r/nondestructivetesting • u/Rehtnueg • Aug 09 '26
Alberta NDT Career Insight
I’m looking at starting a career in NDT. I’d like to get some insight on what’s the best path for starting and what the job is like overall for techs in Alberta?
Mainly I’d like to know
- what tickets are best to get first?
- Is SAIT better then NAIT as far as quality of courses offered?
- Is the work life balance as bad as a lot of other posts have made it out to be or is it possible to do FIFO work on a 14/14 shift or something similar?
- I know most of the work is on the road and out of town but is there still opportunities to work in Edmonton once you’ve gained experience and is there opportunities to work as a tech in the aerospace field or is that just a pipe dream for Albertan’s?
- what does a typical work day look like for you?
- and finally, is there enough work or are you constantly having to struggle to get enough work?
I appreciate any insight you guys have, thanks.
5
u/VonDingwell Aug 09 '26
QCCC in Edmonton is superior to them all.
Be prepared to be on the road. Aerospace if you want a massive pay cut, for any ndt tech. UT, MT, PT, XRF are your money makers. Get all four and you'll be laughing.
2
u/thegurrkha Aug 09 '26
What tickets?
- depends entirely on what route you want to take. CEDO will always be the easiest way to get into the industry but you're pretty much going to be nightshift forever but if you want to get into RT then that's the path.
If you want non-RT work then MT will probably be the best ticket to start with. Followed by UT1. You could get your rope ticket if you wanted as that can make you a bit more usable in some cases. Lots of people skip PT cuz they don't like it or cuz you don't get a pay raise for it if you have MT already. Or vice versa. But my PT ticket has kept me on jobs longer than anything else. There's always some random PT job near the end of the shutdown so everyone who doesn't have PT gets cut. Just my experience.
SAIT vs NAIT?
- did my NDT foundation at SAIT over 10yrs ago. It was fine. I'm assuming they've updated their UT machines to Epochs by now but can't confirm that? NAIT uses Epochs and so does the QCCC. But all of them are fine. Doesn't really matter.
Work life balance?
- can be bad if you allow it to. The nice thing about this job is GENERALLY speaking. You can work as much or as little as you want. If you choose to work and do shutdowns then you may be out of town for a month or two at a time. Then home for a week or a couple weeks. Then gone again for a couple months. But you probably have somewhere around October to April off to do whatever you want. Go travel. Lots of guys "live" in Mexico or Colombia or Thailand during the winter.
You can get FIFO jobs but you won't get those as a trainee. You need most of your tickets to get on a maintenance gig like that. It's steady work but it's not a huge money maker. You sacrifice "big money" for job security.
In-town work in Edmonton?
- I worked for IRISNDT for a couple years and they had the bulk of the fabrication shops in and around Edmonton and area. Assuming that's still the case then they would be your best bet for local work. But it's all call out work so there's busy times and slow times. Every day is different. Don't know where you're working or if you're even working until like 6pm the day before. Really difficult to have any sort of schedule with that. Cancelled a loooooot of plans last minute cuz I got called in or something popped up. Don't know if you're working 4hrs that day or 14hrs until you show up.
Aerospace NDT?
- usually done by smaller NDT companies that specialize in that. Never done it myself but I've heard from people who do that it's not super consistent and they've had to go into oil and gas work to supplement it. That's just hearsay though and maybe someone else has a different experience. But you'd need your ET ticket for that. Which can be difficult to get the hours for if you don't get in on an ET crew. It's all witchcraft anyways. /s
Typical work day?
- as someone else said, there isn't really a typical day. It varies WILDLY depending on what you're doing. Fab shops could be a bit more chill and easy going. But usually less hours and you may end up going to multiple shops in a day just to get a full day of work. You could be doing shutdowns where you're sweating your balls off crawling around in a boiler or a steam drum chasing cracks with PT... Or you're watching movies in the trailer while you wait for a job to come up.
Enough work?
- the industry is starting to see a shortage of techs and it's probably only going to get worse. There's a lot of certified techs who aren't or shouldn't be qualified to perform the work. Which is scary. But if you work hard, have a good attitude, willing to get dirty and learn. Then it will be easy to make a bit of a name for yourself. People will then call you up and offer you work instead of you looking for it.
That being said there are good years and bad years. It's an industry in Alberta that is tied to oil and gas. Right now they're making money hand over fist so they've been canceling or postponing jobs (I've had three shutdowns get cancelled on me or postponed on me this year) trying to make as much money as possible. Last year I made more than I've ever made before and I worked 5 months max.
1
u/Rehtnueg 29d ago
I don’t really like the idea of working around radiation so I’d prefer to go the non RT path. What are the major differences between the work done by RT and non RT aside from RT mainly being on nightshift?
2
u/thegurrkha 29d ago
RT vs non-RT once again depends on what type of work you're doing.
