Streamline Your Construction Industry Processes with Pipeline Integrity Data

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we have over a billion and a half dollars worth of infrastructure in the ground and we have a very robust program to protect that pipeline it's been in place since the 90s in fact it's probably one of the leading programs in the nation we've reduced the failure rates dramatically for Cedar Creek and for RC since the 90s our curves at this time showed we would have had exponentially more failures per year than we do currently [Music] this Cedar Creek pipeline is our oldest pipeline it's been the ground since the early 1970s and unfortunately the standards in the early seventies for that particular type of pipe were relaxed so the wire that's so important in maintaining the hoop strength of that pipe was of a pore metallurgy too high of a tensile strength is more subject to embrittlement to failure we had failures that were catastrophic in nature there's a lot of energy in this pipe and this pre-stressed concrete southern pipe and so when it fails it's a significant event so in the mid-90s we're seeing significant numbers of failures coming up on this and that began our pipeline integrity program in response to those we helped pilot a new technology with an outside vendor to determine through non-destructive testing means where exactly we have wire breaks and that pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe for every single pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe they'll give us the footage along that pipe where there is pipe wire breaks and then we put that all into the database every single segment in our database we know how many wire breaks and where those wire breaks are in our system and then from there not only knowing the wire breaks but if we have 25 wire breaks what does that mean so that's what our structural model tells us is it tells us if that pipe is with a certain pressure and those wire breaks are we exceeding that limit of that pipe we're able to identify which segments were most distressed to the pure electromagnetic inspections and throughout working with our operations staff we began identifying about 15 joints of pipe per year that were the highest risk and in need of replacement a lot of times if we have had a failure we look at that data and to see what was going on at that time and so that can really help us evaluate why we had that failure and this is why we have this entire program is to get ahead of those failures over time for us here at towd it's been very important to be good stewards of our infrastructure water sector industry research has shown that this condition assessment based approach with all the inspection cost and the prioritized replacements run about four to five percent of what an entire full replacement cost would run from the pure inspection data to the structural evaluation to the risk modeling we've come a long ways I think we are a pioneer where we've taken the program from just inspection data to knowing what that inspection data means and how to utilize it best to repair and rehabilitate your pipeline