Individual membership
For welders, welding supervisors, welding inspectors, welding engineers and anybody else whose work depends on welds holding. One person, one membership, and the certification discount is designed to be worth more than the fee.
Who it is for
Individual membership is the standard tier. It suits:
- Welders who hold, or want, certification against a standard
- Welding supervisors and leading hands responsible for other people’s welds
- Welding inspectors and QA staff who need the codes at hand
- Welding engineers, metallurgists and consultants
- Trainers and assessors delivering welding qualifications
If you are an apprentice or a full time student, do not pay for this. Student and apprentice membership is free. If your employer wants several people covered, corporate membership is cheaper per head.
What is included
- Certification at the member rate. The discount on assessment and endorsement is the main financial reason to join. It is set so that a single certification saves more than the year’s membership costs.
- The full technical library. The Job Knowledge series and the archive, without the metering that applies to non-members.
- The WeldED bulletin and its archive. Direct subscription, and access to back issues.
- A listing on the public register, if you want one. Opt in, credential information only. What a listing looks like.
- Somebody to ask. A question about a standard, a procedure or a defect gets an answer from somebody who welds. Ask what AWI can help with before you assume it cannot.
- The professional network. Connecting with other people who do this work, which is the part that is hard to quantify and the part long standing members mention first.
What is deliberately not a member benefit: the standards library and checking a certificate. Both stay free to everybody, permanently. Charging industry for the two things a certification body exists to provide would be a strange way to run one.
What it costs
Fees are quoted on application. Ask us for the current schedule and it gives you the annual rate, the three year rate and the certification discount together, so you can check the arithmetic rather than take it on trust. How the fee works.
The test any professional membership should pass: does the discount you get on the thing you were going to buy anyway exceed the fee? If it does not, the membership is a subscription rather than a professional body. AWI sets the certification discount above the individual fee for exactly that reason.
Worked example
If you are getting certified this year
Join first, then apply. The member rate on certification assessment applies immediately, so the membership pays for itself on the first transaction and you are ahead before you have used anything else.
The three step join lets you add certification in the same transaction, which is the simplest way to make sure you never pay the non-member rate by accident.
If you are not getting certified this year
Then judge it on the library, the bulletin and the network, and decide honestly whether those are worth the fee to you. A membership body that pretends every member gets the same value out of it is not being straight with you.
Renewing, and cancelling
Membership renews annually unless you cancel before renewal. A three year term is available and costs less than paying yearly. There is a practical reason to consider the longer term beyond the discount: certification renewal cycles are measured in years, and having membership current at the point your certificate falls due means you renew at the member rate.
Cancelling is a form, not a phone call, and it does not require a conversation with anybody about why.
What AWI holds about you
Your member record lives in the authenticated member portal. It is not published on this website, and there is no public member directory. The only place your name can appear publicly is the register of certified people, only if you opt in, and it carries credential information and nothing else. No date of birth, no address, no phone number, no employer.
The privacy policy sets out the detail, including how to ask for a copy of what AWI holds and how to have it corrected.