TWI Annual Review - July 2008

Environment, health and safety

TWI's health, safety and environmental aims are to avoid harming our people and the environment, and to help our Members reduce negative impacts on the world through new technologies.

Environmental impacts

Our key environmental objectives are to minimise energy and water use, prevent pollution, control waste and encourage recycling. However, TWI's major impact on the environment is not through its own operation, but through its development of novel sustainable technologies and its influence on the industrial operations of its Member companies.

Examples of project work in this area are as follows:

  • Carbon footprinting of manufacturing processes (see description in Technical Achievements)
  • Friction processing of recycled metal swarf
  • Bonding technology developments for hydrogen fuel cells
  • Integrity management of pipelines and storage vessels
  • Nuclear waste encapsulation technology developments
  • Design for easier disassembly at end-of-life
  • Technologies to enable more efficient energy-from-waste plant
  • Near-net shape additive manufacturing techniques
  • Developments in battery technology

Management structure

TWI has well-established management systems to monitor and improve our health, safety and environmental performance. Our Environmental Management System is certified to ISO 14001 and we are committed to gaining external certification to OHSAS 18001 for our Health and Safety Management System within the next three years. Both management systems are the responsibility of the Director, Research and Technology.

Health and safety performance

In 2007 TWI has invested significantly in raising the health and safety skills and awareness of our people. All relevant supervisory staff and senior managers have successfully attended training accredited by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health.

As a consequence of increased awareness, the number of lost days due to work-related injuries has reduced significantly and there is a positive long-term trend.


Research and development activities

Last year was the first year of the 2007 to 2009 Core Research Programme. TWI worked on a wide range of projects, spread across most technologies with progress monitored by the Research Board.

Thirty-four TWI Research Reports were discussed and approved during the Research Board meetings and have been issued to Members or loaded onto JoinIT. CRP expenditure was around £3m including sponsoring and supervising Industrial Case Award and Engineering Doctorate students. There are currently a total of 13 students working in support of TWI technology development, located both at partner universities and at TWI and its regional centres.

TWI remains very active in supporting Members' interests in national and international standards committees (BSI, CEN, ISO, AWS, API and IIW). Expenditure on standardisation activities has been approximately £300k in 2007.

The year 2007 saw TWI continuing the role of managing or supporting four of the UK's Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTNs) on behalf of the Technology Strategy Board. TWI is the lead partner of the Health Technologies KTN, is the Manager of the National Composites Network, part of the Materials KTN and is a partner within the Photonics KTN. Considerable activity was undertaken with many meetings and considerable support to industry in accelerating business innovation.

TWI's contract R&D and consultancy work is delivered via three types of projects:

  • Single Client Projects (SCPs), which are conducted for individual TWI Member companies, are strictly confidential and include both R&D and consultancy work
  • Group Sponsored Projects (GSPs), which involve medium-term R&D work conducted to meet the needs of a number of Member companies
  • Collaborative Projects, which involve participation in medium and long-term R&D and Technology Transfer Projects together with other organisations. These projects are generally supported by UK or European government agencies

The GSP portfolio comprised 21 projects in 2007, with a further ten projects in various stages of launch. GSPs provided 4.2% of TWI's income. Fourteen of these projects were conducted with the aim of improving safety and reliability of welded structures, and seven dealt with the development of novel or improved joining and surfacing technology. GSPs that were started in 2007 include:

  • High-productivity arc and laser welding of titanium and Ti-alloys
  • Design and use of dissimilar joints for subsea applications
  • Sulphide stress cracking and preferential weld corrosion performance of dissimilar welds in risers
  • Assessment of stationary shoulder friction stir welding (SSFSW) for the joining of Ti-alloys
  • Sour corrosion fatigue behaviour of girth welded clad pipe
  • Factors affecting the sour corrosion fatigue behaviour of C-Mn riser welds
  • Exploitation of power beam welding of thick section steel for structural applications
  • Reliability of manually applied phased array ultrasonic inspection for detection and sizing of flaws

TWI was involved in 74 collaborative research and development or Technology Transfer Projects in 2007, with a further 20 approved and in contract negotiation at the end of the year, and 30 in various stages of submission. Collaborative projects provided 22% of TWI's income in 2007. Thirty-five projects were part-funded by the European Commission and 39 by UK Government (national and regional). Collaborative projects which started in 2007 include:

  • Flexible and near-net-shaped generative manufacturing chains and repair techniques for complex shaped aeroengine parts (FANTASIA)
  • Advanced manufacturing in Yorkshire (ADMAN)
  • E-learning for composite repair
  • Direct additive manufacture of safety critical primary structure (DAMASCUS)
  • NDT of ageing aircraft wiring (AWARE)
  • Wireless electricity management systems (LESSTRICITY)
  • Technology transfer to Welsh Industry (Joining Forces Wales 2)
  • Northwest nuclear supply chain support project

Industrial Membership

In 2007, 105 new Member companies joined TWI, providing an additional income of £832k. With resignations in 2007 also at a very low level, membership grew by £562k in the year, representing a growth of 12%. New Members were recruited from 22 different countries; non-UK Members provided 56% of the new recruitment income in 2007 and 14% of the new income came from the USA.

New membership income in 2007 was particularly strong in oil, gas and chemical, construction and engineering, aerospace, electronics and sensors and equipment, consumables and materials sectors. Members' satisfaction with the services provided remains at a high level and TWI's electronic knowledge resource, JoinIT, continues to grow with a total of 2.8m visits (equivalent to approximately 7,700 per day) being recorded during 2007, a 22% increase compared with 2006.

