SUMMARY
The European Community has identified in ISO 9000 Standard the instrument to take for planning, checking, and valuating the training process by means of "objective parameters", according to national and international criteria.
The ISO 9000 actuative indications allow to manage the complexity of the formative action in any fields of application, documenting the working methodology adopted to develop and continuously improve the capability to fitly meet any specific application field's needs.
To answer in right way to the Quality Assurance on the Training Personnel Processes in Non Destructive Examination Field, ENEA, on the ground of CAMPUS Project too, began the initiative to develop specific Training Courses according to EN 473 as regards to contents, and to ISO 9001 as far as their application and management.
To this aim, the Spellucci Institute of Rome's infrastructures and human resources have been used for the classroom train, and the Stelin Electronic Laboratory's has been used for the practical training.
The produced documentation, essentially the Quality System, not only increases the Training Service's efficiency and competitiveness, but assures to the customers the right efficiency and effectiveness of the formative action to meet their own specific needs.
To support the customers also about horizontal thematics besides the ones dealt in classroom lessons, a series of Modules for ODL (Open Distance Learning), developed by ENEA, are available on the Internet site, which the Society can link free to, only against recording.
For each "Module" and "Lesson" there is an "on-line" help to deepen topics with the experts who have attended to the several thematics of the Courses.
0. INTRODUCTION
Continuously students, families and productive world ask for "quality" to the "Training Institutes", in that public service and decisive factor for the Country's development.
Also the economic and social context ask for technicians with more ground's knowledge, more ready to react correctly in function of job's changing, more able to collaborate, of living positively the interpersonal relationships, to communicate and to assume precise responsibilities.
On the base of such parameters, in the public and private structures operating in the "Training personnel" nowadays are realizing some changes on the "quality of the formative activities".
Even if the question of quality on the "training processes" is sometimes difficult to interpret, the European Community has identified in ISO 9001 standard the tool to take for planning, checking and valuing the quality of "formative processes" by means of "objectives parameters", according to national and international criteria.
Indeed the indications required by ISO 9000 standard allow to manage the complexity of the formative action in any field of application, documenting the working methodology adopted to develop and continuously improve the teachers' ability and organizations' reliability to fitly meet any specific application field's needs.
However, while the world of "scholastic" and "professional" formation tries to adapt oneself to the ISO 9000 reference standard, even if some objective difficulties, on Non Destructive Testing (NDT) field the applied standards stretch to privilege a final verification of knowledge acquired by personnel during training courses, rather than apply the correct methodology to evaluate the entire formative process (e.g. organization, teachers' ability, didactic methodologies, services, etc.).
This situation together with the look of precise criteria for planning, conduction, monitoring and verification of didactic methodologies, (form and content) sometimes determines a considerable difference on the basic professional knowledge of personnel working on the NDT field, even if Certified at I, II or III level.
1. STATE OF THE ART
Nowadays, the domestic and international market offers in abundance "Training Courses" for Qualification and Certification of personnel operating in Non Destructive Testing field.
Generally, these Courses are conducted by institutional organizations, public and private societies and /or professional men, having technical and professional characteristics according to NDT reference standards.
Particularly, as regards minimum theoretical and practical knowledge required to the operators, they are described in several standards as an example EN473 (currently under review); instead, as far as the Examination's Centers, thew necessary qualifications are made according to specific procedures emitted by Competence's National Bodies.
However, technical procedures and specific standards regulate NDT personnel's qualification and certification, mostly defining:
- minimum training's hours and minimum knowledge's content necessary to obtain a specific NDT Certification's Level for each method
- managing and technical characteristics of Examination's Centers, including Level III personnel responsible of training courses.
Instead as regards specifically the complete "formative process", meant as ability in planning, conduction, monitoring and valuing of the didactic activities, it does not held in due consideration how to occur in other application's field.
The "quality of formative processes" in the NDT Training courses is extrapolated, if that happens, on the base of the final results at the end of the Certification's examination; this situation transfers to personnel's learning ability some specific responsibilities that, instead, falls on teachers and training course's organization.
The first and immediate consequence of such fact is the considerable difficulty to develop, especially in the small and medium societies, on effective "culture" on the Non Destructive Testing, relegating the societies' interest exclusively on the obtaining Certifications for personnel.
And just to answer in the right way on the real needs of the service and productive societies, ENEA, after the experience acquired on the formative processes' quality of University Diplomas in CAMPUS projects too, began the initiative to develop specific training courses according to EN473 and regards to contents, and to ISO 9001, as far as planning, control and evaluating of the didactic activities of the complete formative process.
2. SCOPE OF THE WORKS
The improvement of the formative process' quality is the product of a continuous series of actions, either didactic or managing, periodically verified, evaluated and redesigned.
