I am not paid to run the Institute.
This belongs at the top, because the first question worth asking about any certification body is a simple one. Who benefits when it issues a certificate?
My name is Graham Fry. Welder first, welding engineer second, in that order because that is the order it happened in. Thirty odd years from the tools, through supervision, to the engineering side. The thing that still decides whether a job goes right is what happens in the two seconds after the arc strikes. Everything else is arrangements around that moment.
Why the Institute still matters
AWI was formed in Adelaide in 2010 by three state chairmen who had run out of patience with the direction the national body was taking. That account is on the About page, and it is theirs.
What I can speak to is why it still needs to exist, and why I give my time to it.
Australian welding is not short of paperwork. It’s short of a body that measures competence, genuinely has a welders perspective and says so plainly, without also selling the training, running the examination, doing the consulting and shifting the equipment. The moment one organisation does all of that, it raises questions regarding every certificate it issues.
So AWI does one job and declines the others. The Institute defines what a scheme requires. TAFE institutes and training providers deliver the training and run the examinations. AWI assesses the evidence, issues the certificate, and audits that the process held. AWI does not run courses. That’s not a gap in the offering. It is the design, it is how the system use to work.
Three schemes, and they are the ones industry actually asks for. AS 1796 Certificates 1 to 9 for welders. AS 1796 Certificate 10 and AS 2214 for welding supervisors. AS/NZS ISO 3834 and AS/NZS 5131 for fabricators. Each one progressive, so somebody builds on what they already hold instead of starting again.
What gets given away
The knowledge library is free. No login, no form, no member wall.
That was a deliberate decision and it costs the Institute money. Industry bodies are there to share information freely.
Apprentices and full time students pay nothing to be members. The certification discount is waiting for them when they finish their trade.
The register is open. A certificate number and a surname, that is all it takes. An employer doesn’t need to be a member, or pay, or ring up and ask a favour. Printed certificates and PDFs are easy to alter, which is why the certificate itself says the register is the record.
None of those three are revenue. They are the reason the Institute is worth running.
Then there’s my time. Marking exams, sitting on standards committees, taking calls when people have issues in the industry and nowhere else to turn, particularly when they have issues with other industry bodies.
The part most bodies leave out
I run a commercial business.
Technoweld does welding consulting, inspection and training. I also work under my own name as an independent welding engineer, and that work is at grahamfry.com.au. Both are paying activities. AWI is not one of them.
If I do audits on behalf of AWI, AWI is charged less than my standard commercial rate. The difference stays with the Institute, so every audit leaves it better funded.
I’d rather state the interest on a page anyone can read than have somebody find it and wonder what else was not said.
Why bother
Because the alternative is an industry where a welding ticket means whatever the issuer needs it to mean that quarter. I do not like the idea of an industry that is at the mercy of a monopoly, or an industry without a genuine voice of welders.
Graham Fry, Welder | International Welding Engineer. Graham runs the Australian Welding Institute, unpaid. He also works as an independent welding engineer at grahamfry.com.au and is a director of Technoweld. Those are commercial activities, and the interest is declared under AWI’s impartiality policy, AWI-C-POL-003.