The bridge between
welding & NDT
Code First teaches high-school and post-secondary welders to evaluate their own work against objective acceptance criteria — turning the welding classroom into the front door of the nondestructive-testing workforce.
Every stage a welder crosses on the way to inspection
Self-inspection
Grade your own weld Pass · Marginal · Fail before the teacher looks.
Code literacy
Read AWS D1.1 / D9.1 acceptance criteria and measure to the limit.
Defect recognition
Find the six weld defects — the language of every inspection report.
NDT methods
VT · PT · MT · UT · RT, framed the way inspectors think — surface vs. volumetric.
They leave thinking like the people who sign off on the work
The NDT field needs technicians faster than the pipeline can supply them — and the welding classroom is the largest untapped recruiting pipeline into the profession.
Code before the arc
Students master the spec sheet and acceptance criteria before they ever strike an arc. Code literacy is the foundation under every inspection credential.
A self-inspection habit
Every weld is self-graded against the code before the instructor looks. Students practice the core act of inspection on their own work, every day.
Defect recognition
The six visual defects, plus the subsurface ones RT reveals when coupons are x-rayed. The vocabulary of a real inspection report.
An on-ramp to NDT
The five methods introduced the way inspectors think — surface (VT · PT · MT) versus volumetric (UT · RT) — so students arrive ready for formal NDT training and ASNT Level I.
The front end — where welding students become tomorrow's inspectors
Walk in Monday and run it
Ready to teach
A complete one-day teacher workshop with full presenter notes on every slide.
A real certification pathway
Built on AWS D1.1 / D9.1 and aligned to CWI, NDT, and ASNT Level I routes your students can actually earn.
Classroom tools included
Two laminated station cards — Pre-Weld and Self-Inspection — that turn the method into a daily habit at every booth.
CTE & workforce-ready
Fits high-school and post-secondary CTE goals, taught with real WPS, real codes, and real acceptance criteria.
Measurable, all semester
Within about two weeks students find their own defects; across the term they make hundreds of code-based pass/fail calls.
"Code First doesn't replace NDT training — it creates students who arrive ready to succeed in it."
Created and taught by Richard Johnston and Heather Roussere, CWI · Welding Instructor.