Gloucester, England, United Kingdom
Nuclear professional and Chartered Engineer with a background in metallurgy and welding. Currently working as Welding Metallurgy Group Leader at EDF (UK). Previously worked as Head of Engineering Programs for ENEC in the UAE’s civil nuclear sector. Holding BEng, PhD, CEng, MWeldI, EWE/IWE, 10m swim certificate
Appointed Head of Engineering Programs where I supervised and provided technical guidance for a team of mixed nationalities in the following programs: Welding, Flow Accelerated Corrosion, General / Seawater Corrosion, Nuclear Coatings, Repair/Replacement, Metallurgy, Ageing Management, Cyclic Transient Monitoring, Boric Acid Corrosion and Non-Safety Pressure Vessels.
Created and developed ENEC's ASME XI Repair/Replacement program supporting all 4 APR 1400 units. Whilst fulfilling this role I also provided metallurgical and welding support for the organisation. I worked as the Engineering Outage Manager (EOM) during outages and supported various event recoveries.
The basic premise of my role at EDF is to support the continued safe operation of our existing nuclear fleet (Advanced Gas Reactors and Pressurised Water Reactors). I offer structural integrity and metallurgical advice on both in-service degradation and construction defects. I am responsible for evaluating welding practices, both on-site and off-site, through the review of welding documentation and witness of welding activities. I author and consult on fabrication / repair strategies. The role of an EDF Welding Metallurgist also requires me to author, verify and comment upon technical advice documents, reports and instructions. Periodically we bring our stations offline for maintenance and a planned in-service inspection regime, this is termed a statutory outage. During an outage I will lead a team of site metallurgists to assess a series of inspection reports on components within the programme scope. The inspection reports are made up of techniques such as MPI, DPI, RAD, UT, EDDY, VIS, TOFT, Metallographic replication and AutoUT. The results from these inspections are then assessed and a return to service case for each component presented to a panel of experts. Outside of outage campaigns one of my responsibilities is to shape the inspection strategy for upcoming outages based on OPEX and plant health. The inspection strategy is tailored depending on the type of defects sought but also the susceptibility of components to particular defects. Vulnerable components are sampled and Inspection techniques are tailored to find defects such as thermal fatigue, stress corrosion cracking, creep, reheat damage and mechanical fatigue etc. Standards worked to include: BS 2633, BS 13480, ASME IX, ASME XI, ASME III, ASME II, ASME B31.1, ASME B31.3
During my time at Rolls-Royce Submarines I was responsible for providing technical and operational support to their welding supply chain. As part of this role I was a Lloyds Register certificated auditor for new and existing welding suppliers. The role meant that I worked across the business for PCO (Primary Component Operation), EC&I (Electrical Controls and Instrumentation), NPS (Nuclear Propulsion Services), CDM (Core, Design and Manufacture and S&D (Support and Development). The work varied greatly between each department and is therefore multi-process, multi-material and utilises a wide range of codes and standards including; ASME IX, ASME II Section C, ASME III, ASME VIII, ISO 15614-‘X’:2004 (multi material), DGS 3003, DGS NAS 3, NAVSEA, RCC-M The main technical responsibility of this role was to provide technical support to suppliers including interpretation of DGS standards, materials combinations, filler metal choice. Provide supplier welding documentation review/approval in supply chain (WPS, PQR, WQUAL, Weld Maps and Technical Instructions). Practical welding support, problem resolution and supervision on a project by project basis During my time at Rolls-Royce I also taught the welding module of NSIC (Nuclear Safety Inspectors Course) During a secondment to CDM I was responsible for developing a number of welds in Dreadnought class, utilising Electron Beam Welding, Robotic GTAW and manual repair processes.
Focal point for welding related activities and enquiries in DNV-GL UK (Legacy GL) such as; feasibility studies, welding solutions, consumable choice, repair strategies etc. Experience welding pipelines from 2” - 52”, pipeline grades X52 - X100, Duplex stainless steels, high temperature fully austenitic stainless steel. Writing, developing, qualifying and executing a range of construction/ repair WPS. As part of my role I am often required to plan, manage, inspect and review welding activities on site. Resource co-ordination of welders, welding equipment and consumables. QA/QC work ensuring client specifications are being adhered to during production welding and qualification. Plant shutdown experience – BG Tunisia Hasdrubal shutdown May 2014 (Welding Engineer). Used and interpreted the following standards: BS 4515, API 1104, Client specifications (BP, BG), NORSOK standards and CSA Z662