PRCI AND ELECTRICORE

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  PIPELINE RESEARCH MANAGEMENT CENTER

How PRMC will consolidate R&D in Pipeline Safety

The PRMC R&D program goal is to improve the safety and integrity of the U.S. pipeline infrastructure system through the consolidated R&D program offered by the PRCI/Electricore team. PRMC achieves five critical outcomes.

    1. Maximizes Probability of Technical Program Success

The PRMC manages energy pipeline R&D as a portfolio of interrelated technical efforts and product/technique developments, rather than as compartmentalized projects.  This management approach requires and enables the exchange of meaningful technical results across projects, thus improving the productivity of each technical team and assuring that the ongoing results from one project inform other projects rapidly, by:

·        Avoiding information/communication silos, and the resultant loss of synergy, effectiveness and ‘stranded research’ that burdens one-off projects;

·        Creating an environment where information can flow between projects quickly, rather than awaiting project completion and report review; and,

·        Allowing interim results to be applied across the portfolio to enhance the likelihood of success of all projects.

The PRMC portfolio, increases the overall likelihood of success as it minimizes the risks otherwise inherent in the projects comprising a Consolidated Program by shortening the communication chains between sponsor, user, and R&D performer.  This improves the ability of technology development to address such significant realities of the pipeline system as multiple and diverse operators, multi-faceted infrastructure configurations, dynamic physical environments, and many separate service and equipment providers. 

Not only is the effectiveness of a single multiple-project R&D program enhanced, but the Consolidated Program approach allows the integration of multiple programs that address different aspects of pipeline safety.  This integration can occur both at the planning stage, but also during the progress of work already in the portfolio.  With respect to the latter, this approach would enable sponsors to insert other ongoing programs and projects into the Consolidated Program where it is determined that program synergies have emerged that allow all participants and sponsors to benefit from combining of these efforts.

    2. Enables an Effective and Productive Government/Industry R&D Collaboration

Many pipeline safety R&D sponsors have pledged to coordinate research efforts with the pipeline industry in an effort to promote cost efficiency, avoid needless duplication and to focus on the most critical areas of need.  The Consolidated Program conducted under PRMC provides a one-stop information and coordination source that cannot be paralleled in one-off research efforts.  The broader view of technical efforts and ongoing results provides an effective means for industry and sponsor to make effective decisions during the course of research.  The Consolidated Program approach will enable reporting in a comprehensive manner, identifying cross cutting and synergistic effects far more rapidly than awaiting the results of each separate project, distributing those separate results to knowledgeable resources in industry and government and waiting for these effects to be identified, if they are identified at all.  This allows industry and the sponsor to coordinate far more effectively and to make adjustments as needed.  Importantly, the PRMC program is “contractor-neutral” and can serve as a fiduciary to ensure the best projects are pursued independent of the R&D performer.

    3. Achieves Technical Outcomes at Lowest Cost

    The Consolidated Program approach allows results and techniques to be applied across a broad spectrum of research in a cost effective manner.  By assembling the right team up front, the Consolidated Program will allow the sponsor to avoid the time and cost of circulating results from individual projects to other research efforts in order to determine possible synergies and whether techniques in one research effort can achieve results in another in a more cost-effective manner.  The cost savings is estimated to be several thousands if not hundred of thousands of dollars annually.  By expediting this communication, and making it far more efficient, the Consolidated Program will result in the application of cross-cutting techniques and results in a far more rapid time period, thus avoiding the extra cost incurred by delaying the application of such techniques and results.  In addition, the Consolidated Program will enhance the ability of sponsors to redirect financial support from projects that are not meeting expectations, allowing overall improved program stewardship.

    4. Expedites the Broad Introduction of New Technologies, Techniques and Practices into General Use

By mitigating the need for separately orchestrated ‘hand-offs” of technology between scientific researchers and pipeline service/product vendors, the Consolidated Program will ensure that effective results are brought to market and applied far more rapidly than individual result efforts.  In addition, the Consolidated Program will provide rapid market feedback on the performance of beta-test, field test and commercial technologies so that the R&D planning process can incorporate these real-world results.

5. The Consolidated Program is Unique

The unique aspect of the PRMC is its integration of the PRCI standing R&D Technical Committees into the Consolidated Program.  PRCI’s Technical Committees are comprised of experienced pipeline engineers and managers who provide: insight into pipeline needs and constraints; a collective industry memory of previous R&D efforts; and, an assessment of the needed performance of commercial products (i.e., the practical State-of-the-Art), as well as the status of ongoing (vendor-originated) product development efforts.  Through program consolidation the Technical Committees are uniquely capable of ensuring that research results are:

1. relevant,

2. not duplicative of earlier or parallel work,

3. are of sufficient quality and rigor to be applied to operating pipelines,

4. are cost-effective,

5. are mutually supportive (i.e., results from one project feed into another),

6. are timely. 

Critical to the efficient use of the above capabilities, and the results they seek to achieve, is effective communication through the Technical Committees that:

·        Continually evaluates and reevaluates integrity needs and opportunities;

·        Grants access to an extensive set of pipeline facilities and environments;

·        Maintains a platform for regular interactions between operators, vendors, R&D developers and sponsoring agencies to identify, inter alia, areas that are not progressing, so that sponsors can reallocate resources to better address critical needs; and,

·        Facilitates forward planning by pipelines to accommodate the expected future field evaluation needs of the R&D program, as well as to signal to the research community (and sponsors) emerging needs that require new R&D initiatives.

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Last modified: 07/28/04