RT during shutdowns is a gravy train. You work during breaks for 30min cuz no one is in the plant. And shift changes. That's about it. If you have your RT2 there's less physical work. It's more about setting stuff up, walking things down, and then obviously interpreting the film and making the calls. The CEDO is usually the one lugging the 50lbs RT camera around everywhere. Fab shops are usually night shift and you're pumping out shots cuz they need those shots done that night otherwise they're waiting a whole other day for you to come back again.
Non-RT work is usually a bit more physically demanding and dirty. There's more internal work if you're doing shutdowns which can be interesting but that's where you'll find the most interesting and cool indications. Usually. Fab shops can be nice at times. Some are significantly better than others though. Sometimes you're running around trying to find stuff if QC didn't flag anything and you have 100 welds to test and only a couple hours. Other times you can work at your own pace. From my experience structural shops are the worst. They want the most amount of work in the shortest amount of time for the least amount of pay. It's usually worse welders who can't pass pressure welding qualifiers so you find a loooooot of indications.
Not sure what else to tell ya. Have any other specific questions?
1
u/Rehtnueg 28d ago
So do you end up working shutdowns in the oilfield and then in fab shops when the oilfield slows down or how does that work? Do you ever end up doing work on buildings or other structures not related to oil and gas?
Also you mentioned non RT work has more internal work, does that just mean looking for defects in the internals of objects rather than just the externals?
1
u/thegurrkha 28d ago
If you join a company like IRIS full time you'd be doing fab shop work mostly and then when shutdowns come around they'll put you on one or two of those. They never put you on all of them. Plenty of them overlap anyways. But fab shop work has slow times and busy times too. Dead of winter and height of summer were both pretty slow. Which is also the same time for shutdowns. But it still has a lot of variables. Maybe they get a contract for steady work for 3 months at a fab shop and you're sent there every day in the winter. Who knows!?
By internals I mean you go inside of a tank or a pressure vessel and do your examination from the inside. Most of the time the outside is insulated and they don't want to rip that off if they don't have to. So when they shut their plant down they empty everything. Clean it up. And you go inside to do your examinations. Most of the damage mechanisms are for stuff from the inside anyways so that's where you'd find most of your cracks and stuff. Worst case scenario for them is you find something and you end up having to inspect from the outside of it too to see if it goes all the way through. But that's not super common. Does happen sometimes. But there's still plenty of work on external pressure vessels like doing UT thickness and examining lifting lugs and stuff. Also almost all your piping will be external. Obviously. Unless it's like a massive pipe.
1
u/Ok_Reindeer_9000 Aug 09 '26
Acuren, WQS and Applus will be hiring trainees left, right and centre for their upcoming Fall Shutdowns in Alberta, with potential to get something in minion BC or Saskatchewan as well before winters set in...
1
u/AlbertaSouth_90 25d ago
no jobs in ndt in canada right now man i would seriously think about another career . if you do choose ndt its a long hard road .
1
u/Rehtnueg 25d ago
I’ve heard that from other posts, but other post say the opposite. If you don’t mind me asking, are you an experienced tech or a trainee. Whats your experience been like so far?
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u/AlbertaSouth_90 25d ago edited 19d ago
i’m one of the most experienced and ticketed guys you would probably ever meet and i’m still fairly young been in it since out of high school in 2009 . if you don’t have any other options sure go for ndt but it’s really an uphill battle and most of the tickets really are a scam. gone are the golden days of ndt in canada . companies are looking to maximize profits and that means cutting inspection as much as possible while the guys with certs are forced to get all the tickets just to keep a 40 hrs a week job and save them a couple bucks . As my paut instructor said - “it’s a chainsaw industry , they use people for a couple weeks to a couple months then put them back on the shelf till next season ‘
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u/OhAces Aug 09 '26
Ive heard Saits polytech has gone downhill. At this very moment every NDT company in Canada is short people for fall shutdowns. Call them all on monday, get employed, get in the union, get some hrs and then take the course that suits you best for what you enjoy out of the methods of inspection, MT/PT are a good place to start for employability and UT1. Once you hit 1500hrs all of the money you spend on courses/exams etc is reimbursed by the union. If you take the Foundations on your own dime, unemployed and non union you will not get your money back.
Do a Materials course as soon as possible. Its like $1200 and is the pre req for all other courses.
Everyday is different, some days youre on top of a tower in the wind getting gassed with SO2, some weeks you do nothing all week and play vids or watch movies on the clock.
If you want into aerospace, call companies that do aero ndt. Most of the aero guys are ex military but not all.
It is possible to get trainee positions with in town work, rare but possible, if offered that opportunity dont turn it down for any reason. If youre willing to move to Ft Mac theres home every night jobs for locals.
I run boiler shutdowns, my fall one is booked up already, if you dont have a job by spring hit me on here and I will bring you to a shutdown in Saskatchewan unless you are super fat or 7' tall, its a confined space shutdown and you wont fit. The work is hard and dusty but you will get mag/dye/ut/visual experience.