Creativity
by Bernard McGrath, Inspection Validation Centre

Ron Nisbet was motivated to be creative by his wife and wrote his October ‘Letter from America’ as an NDT mystery story. By the way, congratulations to Felicity who has just had two mysteries accepted for publication. I can only hope that they were accepted by a publishing house with greater reach than BINDT, even if it means we will not qualify for a discount! But Ron threw the gauntlet down to me by mentioning me by name in his article. I cannot help myself from rising to the challenge, not by writing an NDT novel, but by pondering creativity and NDT. I will, however, refrain from cheap jokes about creative 4-6-0 formations.

Is there creativity in NDT? The evidence is mixed. A piece of evidence which may indicate ‘no’ is the PANI 3 project: it found that a lower score on the ‘Original Thinking’ personality scale equated to better ultrasonic performance. This scale measures how much a person likes to work on difficult problems, is intellectually curious and enjoys thought-provoking discussions. Another piece of evidence to support ‘no’ is the front cover of Insight. That certainly lacks creativity. Month after month we have a picture of a man in a hard hat holding a piece of kit on a pipe. I suppose the colour of the hard hat does change.
 
More tellingly, when I asked for ideas to improve NDT to be submitted, in March 2008, the whole NDT News community came up with a total of 0. This was exceeded in August 2009 when I asked for photographs of inspirational images seen on the way to work. Well, I had included one in the actual article so that was 1. So, is NDT a creative desert? Or is it just that no-one wants to share their creativity with me? This is a rhetorical question because I’m not sure I could cope if I got swamped with replies!

On the positive side, there was an active discussion at the BINDT conference a number of years ago looking at the future of NDT and a number of good ideas were proposed, including that of a film or TV drama on NDT. I think the NDT creative capital may have struggled with the drama bit but an NDT film has been produced and can be viewed on YouTube (search for BINDT or click on the link on the BINDT home page).
 
Then, of course, you could discredit the ‘no’ arguments by pointing out that creativity doesn’t necessarily have to be original. The definition of the ‘Original Thinking’ scale uses the words ‘likes’ and ‘enjoys’ and doesn’t say ‘is capable of’. So a low score doesn’t preclude being creative. The lack of creativity on the Insight cover can be explained by the fact that any initiative to generate NDT art for the front cover will be unable to compensate for the loss in valuable income generated by the current format of product placement. The fact that no ideas or pictures were submitted may mean that the NDT readership were too busy being creative by making music, building a kit car or growing prize-winning marrows to get to a post box or a computer email account.
 
The evidence against appears to be balanced by the evidence for, with neither being particularly convincing. However, to use creative business language, the ‘big swing item’ is the fact that NDT is an engineering discipline. Engineering distinguishes itself from most other scientific/technical disciplines by being based on design. Design is driven by creativity and implementing a design is creation. Design doesn’t have to produce something that is new, novel or futuristic: just something that does the job. Over the past few days I have been watching the Chilean miners being brought up to the surface in what looks like a very basic bit of kit. That kit was designed and created to do a difficult job. What a successful piece of engineering!
 
I know I keep going on about this but every inspection procedure should be designed for the intended job. And the creative process does not finish with the production of the procedure: it is completed by the successful application of the procedure and the production of the results. So, NDT is creative and NDT engineers and technicians are creative professionals. If only we accepted the fact and acted as if it were true!

Please note that the views expressed in this column are the author’s own personal ramblings for the purpose of encouraging discussion within the NDT Newspaper. They do not represent the views of the IVC, Serco Assurance or the HSE who funded the PANI projects.

Letters can be mailed to The Editor, NDT News, Newton Building, St George’s Avenue, Northampton NN2 6JB. Fax: 01604 89 3861; Email: ndtnews@bindt.org or email Bernard McGrath direct at Bernard.McGrath@sercoassurance.com