Dr S Vahaviolos Co-Chair

Mr G Nardoni President, ICNDT

Mr D Marshall Pan-American

Mr G Aufricht Task Group on Harmonisation

Dr J M Farley Secretary

Mr W R Doggart Observer

Mr T Sadek Observer

Mr Nardoni warmly welcomed the members.

Dr Baldev Raj in response to questions from the floor explained the need to work by consensus.

Dr Vahaviolos asked for confirmation that the meeting was quorate. Given the good representation of the PGP present at the meeting, this was confirmed. It was noted that under the old Constitution the PGP has no power to make decisions on behalf of the ICNDT; all decisions at the meeting would be put to the full ICNDT for approval.

The planned Agenda circulated to the PGP by e-mail was read out by Dr Farley.

For the record, although not discussed, Membership of the PGP is:

In response to a question Dr Farley advised that although he was not present he could confirm the Shantou PGP meeting was a properly constituted PGP meeting, duly announced in advance and having an adequate representation, four members present in person and two (USA and Japan) sending substitutes.

The minutes, prepared by D Marshall, were accepted. ASNT reservations regarding proposed ISO9712 Seminar were noted.

Noted

Concerns were expressed that the two Awards, approved in principle by PGP were each named after European NDT pioneers. It was agreed that the number of Awards should be extended to five, recognising pioneers from other areas of the World. A procedure is to be developed by Vahaviolos, Klyuev and Baldev Raj by March 2001.

A motion to approve the creation of the first two awards was approved, subject to the above. The PGP agreed to recommend to ICNDT that the recipients should be:

The excellent work of Professor Onoe was acclaimed and it was agreed to propose his Working Group’s report “ICNDT Internet” for ratification by the full ICNDT.

It was agreed to organise a further PGP to discuss the work of other Working Groups on Tuesday 17 October at 3.00p.m.

Dr Baldev Raj and Mr Nardoni confirmed that through the consultation process it had been ascertained that there was a wide measure of agreement with the proposed changes and people were generally in favour of adopting the new Constitution (which had been duly circulated nine months ahead of the ICNDT meeting). Some further fine tuning and development of procedures can follow.

The ASNT representatives explained their concerns, (expressed in a letter sent to Mr Nardoni criticising his summary of the Shantou meeting) that the new Constitution was being introduced before all the necessary operating procedures had been established. Nevertheless they believed in principle there were many good things in the new Constitution and Terms of Reference. ASNT do not agree with the wording of para 4.6 “To encourage the formulation of International Standards on Non-Destructive Testing in collaboration with the International Standards Organisation, and other standards bodies”.

Dr Farley recommended that the motion to be put to the full ICNDT meeting on the New Constitution should be:

and considered this would allow ICNDT to progress while continuing to develop its procedures and ways of working.

Douglas Marshall explained that from his research through the records there are 49 member societies which have been admitted to membership, and two (Croatia and Slovakia) whose membership will be approved at the first meeting, giving a total of 51. However as many as 10 of these have not responded to attempts to contact them and have not attended any conferences since 1992.

Dr Baldev Raj summed up by recommending that ICNDT proceed in the manner proposed by Dr Farley, and review the position in four year’s time, by which time we should have developed a manual of procedures.

The meeting closed at 10.00a.m.

Minutes prepared by Dr J M Farley (PGP Secretary)