The 3rd South African National NDT Conference presented by SAINT in celebration of 50 years of existence was held at the Accolades Conference Centre, Midrand, Gauteng on the 7th and 8th February 2018.

The conference consisted of 2 parallel paper presentation sessions (30 papers in total) that covered a range of topics such as ‘Robotics working in harmony with NDT’ to ‘Hydrogen Fuel Cells: Optimisation through NDT using Neutron Radiography’. Most of the papers resulted in quite a bit of dialogue thereafter, with further discussions being held outside of the lecture rooms. World renowned plenary speakers such as the Chairman of ICNDT, S.K. Babu and the ASNT Africa Chair had confirmed their attendance but later had to withdraw.

124 delegates attended with 10 being of overseas origin. There were a total of 22 exhibitors that also included 3 from overseas. There was a mixed bag of NDT equipment suppliers, service providers, training entities and associated sister institutes. Live action demonstrations were planned that included the use of drones, scaffolding for fall arrest equipment supplier and rope access service provider use.

Judging from the feedback from the various participants, the conference was a huge success. The ensuing rain was a blessing and made for some creative redesign of the exhibitors booth position or layouts prior to the exhibition.

The ‘Event’ within the event was the Gala Dinner that was held on the Wednesday evening. The SAINT Annual awards were presented with the Best Corporate going to DEKRA Industrial RSA (PTY) Ltd, Best Student to Pieter Oberholster, Best Technician to Richard Makgoale, and Best NDT Instructor to Phillip Skelton. The inaugural SAINT Gold Medal award for Outstanding Contribution to NDT was presented to the meritorious Manfred Johannes by Mr
Bernd Rohloff, the last remaining founder member of SAINT.

Bernd also attended the conference and while chatting to him, it soon became apparent that some of the challenges that he and his fellow Institute committee members faced way back in the 1970’s are still with us today! SAINT thanks all of the Sponsors, Exhibiters, Presenters and Visitors for contributing to the auspiciousness of the occasion. The LOC is looking forward to the next conference where it is hoped that more overseas visitors will find it a prerequisite to attend.

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I gazed wistfully out of the window. Even I would have been a better player on grass like that. It was of a quality never seen on the pitches of my youth. On some of them, any grass was a bonus. I remember being pleased when an opposing school’s pitch had grass in the centre circle in the middle of winter. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever played on a cricket pitch with such quality grass. As a youngster, the only opportunity would have been to play on a bowling green, which of course we never did.

The pitch was in the stadium referred to as the Theatre of Dreams. Although I do not support the team that call it home, I am old enough to remember occasions when it realised dreams for the team that I do support. But in February, when I was attending the second day of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers’ conference on Structural Integrity Design and Validation Technologies, it lived up to its name, but not quite in the way that gave rise to it. As evidenced above, there was the nostalgic revival of boyhood dreams as I first gazed down on the pitch. Then during the tea and lunch breaks there was the discombobulating dream of “wouldn’t it be nice for NDT to be given just a fraction of the investment that was highlighted in the vista from the window”.

During the presentations we had heard how the ubiquitous pressure on costs impacts on the ability to conduct NDT: often only the bare minimum NDT is conducted; windows in which to conduct the NDT are constrained and infrequent; perfectly good plant is shut down if a defect is found in a component because it is not worth the cost in time and money for the repair. In the electricity supply industry the pressures are due to the low wholesale price of electricity. Contrast these restrictions with the financial environment represented by the lush green grass, now tinged yellow by the vast array of lights, which are positioned to help encourage growth in the shadow caused by the surrounding stands. Unseen is the under pitch heating, which was keeping the snow and ice away on this particularly wintry February day.

This mismatch between the investment which impacts on NDT and the investment input to leisure activities is not new. Many years ago, a colleague took his family to Walt Disney World resort in Florida. On his return, he bemoaned the fact that the computing power available to drive the Disneyland exhibits was way in excess of that at our disposal to support the construction and maintenance of industrial plant. At around the same time as my colleague’s sojourn into the world of cartoons, I gave the first of many presentations on the PANI projects, which highlighted issues impacting on the application of NDT. I am saddened to report that, 17 years later, my presentation at the current conference included some of the same slides, which remain applicable. Limited progress has been made. So what is the answer? What more can we, as a profession, do to improve the situation? A number of suggestions were raised during the discussions, but there was no consensus on key actions to implement.
We are living in a period of rapid technological change. Looking back at the presentations I gave at the start of my career, the display technology was overhead acetate sheets or, with sufficient preparation time, photographic slides. Seventeen years ago, laptops were connected to projectors, which is still the principle used today, with maybe television screens replacing the white screen. Similar, small incremental change is observed in the actual format of presentations. The bullet points and images of acetate sheets are replaced by the bullet points, clip art and images of Powerpoint. Animations are now relatively easy to implement and videos are easy to embed and run. Apart from these differences, the format of presentations has changed very little.

The biggest impact of technology has been in the audience. In the past, the presenter always had to observe the odd one or two of the audience nodding off and others reading or writing, which may or may not have been about the talk being given. Now the presenter has to talk over the tops of the audience’s laptops, notebooks, tablets and phones. Who is to say any of the audience are listening? They can take photographs of any slides of interest and then go back to diminishing the flurry of e-mails, which have arrived since leaving home that morning.

All this technology distracts the audience from exchanging ideas, having a discussion and thinking creatively, which is what conferences and seminars are supposed to be for. This is a big challenge to presenters: how do you capture the audience’s attention? What devices can you employ to communicate your message and spur them into action when they leave?