Ingenuity and Curiosity to Supercharge Your Pipeline Safety Management System

Everyone working in the pipeline industry knows that they “Don’t Know What They Don’t Know”. Our behaviours and actions to address this simple phrase have led to significant successes. Pipeline Safety Management Systems and Integrity Management Programs have evolved over the last 40 years. This evolution has been a result of adopting quality management systems, learnings from failures and incidents, and regulatory involvement. These advances and areas of improvement are investigated through examples and observations made by the authors. The examples and observations in this presentation will demonstrate how organizations of various sizes have successfully addressed safety and integrity challenges over the past forty years. Examples will be discussed from small, medium, and large sized organizations. The management systems have continually improved; these advancements have enabled some of these systems to provide significant value to the pipeline system operators. The following will be included in the presentation: a) important elements required to meet policy requirements associated with a pipeline safety management system, b) the advantages and disadvantages of changing versus constant management system requirements defined within a regulatory framework, c) compliance versus beyond-compliance approaches, d) the importance of integrated management systems, e) the importance of planning and performance verification to meet goals and targets, and f) examples to demonstrate continual improvement and alignment with corporate goals. Continual improvement in the ISO 9000 series of standards for quality management systems have preceded changes in pipeline safety management systems. This presentation will show correlations and relationships between Quality Management Systems and Pipeline Safety Management Systems. Forecasts about the future of Pipeline Safety Management Systems will also be presented. The examples and observations in this presentation are intended to promote ingenuity and curiosity as methods to supercharge pipeline safety management systems.