Mon, 28 September, 2020
Badrul was passionate about engineering and, knowing the demand in Malaysian industry, he chose to study mechanical engineering at the Melaka Polytechnic Institute.
During his last year of studies at university, his lecturer recommended students to consider getting an API certificate in order to enhance their entry to the job market. Badrul landed his first job as an assistant integrity engineer where he was exposed to risk based inspection of pipelines. However, he didn’t find this job to be the best fit for his limited industrial experience and decided to shift to a role where he could get involved with more hands-on procedures and gain more practical expertise. After around one year, he found an opportunity in quality control inspection and moved to Johor Bahru to start his new career path. Landing on this job, he realised that, in order to perform his tasks, he needed to hold BGAS-CSWIP painting inspection and site coating inspection certificates. Five years of working in Johor for various companies allowed Badrul to specialise in painting inspection.
In 2011, when his last contract was over, he returned to Melaka and started looking for jobs and this was when he was informed that TWI was looking for a suitable candidate who could deliver painting inspection courses. He knew that he was the perfect fit for this position because of his years of working as a painting inspector and that was how he started his lecturing career at TWI Malaysia in 2012.
He found the change of environment from the industrial site to classroom a challenge to hurdle. However, he has found that working as a lecturer at TWI has given him access to endless sources of information and also got him exposed to a different side of the inspection world. Teaching has become a great avenue for him to enhance his knowledge and build up greater confidence to transfer his knowledge to his students.
Badrul explained, “Although most candidates who attend the course come with industrial experience, they usually don’t have any knowledge of the correct standard procedures that should be practiced in order to do the job properly. Being a lecturer, I get the chance to teach students the correct way of doing things and, when a candidate tells me that what they have learnt is going to save them a lot of time and cost, I feel that my mission as a lecturer is accomplished.”
Badrul delivers BGAS-CSWIP painting inspector as well as site coating inspector courses and, since 2018, he has been teaching CSWIP visual welding inspector training and, once the protective coating inspector PCI course is introduced to the market, he will be adding that to the range of the courses that he delivers.
In 2019, Badrul went to TWI’s headquarters in Cambridge, UK to get trained and certified for CSWIP plastic welding training. Once TWI Malaysia is ready to launch this training course in the SEA region, Badrul will deliver the training to the local market.