Non Destructive Testing 2023: Designing for full-lifecycle inspection

Kyle Duncan: Group Operations Manager, IMechE Argyll Ruane

Kyle is the Group Operations manager of IMechE Argyll Ruane and IMechE Fife NDT.

With over 17 years’ experience working in NDT across a range of industries, including aerospace and oil and gas as a Responsible Level 3, Lead NDT Engineer and Senior Technical Expert, Kyle’s diverse technical knowledge base ensures clients receive a high standard of training and support.

Kyle joined the technical team at IMechE Fife NDT in 2021 as an NDT Trainer and Level 3 Consultant. He later took on the role of Training Manager in 2022, before becoming Group Operations Manager in 2023.

Responsible for the day-to-day NDT operations at the training facilities in Sheffield and Fife, Kyle works closely with customers, trainers, Level 3 Consultants and the Customer Services team to manage the NDT training function for both sites and ensuring processes run smoothly. Kyle also continues to support:

• Examination Invigilation and Marking
• Provision of Level 3 Consultancy Services, including acting as a responsible Level 3, procedure writing, conducting performance reviews, scan plan writing and conducting audits
• Customer relationship management

Liam Harrison: NDT Validation Consultant, Jacobs

Liam is a validation consultant focussed on providing assessment of Nuclear Inspection Systems against written specifications. After more than a decade in the industry, he has worked extensively with advanced ultrasonics within the Oil & Gas, Power Generation, Pharmaceutical and Defence industries spanning the globe from Europe, North America, Asia and most recently Australia. His experience covers practical operational roles, method development, procedural writing, and technique validation. Liam’s work extends to provision of support for both customers, and internal engineering teams on critical and complex inspection applications.

Karen Stone: Senior Consultant, MSSI, Jacobs

Karen is a Senior Consultant and has worked in the Materials Science and Structural Integrity (MSSI) department at Jacobs’ for over sixteen years. She has a background in geophysics and started out with the company conducting research related to the modelling of residual stresses in multi-pass welds, and supporting research in the inspection department. Taking this experience, she then moved into conducting Independent Nuclear Safety and Technical Assessment of nuclear vessel safety justifications, principally concerned with inspection which forms a major aspect of their strength, taking into account manufacturing and in-service inspection. This is where her interest in design for inspection in the nuclear industry originates from. She is also a member of the European Network of Inspection and Qualification risk-informed inspection committee.

Wilson Vesga Rivera: Advanced Research Engineer – NDT, MTC

Wilson is an Advanced Research Engineer with diversified 16 years of materials, integrity and NDT experience. His PhD was in structural integrity followed by a postdoc in fatigue life for offshore wind turbine foundations. He is currently working to assess the quality and integrity of AM metals and polymers for application on the NetZero strategy.

Gordon Dobie: Reader, University of Strathclyde and RCNDE

Dr Gordon Dobie is a Reader in Electronic & Electrical Engineering (EEE) at University of Strathclyde appointed through the award of a prestigious University of Strathclyde Chancellor’s Fellowship. He leads a team of 20 doctoral and post-doctoral researchers that consider novel measurement systems with a strong physical background in sensing, particularly in ultrasonics, enabling the application of physics based (white box), black box and hybrid models. He has 16 years’ experience and almost 90 publications covering sensing, signal processing, machine learning and imaging (medical and structural). He has been involved in several successful EPSRC funded projects, including a £2.1M Prosperity Partnership. Dr Dobie has a strong track record in industrial engagement and has secured several Innovate UK projects including an award of a £1.24M collaborative R&D project with National Nuclear Laboratories to develop a novel imaging system. He has seen his research deployed in several industries, including the licensing of key components of his research.

