Qualified Radiation Protection Expert Licence in Qatar
October 9, 2026
12 min read
DITEC Experts, Radiation Protection Team, ALDuha Institute for Training and Environmental Consulting
The entry that licenses an opinion rather than an operation
One point before anything else. Meeting the conditions in the Decision is what you can prepare for. Whether a licence is granted, and when, is a decision of the competent authority alone, and nothing in this explanation and nothing in any course is a commitment that a licence will be granted or that it will be granted within a given period. What this article does is set out the condition as the instrument states it and point to the training that bears on it.
The industrial entries transcribed in this explanation each license somebody to do something to a source or to supervise its being done: to supervise a plant, to work in the field, to carry a package, to open a housing, to supervise research devices. Item 11 licenses somebody to say something about sources instead. The qualified expert in radiation protection is the person a facility turns to when the question is not what to do next but whether what it is doing is right: whether the shielding calculation holds, whether the dose assessment was made on the correct assumptions, whether a change in the practice has changed the risk, whether what the facility is about to tell the regulator is defensible.
That difference in the nature of the role shows directly in the way the entry is written, and it is the reason this page exists. The entry names no course by name. It names no centre the course is to come from. It names no examination to be passed. What it names instead is an academic degree at a stated level in a described kind of speciality, a total duration of participation in radiation protection courses, and, on one of its two routes, a period of practical experience in the field. It is, in other words, written as a condition about the formation of a person rather than about a certificate he carries.
The entry is also written in two routes separated by one word, and the two routes are not two ways of writing the same requirement. One of them contains an experience condition and the other, as the entry stands, does not. That is the single most consequential feature of item 11 and it is set out carefully below, with what we do and do not say about it.
One point of orientation before the conditions themselves: they are in the schedule attached to the Decision rather than in the body of it. The preamble records that it was issued having regard to the Executive Regulation and in particular to Article 25 of it, and on the recommendation of the Radiation Protection Committee, and the issuing article does one thing only: the conditions for licences to work in the fields of radiation work, attached to this Decision, shall apply. So a reader who opens the Decision and reads the article that issues it finds a referral and no conditions.
The masters route: three conditions
Item 11 opens with the formula the following conditions must be present in the person who is granted a licence to work as a qualified expert in radiation protection. The formula attaches the conditions to a person and not to an employer and requires them cumulatively. A company does not hold an expert licence; a person does.
Then come three conditions. The academic condition is that he hold the second university degree, the masters, in a speciality that suits the nature of the work, such as engineering and physics with its branches, at minimum. The course condition is that he have taken part in radiation protection courses totalling not less than three months. And the experience condition is that he have practical experience in the field of radiation protection of not less than five years, followed by the word or and a colon — that closing word being the hinge onto the second route.
The academic condition is worth reading in three pieces, because each piece does different work. It names a level: the second university degree, with the word masters in brackets after it. It describes the speciality twice over, first by a test and then by example: the speciality is to be one that suits the nature of the work, and then two fields are named with the Arabic particle of likeness, engineering and physics with its branches. And it closes with the phrase at minimum. Whether the two named fields are the whole of what the condition admits, or examples of what suits the nature of the work, the entry does not say, and we do not say either; that the condition carries both a test and an example is a feature of its wording that we record.
The course condition is the one that looks familiar and is not. In the five entries this series read in the previous batch the course condition named a course and, except for the maintenance course in item 16, described where it was to come from. Here it names participation, in courses in the plural, measured by a total of three months, with no provider described and no subject beyond radiation protection. What that difference amounts to is set out in full in the note on three wordings further down this page, and the practical note on totals is set out next to it.
