Integrity Verification Program
Since 2011, CHA has been providing services to gas utility companies to verify the integrity of their natural gas pipelines. CHA provides the pipeline operator with a thorough, comprehensive review of their records to establish or adjust the maximum allowable operating pressures (MAOP) of the high-pressure pipelines to ensure compliance with applicable state and federal pipeline safety regulations.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) issued an advisory bulletin (ADB-11-01) in 2011 that informed operators of natural gas pipelines that if they are relying on the review of design, construction, inspection, testing, and other related data to establish MAOP, they must ensure that the records used are reliable, traceable, verifiable, and complete. PHMSA reinforced this advisory with recently proposed rulemaking in April 2016 (81 Fed. Reg. 20722). The proposed rule, as written, will require pipeline operators to review records to ensure that they are reliable, traceable, verifiable, and support the functional MAOP. The results of this file review can then be incorporated into the operator’s integrity management program for those covered pipelines.
CHA specializes in creating a turnkey records review product that meets regulatory requirements and produces a traceable, verifiable, and auditable report for each pipeline in support of its MAOP. CHA’s reporting identifies pipelines with proper regulatory documentation to continue operating at historical MAOPs, identifies pipeline segments where records do not support current MAOP, and affords ease of review by internal staff and regulatory oversight agencies. We have built into the review process incremental steps where completed work is reviewed independently before it is finalized. Once the final report is drafted, it is then subjected to an independent quality assurance review to ensure accuracy.
Project Services:
- Review and categorize available pipeline records
- Digitize records as needed and tabulate information for all records creating more efficient storage and ease of retrieval
- Tabulate records by pipeline component purchasing and material properties, pressure testing, welding inspection and non-destructive testing of welds
- Calculate operating percentage of material specified minimum yield strength (SMYS) for pipeline components based on MAOP and material properties
- Match as-built components to purchased material information
- Identify gaps in data needed to support MAOP
- Provide a comprehensive report along with the digitized documents for each individual pipeline or segment as determined by the client
- Environmental inspection
- As-built documentation