Meet the Lecturer: Konstantinos Chronopoulos

Konstantinos Chronopoulos is a senior NDT lecturer at TWI, where he is responsible for delivering and invigilating conventional and advanced NDT course and examinations. He also works on developing NDT course material and eLearning courses for TWI.

He holds a BEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering and Design as well as an MSc in Structural Integrity (Reliability Engineering) and has been working in engineering for around ten years; with the last four spent lecturing.

Konstantinos began his career working as support personnel in an NDT laboratory before gaining some field experience and working as an NDT site manager and assistant project manager for large projects in France, Slovenia and Greece.

This experience saw Konstantinos become a QA/QC manager at the NDT laboratory as he began his BEng studies and moved to an NDT training centre, where he began lecturing. After a few years, in April 2019, he had the opportunity to join TWI’s team of lecturers.

This was not Konstantinos’ first encounter with TWI, as he had undertaken ToFD training with us in 2014, but, as he explained, “TWI is one of the worldwide leaders in the welding industry; being a member of an organisation like TWI is a career milestone from a technical and professional perspective.” He added, “Getting into the TWI family became one of my professional targets.”

Speaking on his interest in NDT, Konstantinos explained it was about being able to use engineering knowledge to improve safety, noting, “NDT is deeply related with quality in critical constructions. Therefore, improved quality makes our world a safer place to be.”

As for those who wish to start a career in NDT, Konstantinos notes that it is a broad field with different disciplines, methods and techniques. Some of these have existed as they are for many years, while others are constantly evolving, making it easy to find something to suit your taste. NDT is worldwide, with the same codes and standards being applied around the globe. This makes NDT a very versatile career, with high levels of employability that is suitable for different professional profiles, which can lead to great professional development.

NDT is closely related to welding as it is frequently used to assess weldments to ensure they meet the required standards. This provides common ground for those wishing to move between welding, welding inspection and NDT.

Of course, TWI Training, like all organisations have had to face challenges in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, with Konstantinos explaining, “With the right measures in place, we managed to only have to cease our operations for a short period of time. The measures included, but were not limited to, smaller number of candidates in the in-classroom training sessions, compulsory wearing of face masks on our premises, one-way corridor systems, risk assessments, and the use of COVID-19 PPE and hand sanitisers.”

Konstantinos clearly enjoys his role as a lecturer, as he revealed, “The ultimate gratification is when a lecturer sees their candidates gain knowledge and skills,” adding, “This is something that I really like; passing knowledge to people that are willing to learn.”

This is borne out by feedback from students who have been trained by Konstantinos, with one recently saying:

'Costas was extremely helpful and knowledgeable for this course. Clearly having an impressive background and experience with UT which lead to a greatly structured course and day to day lessons. I would highly recommend anyone looking to study UT to do so at TWI. His attitude and his approach to learning made the course a pleasure.'

And another: “Great lecturer, very helpful”

As he continues to deliver courses under the strict safety measures in place at TWI, Konstantinos is already looking to the future with the development of new eLearning packages for conventional ultrasonic testing and phased array ultrasonic testing, with both due for release at the end of 2021.

Find out more about TWI's NDT Conventional and Advanced NDT training programmes.