As regards, especially in the NDT personnel's qualification and certification field, a condition often too much undervalued is that the correct way towards quality, "growing in quality" cannot be correlated "exclusively" to the teachers' III Level Certification (or formative operators), and equipment availability, but it is necessary include control valuation's parameters regarding either didactic and managing abilities of all subjects involved on the training courses or general organization of formative service too.
Indeed nowadays there is a diffuse sensation on the fact that, having to assure suitable training processes for NDT personnel with regard to specific fields of application, it is no longer possible adopt quality's criteria "doing prevail theoric form on the objective substance, the adopted methodologies conformity and the available resources to obtain them".
So, the ENEA's initiative is finalized to verify the ISO 9001 applicability for planning and conduction of NDT training courses too, likewise how happened in other applications' field of formative activities.
The following technical and service's resources have been identified in order to obtain the best results:
- ENEA as regard to evaluating and optimizing the training courses' quality process;
- SPELLUCCI Institute of Rome, specialized on Professional Training Courses, as far as the "theoretical training in classroom";
- STELIN Society of Rome, specialized on industrial diagnostic system, as regard to the "practical training in laboratory".
The choice to realize and use a competence's synergy for the conduction of the courses, each specialized on own field of application, is justified because that ISO 9001 standard require to verify the complete training's process including, in addition to the availability and efficiency of organization and equipment, the didactic methodologies more suitable for specific applications too.
And this fact is the exact sense of ISO 9001's philosophy, that requires both the conformity to the standard's requirements and to the specific needs of those parts of professional, economic, social and territorial communities, interested on the "NDT training process' final product".
The above mentioned requirements constitute the "contract" proposed within the NDT training courses, that is substantially signed (implicitly or explicitly) at the inscription's moment by people attending the courses or by their companies.
Such "contract", established at the beginning of the specific NDT training course, have to be periodically evaluated and, if necessary, modified for optimizing, on the basis of results carried out by means of didactic methodology's evaluation, final examination and market's feed-back responses; in other words, the "contract" have to be periodically evaluated on the basis of the "customer satisfaction analyses" made in specific communities (social, technical, economical and/or productive).
Consequently, the most important aim of this initiative is finalized to try a model for planning, conduction and evaluating of the NDT Training Courses where:
- The "process' evaluation" is conducted according to ISO 9001 standard, regards exclusively a "training process' conformity" to the requirements of reference standard for specific application's fields;
- The "absolute evaluation" of the training process' product, conducted according to EN473 standard, made by National Bodies for NDT personnel's certification.
In such a way the use of ISO 9001 standard, very far from being considered a merely formal fact, will represent a strong stimulus and a real aid for a better management's organization in the NDT training process' field, by means of principles' adoption of the planning, systematic methodology for verification and correction (feedback), to obtain a real improvement of the formative actions and, at the same time, a progressive increasing of the ground's technical culture of the personnel (I,II and III Level Certified) working on the NDT's field.
3. DESCRIPTION OF THE WORKS
The principle justifying the application ISO 9000 standards on the NDT personnel's training courses is, on fact, that any organization, realizing "training courses", answers to the needs of specific external customers/purchasers meant as civil, economic, social and political community too.
The evaluation of a specific "formative process" conducted according to ISO 9001 standard, begins therefore at the moment in which is identified a "Direction" of the Course for managing the theoric and practical training, conducted by one or more teachers that, together with the Direction, take the responsibility upon themselves.
As regards, the organization realizing NDT training courses will have to develop a suitable Quality System that, supported by documentary evidence, will allows to carry out correctly planning, control and verification of didactic activities according to the reference's standard.
Such requirement derived from the fact that formative processes, defined and documented (by means of suitable procedures) according to ISO 9001 standard, are able to obtain, in addition to the NDT Certifications Levels, a considerable increasing of the ground's technical culture of the personnel working on Non Destructive Testing field.
Consequently, activities that will be conducted in this initiative, are organized in such a way to obtain the achievement of three principal objectives, as following:
- Manage the complexity of the "formative actions and gave services" according to the requirements specified by national and international standard on "quality assurance".
- Turn, in Non Destructive Testing field, the training courses' planning, the employed human resources and obtained results.
- Supply a specific instrument that, by means of "objective parameters" (defined according to national and international standards), allow to realize either a correct and effective self - valuation of formative activities or a gradual increasing of the ground's culture of personnel working on NDT field, leaving the Certification's Levels out of consideration.
As regards, either for the "theoric training" in classroom that will be conducted by SPELLUCCI Institute or "practical training" in laboratory that will be realized by STELIN Society, the above mentioned companies developed suitable "quality systems" to assure what required by ISO 9001 (for process) and by EN473 (for minimum contents) regarding the NDT courses.