The TWI Technology Groups and their Managers, are as follows:

Advanced Materials and Processes Roger Wise
Electron Beam, Friction and Forge Processes (Cambridge and South Yorkshire) Ian Norris
Industrial Member Services Fred Delany
Laser and Sheet Processes (Cambridge and South Yorkshire) Rob Scudamore
Manufacturing Support and Arc Processes Chris Peters
Metallurgy, Corrosion and Surfacing Paul Woollin
Non-destructive Testing (Cambridge and South Wales) Aamir Khalid
Structural Integrity Geoff Booth

Significant changes in 2007 were the appointment of Rob Scudamore as Technology Group Manager for Laser and Sheet Processes and Geoff Booth transferring into the Structural Integrity management position with the departure of Julian Speck who joined a Member company.

These groups link with the Industry Sectors, Group and European Programmes, and Marketing and Promotion teams responsible for business development.

Aerospace Iain Smith
Automotive John Kell
Construction and Engineering Graham Wylde
Electronics, Sensors and Medical Norman Stockham
Equipment, Consumables and Materials Chris Peters
Group and European Programmes Peter Oakley
Marketing and Promotion Michelle Lamprecht
Oil, Gas and Chemicals Reza Razmjoo
Power Brian Cane

This technology/sales matrix is supported by the teams in Business Systems and IT, Commercial Group, Purchasing, Finance, Quality, Health, Safety and Environment, Human Resources and Site Services.


Innovation, patents and licensing

Continuing development and innovation is vital for TWI's long-term prosperity and reputation. Support for ideas generation and funding of exploratory projects are provided, and stagegate processes are used to manage distinct inventions and intellectual property exploitation. TWI is actively exploiting 13 distinct innovations and has 137 granted patents on its books, with a further 53 patent applications being pursued. Registered trademarks relating to nine innovations were in place in 2007. The licence income approached £1.5m in 2007 and grew by 10% compared with 2006.

All licence royalties are re-invested in TWI for the benefit of the membership as a whole and these fund the development of new ideas. In addition to the direct monetary benefits, the associated income arising from TWI's innovation portfolio, including new Members and contract work, is at least five times the licence income.

An internal research committee encourages, monitors and directs TWI's invention and innovation activities. Once an innovation is thought to be worthy of protection, a formal stagegate procedure is employed to ensure structured exploitation.

TWI is active in the field of Open Innovation with other RTOs and TWI Members. This is a procedure whereby organisations work together to find the best routes to the exploitation of an idea without being overly concerned about where the idea originated. Work includes building trust and underlying commercial arrangements with potential collaborators, understanding the key needs of particular clients and developing intellectual property assets to meet these needs.

Training & examinations

Continued growth in TWI's training and examination business enabled TWI to train more than 12000 candidates in over 60 countries during the year. TWI is by far the largest and most influential organisation in the fields of welding and inspection.

Further expansion took place in the Middle East and other territories and the opening of new facilities in several other countries are planned.

There has been substantial investment in new and leading edge equipment and high calibre new staff continue to be recruited to support this expansion.

A range of new courses and certification schemes have been introduced during the year designed to maintain TWI's position as the world leader in its field.

Key elements of TWI's training and examination business expansion include the following areas of activity:

  • New courses across a wide range of subject areas
  • Substantial investment in new equipment
  • Improved course notes and learning materials
  • New market development across the world
  • Further opening of a number of TWI training centres in various countries
  • Improved delivery capability through staff development
  • Key account development with major international industrial groups
  • New course development and upgrades in traditional services
  • Strong expansion in Advanced Inspection training and services
  • Introduction of a package of Health, Safety and Environmental courses
  • Partnerships with certification and regulatory bodies

Software

  • TWI's welding software suite has been updated with an improved Welding Coordinator and Weldspec and Welderqual updated to the ASME IX:2007 standard.
  • Development of Teletest Focus software to increase productivity and ease of use in multimode tests cutting inspection times significantly.
  • Welding Coordinator has been sold extensively to international corporations and has been tuned for corporate use across wide area networks.
  • ENGFit has been extended to include more assessment methods and has had the user interface improved to make it more useful in fitness-for-service assessments.
  • CRACKWISE has been expanded to give a weight function option to calculate stress intensity factor for a crack loaded by a non-uniform stress distribution.
  • RISKWISE for Boilers Version 4.1 has been released with new practical features to improve consistency, user-friendliness and speeding up the RBI process.

Technology transfer

Technology Transfer had a strong year with successful delivery of projects in the North East, Yorkshire and Wales.

In addition, significant new projects were developed and won, in particular in the North West with a Nuclear Decommissioning Supply Chain support programme to SMEs.

Developments in Scotland for Technology Transfer support projects progressed well with a new project to start in 2008.

JoinIT enjoyed continued growth in registrations and usage with a revamp of the site and search capability completed in the year.

Overseas development feasibility studies within the expanded EU have begun with initial studies and visits to Poland.

Plant Integrity

In 2007 Plant Integrity showed significant growth with sales of the new Teletest Focus product. Widely recognised as the most advanced guided-wave inspection system on the market, it is the only product that has advanced features such as focusing, multimode and Report Manager Generator. This user-friendly system provides rapid 100% volume screening of pipelines and providing the benefits of improved inspection and analysis of inaccessible pipelines.

Further products are expected to be launched in 2008 including permanently installed tools, marinised equipment and additional software utilities.


The Test House

The Test House has continued to grow its marine metallurgical service and consultancy work, and the high spot in 2007 was a joint instruction from the Flag State accident investigators and owners in respect of the MSC Napoli beaching which occurred off the South Coast of England in January.

The year saw positive, above inflation growth in the external UKAS accredited mechanical testing business, and for much of the second half of the year this part of the business was trading above its budgeted capacity.

Further productivity gains have been achieved by the introduction of dedicated CNC specimen manufacture, and a further investment has been made to widen the scope of routine CNC sample manufacturing.

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