A note on what a total of months is and is not. The condition on each route of the two entries read here is stated as participation in radiation protection courses whose total is not less than a stated period, three months on one route and one month on the other. Four things follow from the wording and we state no more than them. It is stated as a total, so the wording speaks of courses in the plural rather than of a single sitting. It is stated as a duration, so the wording speaks of time rather than of a syllabus or an examination. It names its subject as radiation protection and names no speciality within it. And it says nothing about where the courses are to come from, nothing about how the period is to be counted in days or hours, and nothing about how old a course may be. We supply none of those, because an instrument that has not said is not an instrument we may speak for. The practical consequence is a filing habit rather than a reading: keep a running record of every radiation protection course a candidate attends, with the provider, the dates, the contact hours and the certificate, from the first one, because a total cannot be reconstructed years later from memory, and put the counting question itself to the Ministry.
The experience condition is tied to a field by name: it is to be practical experience in the field of radiation protection, and the period is not less than five years. That is the longest period on this route, and the tying is to the field of protection itself rather than to a kind of facility or to a kind of source. A person whose five years were spent operating sources competently, and who was never the person asked whether the operation was right, is a person whose record has to be read against those words rather than against a job title.
The doctorate route, and the condition that is not in it
The second route of item 11 contains two conditions and that is all it contains. The academic condition is that he hold the third university degree, the doctorate, in a speciality that suits the nature of the work, such as the nuclear or radiation sciences. The course condition is that he have taken part in radiation protection courses totalling not less than one month.
Three differences from the first route are on the face of the wording. The level is the third university degree rather than the second. The fields named after the particle of likeness are different: nuclear or radiation sciences here, where the first route names engineering and physics with its branches. And the phrase at minimum is in the first route and is not in this one. We record each of the three and we read no rule into any of them, because a difference in wording between two routes is a thing a reader may observe and not a thing he may interpret on behalf of the instrument.
And then the difference that matters most: the second route of item 11, as the entry stands, contains no experience condition. The first route names five years in the field of radiation protection. The second route names a degree and a total of one month of courses, and it stops. That is a comparison of transcribed wording against transcribed wording in the same entry, which is the firmest kind of statement this series makes.
What we will not do is turn that observation into a rule. We do not say the entry treats a doctorate as standing in place of experience, because that is a reason we would be supplying for a provision that gives none. We do not say that the second route is the easier of the two, because easier is an ordering and the entry does not order its routes. And we do not say that a person on the second route needs no experience, because that is a statement about the grant of a licence and the grant is not ours to describe. What we say is the wording: the first route contains an experience condition and the second does not contain one.
One consequence of the absence is worth stating because it is practical rather than interpretive. The provision in the third part of the schedule that allows a trainee licence operates as an exception to the experience condition. On the first route of item 11 there is an experience condition for it to reach. On the second route, as the entry stands, there is no experience condition in the entry, so the question of what that provision reaches here is one for the Ministry rather than one a reader may settle by subtraction.
A note on a condition that is absent, and it is the place on this page where a reader is most likely to take more from the text than it carries. The prescribed medical examination appears as a condition of its own in items 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 as transcribed in this explanation. It does not appear in item 11 or in item 12, on either route of either entry. That is the whole of what we record. We do not call it an exemption, because an exemption is something an instrument grants and these entries say nothing. We do not say the examination is not required of a person seeking one of these two licences, because an entry that is silent has not spoken and the Law, the Regulation and the conditions of a given licence are not in front of us on this page. And we do not say the absence was intended, because intention is not something a reader may attribute to an instrument. The transcription note in our source file records that the doctorate route of these entries does not mention the examination and that the text is so in the original, so this is not an artefact of our copy. If your own case turns on it, that is precisely the question to put to the Ministry, quoting the entry in full and asking whether the examination is required.
The two routes set side by side
The table sets the two routes of item 11 against each other. It is a reading of that item, quoted in full on the Arabic version of this article, and nothing is added to it. The rows are to be read across rather than down: the useful fact is not that one route asks for more but that the two ask for different things, at a different academic level, in differently named fields, with a different total of courses, and with an experience condition in one and not in the other. We do not rank them.
