Program Development 101: The Magic Ingredient
As we wind down the calendar year and prepare for 2014 many of us find ourselves setting goals and making resolutions. What are your professional goals as a thermographer going to be in the year of 2014? Perhaps one of your goals is program development within your workplace?
Training can be an exciting experience, especially if you’ve chosen it yourself and it wasn’t forced upon you. You get to spend a few days concentrating on learning, free from the stresses of your normal work day. In your excitement to fully apply your newly acquired skill set, you probably will set some goals for your return to the workplace for how to make sure everyone gets full benefit of this marvelous new technology you learned. The downside though is the enormity of taking what you learned in training and finding a way to work it into your already overloaded maintenance and reliability work load.
Lucky for most of us, this trail has already been blazed by the pioneers of our industry. There are existing best practices for almost every possible application in every industry, so the leg work has been done. Your job, once you’re finished with Level I infrared training, is to learn and apply these practices to fit the needs of your program. Just like any other endeavor of this type, there’s a path to follow to reach your goals. This sounds elementary, and on some level it is, but you start with the foundational elements and build from there. As simple a concept as this seems, it can be difficult to accomplish. The keys to success are tenacity and dedication to the process. I’m going to share with you the cornerstone to implementing a program: your Statement of Practice.
The foundation of any solid program is the Statement of Practice. At The Snell Group, you received a sample of one in your Level I – Thermographic Applications manual. This document describes how your program certifies personnel to perform inspections, duties of the various levels of certification within your program and the overall goals of your program. The sample you received in Level I is an example of a generic, rudimentary document. The American Society of Non-Destructive Testing (ASNT) allows for modification of your Statement of Practice to meet the goals of your exact program, which is where you first task lies.
Topics that should be addressed are the types of equipment to be inspected, and the periodicity of inspection for various types of equipment and levels of criticality. If your program is intended to comply with any particular inspection standard, a reference to that standard should be made in your Statement of Practice. Think of your Statement of Practice as the jumping off point for all the other features of your program. Obviously you will need other elements, such as actual inspection procedures for varying types of equipment, safety procedures for each inspection type, and guidelines for reporting content. These can be made as addendums to your Statement of Practice or stand alone procedural documents, whatever meets your program’s needs.
There are your first steps for program development. It is my hope that all of us strive personally and professionally to do our best as thermographers in the new year. Remember, the recipe is there, all you have to do is follow it. When it gets tough, The Snell Group is here to guide the way.
Keep Thinking Thermally!