I am an old man
by Bernard McGrath, Inspection Validation Centre

Football. Defence. Tackling. Defensive skills. Marking. These are the keywords that someone looking for information on how to defend in a football game may input into the search engine. If you are that someone and you are looking for input into a video or other training material, I believe I have something to contribute. I may not have played at a high level in my football career but what I lacked in physical skill I tried to compensate for in knowledge and effort. Unfortunately, defensive knowledge and effort have been sadly lacking in a lot of the football games I have watched over the last few weeks.

No, I haven't gone mad. Nor have I sent the wrong article to NDT News. I just thought I would take advantage of this article being posted on the web to see if anyone else shares my concerns over the current state of defending in football. This is just one of the two 'major' worries (outside personal ones of course) that I have at the moment.

The other worry started a few weeks ago in the library. I can spend hours in bookshops and libraries looking through the books on display: switching from novels to sports to biographies, to military to business to philosophy. During my last visit it hit me. How am I going to read all the books I would like to read? And these are just the ones I can see in one library. There are the books I already have at home, added to at Christmas and birthday, stacked and circling, ready to land and be read. There are the books I have yet to discover and the ones that have yet to be written! There are the books I should read for work, ones I want to read for fun and to relax and others to uncover knowledge, such as why professional footballers exhibit such woeful defending.

Both my worries have the same underlying source: the transmission of knowledge, or rather the lack of it. Or, in modern management spiel, knowledge management. In the first episode of the BBC's recent series on the history of the Royal Navy, the presenter was able to read information from books written at the time of Sir Francis Drake nearly 500 years ago. Now, it could be the case that a media presenter in 500 years time may be able to read from one of your inspection procedures, but I doubt that they will be able to access the myriad of documents that are held electronically. I can't even access my CVs written 10 years ago! So, how much knowledge will be lost and need reinventing?

The other downside of the electronic transmission of knowledge derives from its major benefits – the ease with which it can be published and the ease with which it can be located. Insight articles are available online and NDT.net provides ready access to many conference papers and presentations. These are good at reporting new developments but does any one paper present the full story? A search engine easily picks up such papers but how many do we have to read to obtain the full picture? There was a very useful series of books on research techniques in NDT which pulled such information together. Maybe there is a role for BINDT or the universities to disseminate updates on reviews of key papers on particular topics.

But once the new knowledge becomes established, how do we store, update and transmit it? When I was an undergraduate, the fount of most chemical engineering knowledge was Perry's Handbook, which is now in its 8th edition, 2008. The source book for ultrasonics was always Krautkramer, last updated as far as I know in 1990. There is the ASNT's Nondestructive Testing Handbook series which undergoes regular updates, but where is the current, UK NDT community-accepted source of underlying information on NDT?

It has been suggested that the transmission of NDT knowledge could be assisted by the production of a summary of the three PANI projects and the associated guideline documents they spawned. It is likely that this will come to fruition. Your help would be useful in providing an update on the impact PANI has had to date. Please overcome the usual reluctance of NDT people to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard and let me or the editor know (email addresses below) if you have found the PANI projects to be of benefit and in what way. Or, if there has been little impact to you as an NDT operator or NDT company, why do you think that has been the case? What do you suggest should be done to alter the situation? As with all the personnel who have participated in the PANI projects, your anonymity will be guaranteed unless you state you wish to be identified with your comments. I look forward to hearing from you.

Mark Twain famously said: "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened". I have found this to be true, but my first worry above has already happened and I know my second will come to pass as well, but both could be reduced by working to transmit knowledge both effectively and efficiently.

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, 1 Spencer Parade, Northampton NN1 5AA. Fax: 01604 231489; Email: ndtnews@bindt.org or email Bernard McGrath direct at Bernard.McGrath@sercoassurance.com