Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?

[DouglassT]

Hi Everyone!

New member here, but I hope to add some value or at least ask good questions.

I'm really curious about pipeline safety and what pipeline engineers think and do about it.

Specifically I'm thinking:

What, in your opinion, is the biggest safety threat on most pipelines?

How do you balance the cost of safety programs with the perceived value of the service?

How does your company handle safety? Is it is priority or just a "cost of doing business"?

Does the priority for safety vary by the size of a company or is there another commonality between companies who value safety more/less?

These are just a few ideas, but please share anything you feel is important to the topic!

Tim

 

[DSB123]

The thought that some incompetent individual whom has gained the position of "Engineer" and has approved a design by some other "beginner". The Company I am working at does not exercise appropriate competency assessment of Contract personnel and we have a few Senior Piping Engineers whom are approvijng calculations and stress calculations but have never performed a stress calculation in their lives. Scary or what!!!!!

 

[DouglassT]

Thanks for your reply DSB!

GREAT COMMENT and so true!!! So to follow up on your greatest fear of a lack of oversight on contracted engineers I have one question:

What can/should be done to mitigate the risk in your opinion?

 

[Duwe6]

IMHO, biggest safety issue is the 'old stuff'. Just because it has given good service for 5 decades, will it last another year? Proper Inspections of unpiggable lines are quite expensive, so a line that has not leaked gets left to quietly corrode in place, with its partial-penetration furnace welded longitudinal seam getting ready to burst after another couple of dozen mils of metal are lost. And it tends to be a waste of breath trying to convince the bean-counters that the risk of a blowout isn't worth the $$ savings of benign neglect.

At the end of the decade, good inspections save money. Looked at quarter by quarter, they are quite expensive.

 

[DouglassT]

Thanks for your feedback DUVE6! 3 questions:

1. Can you define a "good" inspection? What does it have that the typical inspection doesn't?

2. Also any tips for working with the "bean-counters" to help them to understand the value of an inspection?

3. What is the average cost of an inspection of an upigable line?

 

[SNORGY]

Where I come from, by far the biggest safety concern that I see time and time again is Clients who instruct Engineering Contractors to just "Get the pipe on order and put it in the ground, you don't need a geotechnical report or stress analysis, we've built hundreds of these, we know what we're doing, so what's your problem? And by the way, we want you to professionally endorse these typical installation details so we can use the same drawings anywhere...gosh you guys are idiots, we even bough the pipe for you...", and - more frightening - Clients that are able to successfully get Engineering Contractors to obey them following precisely those terms of engagement.

Not that I am in any way bitter.

 

[zdas04]

NEVER revisiting the original design. I saw an HDPE pipe last month that had used a hydraulic design basis of 8 years to get the MAWP up where they needed it. The pipe was installed 20 years ago. If you change the hydraulic design basis to 30 years the MAWP has been exceeded every day for the last 20 years. How much safety factor was built into the original calcs? More than 2 since it hasn't failed yet. But how much more than 2? No one will know until the pipe fails.

I see corrosion allowances cut and cut by shortening the expected pipeline life and then exceeding that shortened life by decades without anyone even aware of what design life of the system was specified in the original design.

I regularly see competent designs that have elements that require they be revisited periodically, and I find that those future analysis are just not done.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[cvg]

1. Can you define a "good" inspection? What does it have that the typical inspection doesn't? It should include a pre-inspection report that includes a full review of the design, especially in light of current codes, regulations and standards

2. Also any tips for working with the "bean-counters" to help them to understand the value of an inspection? conduct a risk assessment and invite them to participate...

 

[BillPSU]

How about have the bean counters build their personal house next to the pipeline right of way. There shouldn't be any problems.

Bill

 

[BigInch]

I'd say that doesn't only apply to contracted engineers.

The two biggest problems, this according to PHMSA statistics, are
1) Failure of pipeline instrument & controls, the #1 cause of gas pipeline leaks, releases and "incidents", and
2) Third party damage to pipeline facilities, the #1 cause of the greatest losses to life and property. and #3,
3) Searching the code for keywords, rather than reading and understanding it from cover to cover. and #4
4) Copying and pasting from irrelevant previous designs. Now pasting from offshore to onshore, because nobody has any onshore experience these days. and 5
5) Copying and pasting from previous designs without understanding why something was included, or designed in some particular manner for a particular reason, which actually does not have any bearing on the present task.