The two routes of item 11
| Condition | Masters route | Doctorate route |
|---|---|---|
| Academic level | The second university degree, masters in brackets | The third university degree, doctorate in brackets |
| How the speciality is described | A speciality that suits the nature of the work, then two fields named with the particle of likeness: engineering and physics with its branches | A speciality that suits the nature of the work, then nuclear or radiation sciences named with the particle of likeness |
| The phrase at minimum | Appears | Does not appear |
| The verb used of courses | Has taken part, not has passed | Has taken part, not has passed |
| Total of courses | Radiation protection courses totalling not less than three months | Radiation protection courses totalling not less than one month |
| Source of the courses | The route says nothing about it | The route says nothing about it |
| Experience | Practical experience in the field of radiation protection of not less than five years | No experience condition in this route |
| Prescribed medical examination | Does not appear in the entry | Does not appear in the entry |
| Conditions in the route | Three | Two |
What to settle before a file is assembled
The condition is one thing and the file that demonstrates it is another. Below is the order we use when a client asks us to look at an expert appointment before it is submitted. It is the Institute's own working practice, and the items set out in this explanation impose no form of file.
Preparing a qualified expert file
Settle which route the candidate is on before anything is collected
- The two routes name different academic levels, different fields after the particle of likeness, different totals of courses, and an experience condition in one and not in the other. So the route decides which documents matter, and collecting first means collecting against a guess.
- Where a candidate holds both degrees, which route a file is presented on is a choice with consequences, and it is a choice to make deliberately rather than by whichever certificate came to hand first.
Build the course total as a running record from the first course
- The condition on each route is a total of a stated number of months of participation in radiation protection courses. A total is an accumulation, so it is recorded as it accumulates: provider, dates, contact hours, certificate, for every course, from the first.
- The entry says nothing about how the period is counted and nothing about where the courses come from, so the counting question and the provider question both go to the Ministry rather than into an assumption.
Document five years against the words of the condition, not against a title
- On the masters route the condition is practical experience in the field of radiation protection of not less than five years. So the record states the dates, the employer, that the experience was practical, and separately and specifically what the work in radiation protection consisted of.
- Operating sources and advising on protection are not the same record, and a file that evidences the first against a condition naming the second is a file that reads as complete and is not.
Ask about the absent conditions rather than filling them in
- The entry contains no prescribed medical examination condition and the doctorate route contains no experience condition. An absence is not a permission and it is not a prohibition, so where your case turns on either, the question goes to the Ministry quoting the entry in full.
Questions we are asked about this item
Does a doctorate really remove the five years of experience?
What the entry shows is that its first route contains an experience condition of not less than five years in the field of radiation protection and its second route, as the entry stands, contains no experience condition. We state that and we stop there. We do not say the entry treats the degree as standing in place of experience, because it gives no reason and we may not supply one, and we do not say what the competent authority will require of a particular applicant, because the grant of a licence is not ours to describe. If your candidate is being presented on the doctorate route, quote the route in full in the enquiry and ask what evidence of experience, if any, is expected.
My masters is in chemical engineering. Is that inside the academic condition?
The condition on the masters route describes the speciality twice: it is to be one that suits the nature of the work, and then two fields are named with the Arabic particle of likeness, engineering and physics with its branches. The entry does not say whether those two named fields are the whole of what it admits or examples of what suits the nature of the work, so we will not tell you that your degree is inside the condition and we will not tell you that it is outside it. That is a question for the Ministry, and it is worth asking with the degree named and the condition quoted in full before a file is built on either reading. The doctorate route names different fields again, which is a reason to ask about the route you are actually on.
Can I add up short courses from several providers to reach three months?
The condition is written as participation in courses in the plural whose total is not less than three months, which is why we describe it as a total rather than as a course. Beyond that the entry is silent on three things your question depends on: it says nothing about where the courses are to come from, nothing about how the period is to be counted in days or in hours, and nothing about how recent a course may be. We do not fill any of those in. The practical course is to keep the full record of every course from the first one, with provider, dates, contact hours and certificate, and to put the counting question itself to the Ministry with that record attached.
