Certification for a civil engineer interested in under water inspections.

[cranstonjdc]

I am not sure that this is the right place to post this. I am a civil engineering major that is interested in working in coastal and ocean engineering. I plan to work in areas such as dredging, beach protection, wharf repairs, and other similar areas. I was wondering if there is a special dive cert that would go along with this. Is there a cert that could allow me to do underwater inspections? Will just basic certifications work for this as long as the structure is within depth and skill limits? Thanks for any info.

Jon C

 

[Thalassamania]

Learn everything you can about N.D.T. and then take commercial training.

 

[Crowley]

Depends what your work is requiring you to do - if you are going to be floating about in 10 metres of open water (ie not going inside anything) looking at stuff and taking notes about how many rivets are in a particular underwater pole, then probably recreational training and some diving experience is all you need. Given that you would be, by default, task loading yourself, I would recommend you take yourself as far as Rescue Diver (or agency equivalent) and get a fair few dives under your weightbelt.

There's no cert that I'm aware of in the recreational world that will specifically qualify you to carry out inspections, and I'm not certain that any broad-spectrum training in any form of diving would qualify you to do that - although persons such as Thalassamania above will know a lot more about that than I.

If you're planning on actually participating in underwater construction, or the inspections require hands on work and tool manipulation under water then for sure you will need commercial training. Some of these will require that you hold a professional level certification from the recreational diving world before you commence training. HSE Commercial diving in the UK, for example, requires that you are a PADI Divemaster or equivalent prior to commercial certifications, even though the two fields are often unrelated.

You will of course get better information from prospective employers as to what certifications they would require of their diving inspectors, but hope that helps a bit.

Cheers

C.

 

[muddiver]

In the United States you are expected to have a basic scuba certification to get into a commercial diving school. A PADI Divemaster certification would be a waste of time and money if you are trying to get in with a company like Halcro Engineering, Edison Engineering or the Navy Facilities Engineering Service Center.

If you plan to be a one man show, a scuba certification is probably all you need. Until you try to bid a governmnet project. Then you will be held to the OSHA standards and expected to have commercial diving trained people to do the work.

Because you will never get your professional engineer's license working on your own, you probably need to look at a commercial diving school. Most are a year long, with some exceptions. Ask questions in the Commercial Divers forum.

Also look up some of the civil engineering companies that do that type of work and go ask them as well.