Extende Inc. celebrates our 15th anniversary!
On August 8th, 2011, EXTENDE Inc. opened for business in the U.S.A. with the goal of providing excellent support to our CIVA customers in the U.S.A. and Canada. August 8th, 2026, we celebrated our 15th anniversary. The past 15 years have been quite an adventure!
In 2011, our only products were CIVA Ultrasonic Testing (UT), Eddy Current Testing (ET), and Radiographic Testing (RT) modules, and our services were limited to training and simulation-based consulting. Fifteen years later, CIVA has continued to evolve to include additional modules for Computed Tomographic Testing (CT), Guided Wave Testing (GWT), Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), Thermographic Testing (TT), plus Script and Data Science add-ons. Additionally, new CIVA based products have been created including CIVA Education v2 (UT, ET, RT and GWT), CIVA AUT Pipeline, and CIVA UT Analysis. While CIVA software continues to be developed by the CEA, the EXTENDE team works closely with them to provide feedback on what is needed next.
As industry needs change, we adapt to meet them. During COVID, this meant teaching CIVA training on-line for the first time. More recently, it has led to the creation of the CIVA Data Science option to help those developing nondestructive testing (NDT) based AI to train and test their machine-learning algorithms.
Seeing a need for ways to maximize effective training with limited instructor resources, EXTENDE created two training simulators, TraiNDE UT and TraiNDE RT, designed to revolutionize the way hands-on NDT is taught. We were proud to see EXTENDE’s ingenuity awarded the 2024 Nondestructive Testing Management Association (NDTMA) Innovation Award for our TraiNDE RT virtual-reality based radiography training simulator. Realizing the need for user-friendly remote training tools, we developed TraiNDE RT Remote for online hands-on RT training. And a remote access version of TraiNDE UT is currently under development.
In 2018, EXTENDE Inc. moved from upstate New-York to Hampton Roads, Virginia. Just a few years later, Starr Penix joined the team, and we opened our office in Newport News, VA. Very recently, James (Jimmy) Sabin has come on board, tripling the size of the EXTENDE Inc. team since we opened for business!
Giving back to the NDT community in the U.S.A. and Canada is important to us. We support the volunteer efforts of EXTENDE Inc. V.P., Erica Schumacher, as she serves on the board of the Canadian Institute for Nondestructive Evaluation (CINDE) and the board of the Nondestructive Testing Management Association (NDTMA), while EXTENDE Inc. Technical Sales Manager, Starr Penix, volunteers her time on the steering committee for the Defense Working Group in NDT, and is a former Chairperson of the Hampton Roads ASNT chapter.
As the EXTENDE Inc. team grows, so do our opportunities to make a positive impact on the world. When used wisely, our products and consulting services support the needs of the NDT community to optimize inspections, effectively train the next generation of inspectors, and in turn, make the world a safer place.
We thank all of you who have been a part of our journey, and those of you who will be in the future!
The EXTENDE Inc. team.