Our consultant is licensed abroad as a qualified expert. Does that carry over?
The entry sets conditions that must be present in the person who is granted the licence, and it names an academic degree, a total of radiation protection courses and, on one route, a period of practical experience. It says nothing about a licence held elsewhere and nothing about recognition of one, so the items read here do not answer your question and we will not answer it for the Ministry. Present the person against the conditions of the route he would be on, with the degree, the course record and the experience record, and ask separately whether an existing licence from another jurisdiction bears on the application at all.
Is the medical examination required for this licence or not?
The condition requiring the prescribed medical examination appears in items 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 as transcribed in this explanation, and it does not appear in item 11 on either route. That is what we can show you, and it is all we will say. We do not call the absence an exemption, because an exemption is granted and this entry says nothing; and we do not tell you the examination is not required, because the Law, the Regulation and the conditions of a given licence are not on this page. Quote the entry in full, note that the condition does not appear in it, and ask the Ministry whether the examination is expected.
A technical note: the licence is not the protection
A technical note, and it is the most important passage on this page. The conditions in this Decision are licensing conditions, not site work instructions. Meeting them, and any licence that may follow, replaces nothing in operational protection, and no course makes anyone safe by itself. One rule governs every judgement about where a source is and what is coming off it: it is settled by measurement, never by inference.
The measurement is made by the licensee, through a person qualified to make it, with an instrument within its calibration validity and response-checked before work starts, and the instrument has to respond to the radiation actually present and at the energies present. A meter calibrated on the energies of a gamma source may read far below the truth at the much lower photon energies in a diffraction or fluorescence instrument, or not respond at all. An alpha emitter is not reliably detected by a gamma probe or a beta probe. Where neutron-emitting material may be present, or a beam energy high enough to produce neutrons, a gamma-only meter can read clean beside an unshielded source. And intake, by inhalation or by ingestion, is not something a surface monitor shows at all, so it sits with the air sampling and internal-dose arrangements of the licensee.
What does not count is an inference. Not a mechanical indicator, not a position switch, not a painted mark, not a label on a container, and not the fact that the work went as planned. And for an electrically generated source the rule is not softened but changed. A tube with the supply cut reads clean and establishes nothing about the next minute. What makes the device safe to work on is that the means of switching it on has been taken out of service and kept under the control of the person doing the work. These are obligations on the licensee under the Law, the Regulation and the conditions of his own licence, and their place is not this Decision.
This entry licenses the person others will rely on for that judgement, which is why two things about the role belong here. The first is that holding the licence does not make the holder right. An expert opinion on a shielding calculation, a dose assessment or a change in a practice is only as good as the assumptions it was built on and the measurements that fed it. The person asking for the opinion is entitled to see both.
The second is that an expert opinion is dated the day it is written. A facility that changes a source, a device, a working position, a shielding arrangement or the people who do the work has changed the thing the opinion was about. So the useful practice is that an opinion records the configuration it assumed, in terms specific enough that a reader can tell whether the configuration in front of him is still that one.
One consequence follows and it is practical rather than regulatory. The expert whose opinion is sought by the party whose work it would stop is being asked for a judgement in which the person asking has a visible interest; and the same stands in reverse where the expert is employed in, or heads, the department whose practice is the subject, so that the opinion is a judgement on his own work. That is not a condition in the item. It is managed by writing down, before the first disagreement rather than after it, who may act on an opinion and who may set it aside, and by keeping the opinion and the measurements it rests on in the record together.
How the Institute can help
Two findings recur on expert files. The first is a file presented on one route and documented against the other: a candidate on the doctorate route whose paperwork is an experience dossier, or a candidate on the masters route whose five years are evidenced by a job title rather than by what the work in radiation protection consisted of. The second is a course record that begins in the year the appointment was proposed, against a condition stated as a total of months, which leaves the earlier courses unevidenced because nobody kept the certificates.
