Testing the Limits

By Lisa Helder and Cathy Miehm

IN HIS YOUTH, KEVIN PAPE dreamed of getting an education that would land him a lucrative office job.

“I took one year of college for a bachelor of commerce degree, and I was like, ‘Nope. Get me right to work.’”

His father had enjoyed a career in Al­berta’s oil and gas industry, so Kevin con­sidered various options before deciding on a career in nondestructive testing (NDT). Since 2008, he has worked as a radiographer for BakosNDT Ltd. in Edmonton.

You may never have heard of NDT, but it protects you each time you enter a building, drive over a bridge, or board a plane.

“We find faults or defects in any ma­terial, component, or structure, and we do that without damaging or altering the piece in any way,” says Kevin, who is a steward. “Bakos is mostly oil and gas, so we do a lot of pipeline and facility work. We inspect for quality and integrity.”

His work as a radiographer is similar to the work done by his counterparts in healthcare.

“We take X-rays, but we look at objects, not people. Then we interpret those radio­graphs to determine if there are any defects in the material.”

SHAIN BAKOS LEARNED THE INDUSTRY from the ground up in the company founded by his father, Frank, and is proud of their rec­ord in the pipeline industry.

“A pipeline is made up of a bunch of short pieces of pipe stuck together, and at the places where they’re welded, that’s where we check to make sure that the human weld­ing is good and meets code before it’s put underground,” he says. “Anytime you hear in the news of a leak or a pipeline failure, it’s never at the places we inspect. It’s always a fault somewhere else on the pipeline. It shows that what we do actually helps save money and people’s lives.”

The company also provides testing for a range of other industries, including pulp and paper, electrical generating plants, and bridge construction.

NDT was still a very niche service when Shain started out in the early 1990s, and all the players in Alberta knew each other.

“It was a very tight-knit community,” he says. “We used to be able to run ‘cowboy,’ as we used to call it. Now, it is all very profes­sional. It went from low regulation to very high regulation. And I’ve been in long enough to see the transition and make the transition.

“A lot of the smaller companies can’t compete anymore because of the high de­mand on quality-control systems.”

BECAUSE OF THE HAZARDOUS WORK they do, NDT companies and workers are regulat­ed by the federal Ministry of Natural Resour­ces through the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).

“Anything that’s built that could explode, break, hurt somebody, or cause financial damage we have to inspect to make sure that everything is safe,” says Shain. “Our job is to protect the environment and protect people. We also save companies money but, ob­viously, the priority is keeping people safe.”

Kevin says safety is the top priority when he and other technicians are working in the field.

“We wear monitors and are tracked by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. They keep track of our radiation levels. We have survey meters and monitors, and we keep people at a certain distance when we work around them. It’s all very controlled.”

NDT workers have to regularly recertify with the CNSC, a necessary but long and expensive process involving written tests that was further slowed by the pandemic shutdowns.

“One of the problems that we run into—that everybody’s running into—is the attri­tion rate,” says Shain. “There are only so many people across Canada who have the proper in­dustry certifications. Over the last few years, some of the more senior people decided not to renew their certifications and retired. A huge pool of knowledge has just disappeared.”

Replacing those workers is an uphill battle.

“We could grow a lot bigger, but there’s a real labour shortage,” says Shain.

The specific skills needed, and the rigours of the job, mean not everyone is cut out for work in NDT.

“We want people who can handle being outside for 12 hours at a time,” says Shain. “We sometimes get older people wanting to change careers, and it’s absolutely the wrong business because it’s very demanding on them physically.”

But for successful NDT technicians like Kevin, the reward for enduring rough ter­rain and bad weather is steady employment that is not affected much by the ups and downs in the oil and gas industry. The work can be unpredictable, but he enjoys the var­iety it offers.

“I like going to different jobs, different places, and seeing different people,” he says. “You’re not stuck at the same location all the time. When we get a dispatch, we could head to anywhere from a pipeline to a plant or a construction yard.”

His work can take him away from home for long stretches, including to construction camps in northern Alberta.

“My last stint there was 24 days,” says Kevin. “You can get into a routine where all you do is eat, work, and sleep. It’s tough for the guys with families, but it’s not terrible. We still get Internet and TV.”

JOHN TAEKEMA, CLAC’S REPRESENTATIVE for the 45 members at Bakos, is proud of the col­laborative relationship that has bloomed in a relatively short time.

