Investigation into NASA Transition to NAS 410

Overview:  

The project was to initially look into the feasibility and development of a internal centralized NAS 410 certification program for civil servants.  The goal of the project was to perform the following tasks.

• Overview of the current certifications held at various NASA Centers.
• Overview of current NASA Nondestructive Testing procedures for certification.
• A cost comparison for internal NAS 410 certification vs. external NAS 410 certification conducted by a outside testing authority.

Problem: There has been issues with civil servants being able to keep there NDE certifications current and what appeared to be escalating costs. Additionally, there was an emphasis to look into more centralized nondestructive testing concerns and how would a centralized NDE program work.   

Conclusion:

• An initial review of nondestructive testing procedures showed some variation in the inspector certification procedures from NASA center to NASA center. 
• Some NASA centers showed a robust NAS 410 certification program in place for civil servants, and at other NASA centers, those performing NDE as civil servants  either were not certified and provided engineering evaluations only, or held ASNT Level 3 certifications. 
• The cost comparison between developing a central certification process internally for civil servant employees vs. utilizing outsourced NDE testing centers failed to show a significant cost savings by developing an internal centralized NAS 410 program within NASA. 
• There appeared to no interest in developing a NASA centralized certification board, developing one standardized NDE certification procedure, and it appears each NASA center will continue to follow their previously-established personnel certification procedures and continue to utilize outsourced NDE testing centers.