Fortunately safety factors and the fact that full design loads are ever achieved cover the most serious errors of 3,4 & 5, but lately that is not only a symptom of engineers. It seems that everybody, from railroad operators to real estate agents are too busy Facebooking and iPodding to approach having any degree of competence in their real jobs. Most can hardly walk down the sidewalk without bumping into me. iPod Zombies! I need to invent an APP that warns them when they're about to crash into me.

I hate Windowz 8!!!!

 

[DouglassT]

Snorgy...Why is the customer so easily able to influence contractors to cut corners like that? What points of pressure are they about to use to "bully" a pipeline engineer into such a position?

Also, what weapons do independent pipeline engineers have at their disposal to fight back when there is a legitimate concern about safety?

 

[DouglassT]

Hi David,

Thanks for contributing! So who is responsible for oversight in these cases? Is this a case of corporations taking advantage of overworked regulators or is the project lead looking the other way due to pressure described by Snorgy or worse, incompetent?

 

[DouglassT]

Thanks for clarifying CVG!

If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that many inspections completely skip an evaluation of the design and whether it meets current safety codes?!?! That's surprising!

Also, most inspections are focused on just "signing off" on the fact that the existing structure is free of immediate danger? Is that what I'm understanding?

 

[DouglassT]

Hey Bill! Is PSU Penn State? I grew up in Hershey! Great sense of humor by the way.

 

[DouglassT]

Hi BigInch, I really appreciate your insight! I'm really interested in hearing if you have solutions or ideas about how to better protect against numbers 1 or 2?

Also curious, when you say "third party" is there any definition to that? Most pipelines run through very remote areas so I'm assuming that these accidents are happening during times of construction/repair or am I assuming too much?

 

[SNORGY]

DouglassT,

I thought that would be a tough question that would require a wordy post. But it's not. It's simple. We, the consulting and contracting engineers, have spent the last 3-4 decades with our thumbs so deeply inserted up our backsides, allowing ourselves to play cutthroat bidding wars and commoditizing ourselves to the point where we have destroyed our own self-respect and reduced our own credibility by losing sight of what really matters, just so we can make money by saying "yes" to whatever hare-brained notion the Client wants. Sadly, that is the true state of "engineering" today.

What do we have to fight back with? That's easy too: just refuse to get bullied, and turn away Clients who impose those rules of engagement on us. Then, the only things left to decide will be how much business do we want to lose and how much money is enough to make us compromise our values?

Sort of like the famous politician who once said to the prostitute, "We have already established what you are, now the only thing we are negotiating is the price."

 

[DouglassT]

Thanks Snorgy!

I've heard that saying before and it is true. What percentage of jobs/contracts fall in the category of "sell your soul"? Is there a way you can screen those jobs out when you are in the bidding process?

In short, I would love to have your insight on some tips to avoid this type of disaster.

 

[zdas04]

The responsibility for not revisiting design choices lies with the "project paradigm". Operators identify a project, pass it to engineering to design it, some engineer (or group of engineers) does the design, the project gets built, operations takes it over, the files go into the archives, the engineers move on to the next project. There is generally no method to communicate any assumptions about things like design life. At best there is a set point for PSV's on the drawings, but nothing to indicate a non-standard design life assumption. Assumptions are in the calculation file that no one ever opens after the project is authorized. With engineers averaging 2-3 years with a company it is hard to communicate that in 8 years you need to re-validate MAWP. It is not a regulation issue, or a workload issue, it is simply that no one has administrative processes to trigger that review.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[jwhit]

First off, for DougT and BillPSU, I'm in Lepnon (Lebanon, if you're not PA Dutch) aka: the center of the flat earth.
My work isn't in pipelines specifically, nor am I a degreed anything, but as a Quality Tech I certainly feel the same pains about what goes on in the production and manufacture of piping and related products. What I lay awake about most is dealing with people who, right or wrong,think a code section doesn't make sense for our application and that they can ignore it or circumvent it. Sometimes the rule isn't logical on the face of things, but someone, somewhere observed a need for it and under all the mumbo jumbo there is a sound basis for it. In most cases these people have never even looked at the codes. These are usually the same ones who gripe about big government or any type of rule, so far I haven't done it, but would like to suggest they look in a mirror and blame themselves for creating a need for more rules.

 

[Duwe6]

"Good Inspection" involves digging up some represenative sections of pipe and checking for Internal problems, not just some thickness measurements and yelling "cover it back up, boys". Needs to be scanned for pitting and internal profile; the long seam needs found and fully tested for integrety, etc. Not cheap.