AS2885 Doesn’t Design/Operate Pipelines: Engineers Do
In the Australian pipeline industry, AS2885 is the standout standard for ensuring pipeline safety through its full lifecycle. Unfortunately (or fortunately), because it is such a solid Standard, it’s often treated as though it is a textbook and as if “it” designs/operates the pipeline. It doesn’t. Engineers do. AS2885 provides the structured safety framework, covering…
More questions than answers….
In the last few weeks, I’ve been fortunate to have experienced interactions in rooms full of very smart people (irl and virtually). These ‘rooms full’ are from various capacities: the ME-038 Standards committee, two different pipeline design teams I’m advising, the APGA Research and Standards committee, a pipeline system operator I’m auditing, and several individuals…
How to… learn about AS2885
I’m writing this today with a buzz in my brain, coming off a full (long yet inspiring) day yesterday of being in a room (and onscreen) with an inspiring group of about 15 pipeliners, all taking in learnings about AS2885, from an Operations lens. I took them through the contents of AS2885.3 (Operations and maintenance),…
ME-038 Annual Meeting is next month (February 10-11, 2026)
The Standards Australia ME-038 Main Technical Committee, responsible for the AS2885 suite, consists of representatives from these Nominating Organisations. I haven’t included the individual representatives’ names, because, privacy…. but I also think that if you’re on the committee maybe it shouldn’t be private. I’ll bring that up at our meeting next month and get approval…
AS2885 Conversations Reinvigoration
Looking back through my set of internet browser ‘favourite’ links, looking through my LinkedIn groups and posts, and my emails and my file folders, I see so much good AS2885 content and conversations and knowledge and experience … and it’s just not being shared publicly enough lately. So here I am, along with all of…
AS4822:2024
The standard for field joint coatings, AS4822, is included in ME-038’s portfolio. We usually just refer to AS2885, but AS4822 is part of the team too. This makes sense, because what other committee would look after a standard about coating joints of pipelines in the field? So also, there’s an argument that in the ‘one…
Random Updates
A few things going on in the past week that can be classified as ‘random updates’: CSA Z767 Process Safety Management Standard I listened to the podcast “Process Safety with Trish & Traci”, the episode dated 20Aug2024, titled “World’s first: process safety management standard”. It is, apparently, an industry-agnostic standard, setting benchmarks for organisations not…
Guidance
I had a great chat with AS2885 legend Peter Tuft last week. We reminisced on the creation of Part 6 during the revision of Part 1 from 2013 to publication in 2018. Oh how different the pipeline world was in 2013! No talk of hydrogen. No talk of “energy transition” nor “shut down the fossil…
Contributors and Contributions
In late August, I went to a Standards Australia “Contributor Forum 2024”. These contributor forums are, according to Standards Australia “an opportunity to come together to share initiatives we have delivered or are currently in progress, and seek feedback and insights to areas of focus where we can deliver the greatest value to our stakeholders.”…
Revival / Restart / Rejuvenate : Hello, I’ve missed you!
I will briefly wax lyrical here about revivals, restarting, and getting rejuvenated. There’s something about a ‘restart’ of a past habit or dedication or hobby. Rejuvenating is a good word – it means bringing renewed life to something old by giving it a new vitality. It’s the process of “freshening” something up by reviving it. …
AS2885.5:2020 Correction Amendment No 1
In AS2885.5:2020 Field Pressure Testing, Equation N.4(3) is incorrect. A correction amendment has been issued by Standards Australia, with the equation corrected. It is provided here, to ensure users of AS2885.5 have the correct information. Please also note that another correction amendment is underway, for Equation B.1.3(4) and Equation B.2(1). Please make a note of…
ISO standards set for adoption
(January 5th, 2023: This first week of the new year, before I’d really gotten my feet under the desk yet, has seen a good email exchange amongst ME-038 about the adoption of ISO standards. I had the post below sitting in the drafts section of WordPress, waiting to be published here, wouldn’t you know it,…
Questioning Competency Assessment
Ted Metcalfe provides me (us) with much insight and deep thinking about engineering, competency, ethical behaviour, learning from (engineering/technical) failures, and all kinds of other issues and aspects of life. He’s semi-retired but thankfully not sailing off into the sunset yet. He often talks about raising the competency/skills of up-and-coming engineers. We both share that…
Corrosion in old pipelines
Here’s another contribution by Jan Hayes, who sent these links to me because of the relevance to the pipeline industry, and similarities between San Bruno, and Enbridge Marshall. A recent CSB (Chemical Safety Board) video, titled “Wake Up Call: Refinery Disaster in Philadelphia,” (20mins) details a fire, explosions, and toxic hydrofluoric acid (HF) release that occurred…
Podcast Star!
The Pipeliners Podcast has been around since 2017, hosted by Russel Treat in the USA. I started listening to it in its early days, and listened for a couple of years, but recently took it off rotation in a podcast cleanup (it’s pretty focussed on US pipelines). Fortunately, though, I’ve become aware that one of…
Success: AS2885.3-2022 published
Today, Standards Australia has published the revised AS2885.3-2022, Pipelines – Gas and liquid petroleum, Operations and maintenance. Congratulations and thanks to the Part 3 committee members, who worked hard for 5 years, through the pandemic and all, to reach this publication stage. If you have subscription licensed access to Part 3, please make sure your…
AS2885.3 publication
Hello all For the past 4 months I’ve been “promising” (indirectly and with lots of caveats of course) that AS2885.3 would be published in August. I had high hopes, but of course now it’s September so that promise hasn’t been fulfilled. I followed up with Standards Australia this week, and they’ve apologised, and have prioritised…
Book Club for Failures: New Date and Signup link
We have a new date and signup for the BCfF: Monday August 22nd, 4:15pm-5:00pm AEST Sign up is via Eventbrite, and the meeting will be hosted in Zoom. Sign up here. Our first session will be short (45mins), to gauge interest and check expectations. If we have time, we’ll talk about the APGA Engineer’s Practise…
What interests you?
My recent webinar “Failure is Normal: A Tale of Two Bridges” generated some encouraging feedback, so I could be persuaded to present more webinars, if readers indicate sufficient interest.A couple of categories of possible topics come to mind; engineering practice, and more about learning from failure. Engineering Practice1) The Benefits of Engaging Independent Consultants(A discussion…
Book Club for Failures
There is enough interest in Ted Metcalfe’s book list, and the idea of learning from failures, that it’s time to set up a book club. It’s a book club for people in the pipeline engineering industry, interested in learning from failures. Answering the question “what happened?”, and being better engineers and pipeliners because we’ve paid…
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