Dr Frederic Cegla: Engineer, Imperial College and RCNDE

Dr Frederic Cegla is currently a Reader/Associate Professor in the NDE group of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Imperial College London. His research is focused on improving technology for non-destructive evaluation (NDE), structural health monitoring (SHM) and process monitoring of assets, spanning the whole spectrum from fundamental theoretical considerations of sensor physics, wave propagation and data acquisition all the way to commercial application of technology in industry. He has been the recipient of a prestigious 5 year EPSRC research fellowship, has been a key contributor to research collaborations such as the UK RCNDE and the ORCA Hub for robotics and AI in extreme environments. He has been a key technical driving force behind the successful commercialization of the WT and ET product families of Permasense/Emerson, the Smart-Visco of Rivertrace Ltd and the SonusEvo of Sonobotics Ltd. He has also recently completed a 4-year term as the chair of the UK’s Institute of Physics (IOP) Physical Acoustics Group and is involved in the SHM working group of the BINDT and the scientific committee of the EWSHM conference series

Caroline Bull: Director, RCNDE and Product Engineering Technical Outreach Lead, AWE

Caroline is the UK Research Centre in NDE (RCNDE) Director. RCNDE is a collaboration between industry and academia, comprising 8 universities, 14 Full Industry members and over 45 Associate Members, to coordinate the latest research on Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) technologies, matching it to the needs of industry – both now and in the future.

Caroline studied Physics and Maths at the University of Reading under UKAEA sponsorship, and has worked in industry for over 35 years. Caroline has participated in research programmes, performed NDT inspections at home and abroad, and assumed a series of leadership positions, including the presidency of the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing (BINDT) in January 2017. As Past President, Caroline is a member of BINDT Council, the NDT Technical Committee, NDE 4.0 Working Group, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group, Engineering Council Working Group and the newly formed NDT Leadership Forum Executive. She is also a member of the American Society of NDT (ASNT) Women in NDT Council supporting equality, diversity and inclusion and supports the UK Engineering Council on their Quality Assurance Committee.

Caroline joined RCNDE in February 2022, and as Director has oversight of all Centre activities, technical programmes and industrial liaison.

Tim Barden: Specialist Engineer NDE, Rolls-Royce

Stephen Grigg: Senior Project Leader, TWI

Dr Stephen Grigg is a senior project leader in the NDT group at TWI. He is a Condition monitoring specialist, with a particular interest Acoustic Emission monitoring, which he has a PhD in. Stephen has worked with companies in a range of sectors, including nuclear, aerospace and oil & gas, to develop condition monitoring solutions for novel applications.

Colin Brett: Technology Director, RCNDE

Dr Colin Brett is currently the Technology Director of the UK Research Centre for Non-Destructive Evaluation (RCNDE), an industrial-academic collaboration between eight universities, fourteen major industrial end users, and about fifty supply-chain companies. RCNDE aims to develop inspection technologies and transition them into the market-place. He previously worked in the power generation industry with CEGB/Powergen/E.ON/Uniper where he managed the delivery of NDT services to a range of nuclear, fossil fuel and renewable generation assets. He is a past Vice President of the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing.

Mike Ennis: Area Manager (UK North & Scotland), Sonatest Ltd

Tom Bertenshaw: Senior NDT Research Engineer, GKN Aerospace

Tom Bertenshaw, has been working for GKN Aerospace for 12 years. This has mainly been in the industrial development of NDT technologies. He has worked with the academic & industrial community, equipment providers and sub-contractors to determine the suitability of the latest technologies to GKN Aerospace, with the view to further develop promising NDT technologies to ultimately deploy them at production sites. This has been for large scale composite components as well as Additively Manufactured parts using Laser Metal Deposition by wire (LMDw). He has also been assisting the BINDT with their strategic objectives over the last few years as past chair of the BINDT Aerospace committee and is the current chair of the “Technique validation user group”. In this group, he has been driving the draft of a general validation/qualification document for Aerospace and Civil Nuclear industries, which the ambition to apply this to other industries. This has been supported by a BINDT workshop on Technique Validation & Standards in 2022, where Tom authored the industry report from this workshop. He is also a Chartered Engineer through the BINDT.