The Institute delivers radiation protection training, reviews a candidate against item 11 route by route and condition by condition, builds and maintains the running course record a total of months is evidenced from. It drafts the enquiry to the Ministry on whether a named degree falls inside the academic condition of a given route, on how the total of courses is counted and on whether the prescribed medical examination is expected where the entry does not name it, and advises on the records that let five years in the field of radiation protection be read as the condition words it. A word on the limits of what the Institute issues. The entries read here name no particular course, so neither a course nor a certificate is offered on this page as answering their condition, and the Institute does not state that any programme of its own satisfies a condition that names a total of months. What the Institute delivers is radiation protection training; what a given certificate or a given set of courses does against a given condition is for the Ministry to say, and the Institute does not issue academic degrees of any level, which is the other half of every route in these two entries.
Scope of what the Institute does: training and consulting. Field radiation surveys are carried out through specialist partners. The Institute does not carry out laboratory analysis, instrument calibration or equipment testing.
A note on three wordings of the course condition, and it is the single most useful distinction in this batch. The items transcribed in this explanation do not state the course condition in one way. Item 13, in both its limbs, and item 14 require that he pass a radiation protection officer course in industrial applications from an approved centre. Items 15, 16 and 17 require a training course in radiation protection in industrial applications from an approved centre, item 15 writing it with an additional phrase rendered here as in the field of. And items 11 and 12, the two industrial entries this batch reads, require something written differently again: that he have taken part in radiation protection courses totalling not less than three months on one route and that he have taken part in radiation protection courses totalling not less than one month on the other. The third wording is not a narrower or a wider version of the first two. It is a different kind of condition: it speaks of having taken part rather than of passing, it speaks of courses in the plural with a total duration rather than of one named course, and it names no subject beyond radiation protection. We record the three wordings and we do not resolve them: we do not say that a certificate answering one answers another, we do not place them in an order, and we do not say what any particular certificate does against any particular condition, because the items do not say. What follows practically is narrow and worth acting on: read which wording your own entry uses, and put the question of whether a particular certificate or a particular set of courses satisfies it to the Ministry in the words of the item, in writing, before a course is paid for.
A note on the source of the courses in these two entries. Items 13, 14, 15 and 17, as transcribed in this explanation, describe the centre a course is to come from with an Arabic word this explanation renders as approved, and item 16 carries that description on one of its two courses and not on the other. Items 11 and 12 carry no such description at all: the course condition on each of their routes names the courses and says nothing about where they are to come from. Silence in an instrument is neither a permission nor a prohibition, so we record it and we read it neither way. In particular we do not say that the absence of the description means any provider will do, and we do not say that the description is to be read into the entry from its neighbours. Our practical reading is to name the courses and their providers in the enquiry and to ask in the words of the item, because what the instrument leaves open the competent authority settles. The English word is a rendering chosen for this explanation and is not a term of art. The Institute is a licensed training provider and describes itself that way and no other way.
A note on the authority. The transcribed preamble of the Decision refers to the Executive Regulation issued by decision of the President of the Supreme Council for the Environment and Natural Reserves, number 4 of 2003, and it does not state who issued Decision 4 of 2007. So this explanation does not say that body issued it, and its name appears nowhere in this explanation outside a verbatim quotation but in this note. The authority addressed today is the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, and the unit concerned is named in the organisational decisions as the Radiation Protection Department; that is an administrative statement about who is addressed now and it is not offered as a reading of the Decision. In the Institute's own advice the authority is written as the Ministry.
This explanation is published for awareness by the radiation protection team at ALDuha Institute for Training and Environmental Consulting. The English text is an explanation, not an official translation: the Arabic text published in the Official Gazette governs in case of any difference, and the official Arabic wording of every condition discussed here is quoted in full on the Arabic version of this article. This explanation is introductory. It is not a legal opinion, it does not replace the conditions of your own licence, and it does not replace review by the regulator. Last updated 9 October 2026.