Since the principal aim of the works was to verify initially only the applicability in NDT field of a specific model already adopted in others application's fields Penetrant Testing Analysis has been chosen the as pilot-method.
Deferring to other session the detailed description of the most important documents and procedures elaborated according to each paragraph of ISO 9001 standard, to correctly understand the complete philosophy of this initiative is necessary to spend some words on the horizontal activities characterizing the works.
Particularly, it is important to emphasize that Italy possesses a lot of cultural institutions where are located technical and scientific knowledge that, because of different reasons, are not yet utilized in synergic way for personnel's NDT training.
A series of objective difficulties, from logistical problems to peculiarity of some specific documentation, is nowadays surmountable by means of potentialities of both the informatics and the data transmission (in other words by INTERNET).
As regards, during the activities regarding the application of ISO 9001 standard for personnel's training process, was defined by ENEA the NDT-CARD Project, to realize an informatics connection, by means of internet sites, among the most important private and public institutions operating, directly or indirectly, on Non Destructive Testing field.
Indeed, the ability of NDT personnel to connect, to contextualize, to articulate as a whole the acquired knowledge is, at this moment, strongly developed by means of network culture, able to connect nowadays what nature apparently spears because of logistics problems.
Failed the illusion to dominate "the knowledge" in the Non Destructive Testing field, by means of roles and certainties hierarchically inserted in a knowledge's general vision classified for Levels of Certification, the NDT operators are now aware that, nowadays, "nobody can take a bath twice in the same water".
As regards the aim of NDT-CARD Project is, by means of realization of a really culture's credit-card in the Non Destructive technologies, to transfer to interested subjects some "knowledge" usable directly on the own working activities.
To support technicians also about horizontal thematics besides the ones dealt in classroom lessons, a series of Modules for ODL (Open Distance Learning), developed by ENEA, are available on the Internet site, which the Society can link free to, only against recording.
For each "Module" and "Lesson" there is an "on-line" help to deepen topics with the experts who have attended to the several thematics of the Courses.
Beside NDT-CARD represents a formative open system not only for technical personnel, but also as an instrument either for promotion and social integration of the disable people or for the valorization of cultural diversities.
In this contest, the teacher's figure operating in the NDT field appears in continuous evolution, because nowadays production and service's companies ask them to be not a simple "transmitter" of knowledge but to be a catalyst of synergies that contributes on the personnel's technical formation.
4. CONCLUSIONS
Public and private structures operating in the "Training personnel" are nowadays realizing some changes on the "quality of the formative activities".
Even if the question of quality on the "training processes" is sometimes difficult to interpret, the European Community has identified in ISO 9001 standard the tool to take for planning, checking and valuing the quality of "formative processes" by means of "objectives parameters", according to national and international criteria.
To answer in the right way on the real needs of the service and productive societies, ENEA, after the experience acquired on the formative processes' quality of University Diplomas in CAMPUS projects too, began the initiative to develop specific training courses according to EN473 regarding contents, and to ISO 9001, as far as planning, control and evaluating of the didactic activities of the complete formative process.
This initiative is finalized to verify the ISO 9001 applicability for planning and conduction of NDT training courses too, likewise how happened in others applications' fields of formative activities; as regards, the following technical and service's resources have been identified in order to obtain the best results:
- ENEA as regard to evaluating and optimizing the training courses' quality process;
- SPELLUCCI Institute of Rome, specialized on Professional Training Courses, as far as the "theoretical training in classroom";
- STELIN Society of Rome, specialized on industrial diagnostic system, as regard to the "practical training in laboratory".
The most important aim of this initiative is finalized to try a model for planning, conduction and evaluating of the NDT Training Courses where:
- The "process' evaluation" is conducted according to ISO 9001 standard, regards exclusively a "training process' conformity" to the requirements of reference standard for specific application's fields;
- The "absolute evaluation" of the training process' product, conducted according to EN473 standard, that will be made by National Bodies for NDT personnel's certification.
During the activities regarding the application of ISO 9001 standard for personnel's training process, was defined by ENEA the NDT-CARD Project, to realize an informatics connection, by means of internet sites, among the most important private and public institutions operating, directly or indirectly, on Non Destructive Testing field.
To support technicians also about horizontal thematics besides the ones dealt in classroom lessons, a series of Modules for ODL (Open Distance Learning), developed by ENEA, are available on the Internet site, which the Society can link free to, only against recording.
For each "Module" and "Lesson" there is an "on-line" help to deepen topics with the experts who have attended to the several thematics of the Courses.
The aim of NDT-CARD Project is, by means of realization of a really culture's credit-card in the Non Destructive technologies, to transfer to interested subjects "knowledge" usable directly on the own working activities.
Beside NDT-CARD represents a formative open system not only for technical personnel, but also as an instrument either for promotion and social integration of the disable people or for the valorization of cultural diversities.
