Making light work of Safety Management Studies

Australia’s largest gas pipeline network owner and operator, APA Group is responsible for more than $21 billion of energy assets across Australia.

Under Australian Standard AS/NZS 2885, APA Group and other gas pipeline asset owners are required to conduct cyclic Safety Management Studies (SMS) for all pipeline assets to ensure Australian pipeline standards and regulatory compliance are periodically maintained. Also it ensures the key stakeholders are fully informed of the processes and the operational risks associated with the assets are well understood and managed.

Since 2018, APA Group have been using Mipela’s X-Info SMS suite to automate this process and continue to utilise X-Info SMS suite to efficiently manage periodic reviews of safety management studies and conduct interactive validation workshops using GIS information and aerial imagery data.

WA based Risk Engineer, Kashif Kazi has conducted SMS workshops for various APA pipeline assets in WA State, namely Leonora Gas Lateral, Parmelia Gas Pipeline, Thunderbox Lateral, Jundee and Wiluna Gold Lateral.

“X-Info SMS suite provides a standardised and efficient approach to conduct the validation workshops and a tool to prepare required SMS inputs, collate data and produce outputs. This not only saving time but providing a consistent methodology for 5-yearly periodic operational SMS reviews for all APA assets. The system generates reports that show the spatial representation of threats, assets, and risks using the current and historic SMS review data for each asset, interactive use of GIS and aerial imagery mapping so staff can quickly reference and assess the status of any generic or location specific threats. This enables SMS workshop participants and key stakeholders to better plan resources, create appropriate actions, as required, manage and minimise the pipeline risk for as low as Reasonably Practicable,” said Kazi.

Looks like Kazi and APA’s other state based Risk Engineers are smashing these SMS studies out of the park!

Systematising pipeline risk management

Australia’s largest gas pipeline network owner and operator, APA Group is responsible for more than $21 billion of energy assets across Australia.

Under Australian Standard AS2885, APA Group are required to conduct Safety Management Studies (SMS) on all pipelines to ensure compliance and that key management personnel are fully informed of the operational risks associated with the operating assets.

In 2018, APA Group started using Mipela’s X-Info SMS suite to automate this process. X-Info SMS suite is specifically designed to provide pipeline owners with a comprehensive system that can manage their tasks associated with the operation, maintenance, suspension of operation, decommissioning and abandonment along with all their proposed transmission pipeline asset projects AS2885 workflows, quality control and reporting. Where a threat is identified as “credible” and failure is possible, the risk must be managed to ALARP (As Low as Reasonably Possible). X-Info SMS suite guides participants through an Initial Risk Assessment workflow and Residual Risk Assessment to reach ALARP.

Since that first project, APA Group have completed 12 workshops for more than twenty pipelines using X-Info SMS suite. The design SMS workshop for the Western Outer Ring Main project (Victoria) was the latest to be undertaken. APA Group have also loaded over 300 pipeline assets into the SMS database in preparation for the next round of workshops.

“Using a proven methodology and sound system like X-Info SMS suite not only saves a considerable amount of time from study to study but the automated reporting and reminders are critical in managing any identified threats,” said Phill King, Manager Systems and Assurance at APA Group. “Being able to quickly reference and analyse the status of our threats enables us to also to better resource plan and minimise the risk for all,” King added.

Moving forward, the next steps in the APA SMS story is to plan and “flatten the curve” for the upcoming SMS reviews.

Putting your pipeline Safety Management Study information in one place

“Transmission pipelines have long operational lives (in Australia the Roma to Brisbane is our oldest operating highpressure pipeline in excess of 49 years), the environments around them change over time as do personnel responsible for planning, designing, constructing, commissioning, operating, maintaining and decommissioning. These changes are likely to have effects on a pipeline. In the short term, change will be associated with increased construction activity and its associated risk, in the long term change may alter the risk profile of a pipeline. This is particularly true on the urban fringe of towns and cities, where population growth and housing pressures lead to increasing expansion of urban boundaries and the transformation of rural and semi-rural land into suburban and urban environments containing residential, commercial and industrial communities.”
‘Guideline for investigations of land use around pipelines to guide initial location classification under AS 2885’ (August 2014)

It is now 21 years since AS 2885.1-1997 was published with its ground breaking section SAFETY, developed to provide a methodology for the pipeline industry to demonstrate the safe design, and construction of high pressure transmission pipelines. The SAFETY process was renamed ‘SAFETY MANAGEMENT STUDY’ (SMS) in the 2007 revision of AS 2885.1. Now the greatest change guiding our way forward has been the relocation of all details of safety management to a new standard “AS2885.6 Part 6:2017 Pipeline safety management” with final comments recently submitted 10 August 2018.

Mipela GeoSolutions X-Info SMS suite is a configurable, out of the box solution to capture, manage, display and report for your AS2885 proposed and operating pipelines:

• Design parameters
• SMS Workshop attendance record(s)
• Location Class and Secondary Class assessments including definition of high consequence areas
• Show typical threats which correspond to the whole pipeline route and location specific threats (point and length)
• Protective measures (both procedural and physical)
• Display radiation contours in the event of full bore rupture
• Risk evaluation
• Actions captured in a workshop which would need to be completed in time
• Integration with your businesses Asset, Dial Before Your Dig, Encroachment, GIS Services, Integrity and Lands Management systems for history of contact and previous surveys.

X-Info SMS suite – Safety Management Study

X-Info SMS suite is the latest offering by Mipela that is specifically designed to provide pipeline owners with a comprehensive system that can manage the Clients tasks associated with the operation, maintenance, suspension of operation, decommissioning and abandonment along with all their proposed transmission pipeline asset projects AS2885 workflows, quality control and reporting.

AS2885 requires Licensee Approval for Safety Management Studies. X-Info SMS suite ensures that Client’s key management personnel are fully informed of the operational risks associated with the operating assets. It is a commercial off the shelf (COTS) solution that gathers, stores, displays and reports on information pertaining to design, safety and operational related hazards that cause or are capable of causing loss of pipeline integrity associated with the pipeline infrastructure (as set out in AS2885).

X-Info SMS suite can provide a full pipeline safety management study (generally for new assets), safety management study reviews (generally a five year style review) and local adhoc reviews as necessary for specific issues.

Benefits

• Updates and revises your pipelines Threat Libraries to maintain AS2885 compliance
• Location analysis
• Threats identification
• External interference protection in accordance with AS2885 standard
• Other threats and mitigation measures
• Failure analysis
• Risk evaluation
• Reports and outstanding actions
• Filing – numerous types of important data.