Engineering assessments in support of pipeline safety: Emerging trends and approaches—Part 1

Engineering assessments will increasingly be applied in the pipeline industry to demonstrate related fitness-for-service and appropriate safety margins to stakeholders, including industry, regulatory agencies and the public. From a U.S. perspective, driving factors include the release of Part 1 of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA’s) Gas Mega Rulea in October of 2019 (effective July 1, 2020), along with pending rulemaking on class location designation changes (this proposed rule would add an alternative set of requirements that operators could use, based on implementing integrity management principles and pipe eligibility criteria, to manage certain pipelin