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This week marks a 10 year NDT anniversary milestone for Jordan Wood one of our great instructors. Today we had a quick Q&A session and wanted to share his answers with you all.

HI Jordan, could you tell us a little about your background and how you got into NDT.

“I had just left sixth form and landed in a job but after working there for about 10 months I realised that I wanted a career where there was lots of career progression and so I decided engineering was a good option and saw an apprenticeship online for NDT, that was the beginning!”

Over the past 10 years, what standout moment can you remember?  i.e working on a specific job, a trainer you learnt from, the most fun you had or even something a little risky that happened.

After I had completed my apprenticeship I was offered a job as a trainee at Argyll Ruane LTD to begin teaching UT, I learned so much in my 2.5 years there but always knew I should go back into the field to gain more experience (and money) whilst I was still young, I accepted a job to start working on Pipelay barges doing AUT on offshore oil and gas pipelines. This was a huge risk for me as I knew I would be spending more than half of the year at sea and when I was younger I suffered really bad motion/sea sickness (even on peddle boats in calm bays in Greece!). I got over it pretty quickly just by always having sea sickness tablets on me!

What would you say to yourself if you could speak to Jordan the apprentice?

Buy Bitcoin every time you get paid! Haha

What do you like about teaching?

I’m quite a sociable person so it’s all about the interactions with the people that come into the training centre, because I’ve been in their positions out in the field means we can share stories and experiences etc. This has kept me sane through Covid.

Finally, a question came in from another staff member, they wanted to know how long it took you to realise you looked better without ‘that hairstyle’.

HAHAHA, I had always gone through periods of having a shaved head, can’t be having helmet head after looking cool on the 50cc moped at 16!

But I do remember one of the exact moments I started shaving it again and then sticking with it, I was working offshore in Brazil and the outside temperature was maybe 40 degrees and inside we were cooling high temperature welds with water and the heat was unbearable, my idea was LESS HAIR = COOLER so whipped off the hair and beard, job done.

Plus people tell me I look like Jason Statham 🙄

Congratulations Jordan from all the team.