2019 SAIW Awards

SAIW President’s Award for NDT

 

The First training award of the night was the SAIW Presidents’ award for the best NDT student. Most people will not appreciate that SAIW has been training NDT personnel for more than 30 years – the same period of time in which SAIW has offered training in welding. NDT is a very important part of the Institute’s programmes and the SAIW seeks to encourage more young people to enter this field, which offers good career opportunities.

The Presidents’ award recognises the top NDT student on Institute courses. The award is made in the name of the past Presidents of SAIW, who have helped guide the Institute to become a prominent part of the local welding industry and to be South Africa’s reference point for high quality training in welding and NDT training.

This year, the SAIW Certification Governing Board gave the award to Quintin Ayres – for achieving distinctions in Magnetic Testing Level 1; Penetrant Testing Level 1 and Ultrasonic Wall thickness Testing Level 1 and combined with Visual Testing Level . He achieved an overall average of 90% for examinations undertaken during the period August 2018 to July 2019.

Phil Santilhano Memorial Award

 

This year’s second training award of the evening was the Phil Santilhano Award, which was presented to the best student on the Institute’s courses in Welding Supervision and Inspection.

The award is made in the name of Phil Santilhano, who was one of South Africa’s leading welding technologists and is best remembered for the ground-breaking work he did while employed by Vecor in research and development on Submerged Arc and Electro-Slag welding of heavy wall pressure vessels. He became the Institute’s first full time employee when he was appointed Technical Director in 1977.

The award was presented to the best student on the Welding Coordination or Welding Inspectors training courses. Anyone attending Institute courses will testify that these courses are no walk in the park.

A lot of information must be absorbed in a short amount of time. To be successful really takes special effort and for the first time ever in the institute’s history, two awards were presented to the same person.

The winner for the award was Quintin Ayres, who achieved a distinction in all three Welding Inspectors Level 1 examinations.

Best IIW Manufacturing Certification Company Award

 

This award is made in recognition of a company that has excelled in the ISO 3834 Certification Manufacturing scheme, by recognising the excellence of a manufacturing company with the implementation of a welding process control system.

The nominees for this award were:

CMP Aljimm Engineering – Located in Vereeniging, the company specialises in the use of carbon steels and thermo-mechanically treated steels, to fabricate a variety of products for their customers, including general steel structure fabrication, piping systems, pressurised equipment and mining equipment.

FP Engineering – This is an established general engineering company located in Durban, with many decades of experience in fabrication. The company specialises in steel fabrication and the manufacturing of tanks, silos, pressure vessels, dryers, hoppers, sugar and materials handling equipment, in a large, fully-equipped modern workshop and machine shop.

Hi-Tech Pressure Engineering – The company is focused on the design, manufacture and installation of design code compliant equipment. The company’s expertise extends to high pressure piping systems and associated process vessels. Industries serviced include petrochemical, pulp & paper, mining, sugar and infrastructure.

ND Engineering – The company is known for its world-class fabrication of packaged boilers, heat exchangers, autoclaves, pressure vessels, reactors, petrochemical columns and many more types of equipment. This Durban-based company recently relocated to a brand-new worldclass fabrication facility that has dramatically increased its fabrication capabilities.

Plant Design & Project Services – This is a multi-discipline engineering and construction company offering engineering, piping and structural fabrication, installation and plant maintenance services. The company is located in Secunda with ample experience in the design and maintenance of petrochemical plants.

During the evaluation of the nominees there were various assessment criteria used, which included, but were not limited to the following:

  • Compliance to the requirements of the ISO 3834 scheme
  • Implementation and involvement of the management team of the quality process
  • Continuous improvement of the welding quality processes
  • Production of high quality product
  • High degree of customer satisfaction

All nominees showed extremely high levels of involvement and engagement for various tasks and responsibilities by top management and the welding coordination team members. This led to excellent management of the different projects, producing high quality traceability documentation at all stages and at the end the production of high quality products in the different core areas of the nominees. All nominees were also utilising continuous improvement projects to further enhance their daily operations.

The SAIW Certification Governing Board adjudicated Hi-Tech Pressure Engineering be the recipient for this year’s Best IIW Manufacturing Certification Company Award for their highly innovative, in-house developed ISO 3834 system.

 

Institute Gold Medal Award for 2019

 

The final award for the evening was the Institute’s Gold Medal Award. Introduced in 1966, it is the Institute’s highest award and can be conferred to a company or an individual in recognition of outstanding contributions to welding technology or to the Institute.

For 2019, the award went to Sasol Secunda Inspection Authority.

The award citation reads: “The award to Sasol Secunda Inspection Authority is made for the outstanding opportunities made available to local young school leavers to prepare for a career in the inspection field.”

 

Special mention for Stefan Lottering at SAIW’s Annual Dinner

 

At his maiden SAIW Awards, which took place at the 71st Annual Dinner on the 25th of October 2019, incoming Executive Director John Tarboton made a special mention of Stefan Lottering, who entered the SAIW Youth Welding Challenge held at the SAIW in January 2019.

Having undergone extensive training at ArcelorMittal in Vanderbijlpark, Lottering together with four other candidates, were sponsored by the Chieta to train at the SAIW under the supervision of SAIW lecturer, Samuel Mnguni and Chieta SAIW representative Etienne Nell.

During the subsequent SAIW competition, Lottering excelled by winning almost all the metal categories and achieving the highest mark overall. He entered the South African WorldSkills
competition, held in the last week of February 2019 in Durban, and again outperformed the other competitors by winning all the categories.