Risk Methodology membership for 2020/21
Benefits
This collaborative programme develops and applies techniques for quantifying the risk associated with pipeline assets and AGIs and investigating the effectiveness of a variety of approaches for reducing risk. Collaboration with these companies helps to reduce cost and to learn from the experiences of other pipeline companies and to share best practice.
The main benefit monetarily is realised in cost avoidance. Looking at implications of an incident on a high pressure pipeline, this has the potential cost upwards of £50 million. As a real world example, the Belgium high pressure pipeline experienced an incident in Ghislenghien, that costed in the millions, including compensation payments, resource constraints, reputational damage and stricter regulation.
Learnings
Outcomes
Closure 2020/2021
The project aims and objectives were broadly met for the phases of the project within the financial year of 2019/20. Deliverables include the provision of updated tools and continued development of methods for undertaking risk assessments of National Grid’s high pressure gas assets.
The effective collaboration between the project partners and other operators of similar assets worldwide continues to deliver significant leverage, and this has helped National Grid and Cadent Gas to benefit from sharing experience of the application of the tools and learning from incidents. Completion of the final reports on two of the JIPs has been delayed, as noted below.
The deliverables for each element of work undertaken between April 2020 and March 2021 are listed below:
Hazard and Risk Assessment Methods for Gas Transmission Pipelines
1. An updated version of PIPESAFE (v2.27.0), incorporating improvements and incremental developments, as directed by the PIPESAFE JIP Steering Committee, accompanied by lists of reported problems with PIPESAFE and their resolution and updated lists of FAQs.
2. Annual report summarising activities and outputs from the PIPESAFE JIP in 2020 (PG/21/01).
3. Report summarising new methodology developments identified with recommendations for implementation in the next update of HAMM Pipelines (10271525-1).
Data for Failure Frequency Estimation for Use in Risk Analysis
1. Annual submissions for 2020 [KT1] [NM2] prepared on behalf of Cadent to:
a. FFA detailed pipeline incident database
b. AGIFF detailed installation incident database
2. FFA pipeline database, extended to include 2020 data from participating companies.
3. Technical report on the FFA database (FFA/20/06), summarising data collected in 2008 - 2018 and performing analysis of trends and examples of failure frequency calculations made possible with the new database.
4. Technical report on the development of the AGIFF database (AGIFF/20/07), summarising data collected in 2012 - 2018 and performing analysis of trends and examples of failure frequency calculations made possible with the new database.
Hazard and Risk Assessment Methods for Above-Ground Installations
1. An updated version of ORDER (v2.24.1) incorporating improvements and incremental developments, as directed by the Steering Committee, accompanied by lists of reported problems with ORDER and their resolution and updated FAQs.
2. Annual report summarising activities and outputs from ORDER JIP in 2019-20 (OG/20/05).
3. Report summarising new methodology developments identified with recommendations for implementation in the next update of HAMM AGIs (10271525-2).
Ground Movement Threats to Pipelines
1. Final report with a critical appraisal of the proposed assessment system for ground movement threats to pipelines, including its limits (GMG/20/11).
Effectiveness of Safety-improving Measures (ESM)
1. Final report describing the fault tree approach for assessing the effectiveness of additional non-physical protective measures against external interference damage to buried pipelines and the input data used to populate it, together with worked examples using case studies provided by member companies including Cadent (ESM/20/03).
Hydrogen Transmission Safety Group (HTSG)
1. The detailed scope of work for this new JIP was developed with input from participating companies and agreed (HTS/20/01) and a contract issued for approval for the work to commence (N.B. the report is due for delivery in 2021/22).
Lessons Learnt
Reducing the lead time for contracts is key for collaborative projects so where possible the use of common templates and the agreement of key terms up front can help speed up the process.