“Our first contract was signed in January 2021,” says John. “As an example of how good our relationship is, we were able to sit down in November 2022, midcontract, and talk about wages.”

Because the Alberta oil industry is in a boom cycle, employers are having to up the ante to attract and retain skilled labour. Shain recognized that and was willing to renegotiate the wage package.

“We sat down together and 45 minutes later, we agreed that as of December 1, there would be a 10-percent wage increase,” says John.

He also sees an opportunity for CLAC to step in and offer some of the safety-related training Bakos workers need to become job-ready and stay that way.

“With the sites they are going to, they need safety courses on top of the actual training they need for their jobs,” says John. “Because Bakos has signed on to CLAC’s new train­ing model, all their new on-boarding employ­ees have to do is show that they have been hired, and they can sign up for any cours­es they need that we offer. Bakos will pay for that training.”

Shain believes the health of the industry would improve greatly if the federal govern­ment were to streamline its cumbersome cer­tification and recertification process. About 20 institutions across Canada offer NDT training, but graduates often have to wait a long time to get official government certification.

“It’s not unusual for you to go to school, get your hours, write your exam, and then it takes six months for you to get your results,” says Shain. “Or it can take three months just to get a permission slip to write your exam.”

He points out that some of his company’s best workers have come to Bakos without training.

“We grew them ourselves,” he says. “We figured out where the need was in the industry, and then they would go for that particular training. It can be a long process, but there are a lot of people who have been with us for 20-plus years who started that way.”

Kevin has already been with Bakos for 14 years and sees a bright future with both the company and the workers’ relatively new membership in CLAC.

“The day-to-day work hasn’t changed much, but with CLAC we are really enjoying the collective benefits,” he says. “The retire­ment and benefits are more structured, and we don’t have to worry about looking after everything ourselves.”

Nondestructive versus Destructive Testing

NDT techniques do not damage or destroy the ob­ject being tested, providing an excellent balance be­tween quality control, safety, and cost-effectiveness.

With destructive testing, the material is dam­aged, and the component can usually no longer be used. In general, specially prepared and standardized samples are used for this type of testing.

3 Destructive Testing Methods

1. Three-point bend testing – This technique calls for testing a material’s flexibility and durability by bending it at three points.

2. Tensile testing – Also known as tension testing, this method applies controlled tension to the ma­terial and gauges how it reacts. This might be used to find a materials’ failure point or deter­mine a maximum load amount.

3. Macro sectioning – This type of weld testing will take a given material and alter it with polishing and etching to examine it.

Many of the following industries use both meth­ods of testing, depending on the materials involved:

• Aerospace

• Automotive

• Chemical

• Construction

• Defence

• Electrical engineering

• Fabrication

• Infrastructure

• Manufacturing

• Marine industries

• Medical devices

• Military and defence

• Oil and gas

• Packaging

• Power generation

• Software

• Waste management

Source: limblecmms.com

BAKOS NDT Marked 40 Years in 2022

Frank Bakos started BakosNDT Inspection with one radiography unit in 1982. Since then, the company has grown to include 45 employees and serves much of Alberta, from Calgary to Fort McMurray.

Frank passed away in 2000, but his leg­acy is carried on by son Shain, who joined the family business at age 18 as an assistant. He went on to become the highest NDT-qualified person in the company. He became president of BakosNDT in 2004.

Apart from radiography, the company also offers the following NDT services:

• Ultrasonic testing

• Liquid penetrant

• Magnetic particle testing

• Ground penetrating radar

• Remote visual inspection

• Hardness testing

• Corrosion surveys

• API inspection

Ancient Epic Fail

Ancient Rome was famous for its bloody gladiator fights, and there was money to be made for the owners of amphitheatres.

In 27 AD, an entrepreneur named Atilius ordered the con­struction of an amphitheatre in Fidenae, an area in north­east Rome. He urged the builders to use cheap materials (mainly wood) to construct the stadium, which was also erected on unstable foundations.

Several ancient texts mention the disaster, but they tell the same story. When 50,000 people flocked to the stadium to watch a gladiator fight, the seating collapsed, and 20,000 patrons fell to their deaths. Many more were severely in­jured. The failure was blamed on rushed construction and untested integrity.

The Roman Senate responded to the tragedy by requir­ing that all future amphitheatres be erected on a stable foundation, inspected, and certified for soundness. The gov­ernment also banished Atilius. He should have invested in some nondestructive testing.

Sources: Business Insider, Wikipedia

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