozen on a single set of specimens in a day, so larger groups are split or a second examiner is mobilised. Method mix drives the days on site: UT and RT carry the largest training-hour requirements and the longest practicals; MT, PT and VT are short. Existing records drive the intake: candidates with documented prior training and experience under a previous employer can be credited under the practice and examined sooner, which is often where the largest saving in instructor days sits.

The calendar is the employer's. Turnarounds, shutdown windows, shift patterns and shop loading all set when a cohort can run, and the theory portion is the part that flexes — delivered online before the site week or compressed into it. The output of scoping is a written proposal that lists the methods and levels, the candidates by name where known, the site days, what the employer provides, what Atlantis brings, and the records that will be handed over. Employer-sponsored NDT training describes the corporate engagement model in more detail, and the US training hub lists the corridors served.

What Atlantis does not do, and how to start

Atlantis NDT does not sell API 510, API 570 or API 653 inspector certification training or exam preparation; those are individual certifications administered by API, and Atlantis's API work is inspection support for owner-operators. Atlantis is not a CGSB examination centre, is not an ISO 9712 certification body, and does not operate a training school in any city other than its Houston, Texas base — the model is mobilisation to the employer's site, not a network of local classrooms. Individuals looking for a course to attend on their own account should read how ASNT certification works and the Level I and Level II pages, and then ask their employer to certify them; the certificate has to come from the employer.

To start, send the methods, levels and head-count you need certified, the location, the window you have in mind, and your current written practice if one exists. An ASNT NDT Level III reviews it, maps the training hours and examinations required against your candidates' existing records, and returns a proposal. Request a training proposal — the review of an existing written practice is part of scoping, not a separate charge.

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