Comment

Citation

Cox, W.M. (2002), "Comment", Anti-Corrosion Methods and Materials, Vol. 49 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/acmm.2002.12849daa.001

Comment

It is the end of the first quarter of the year already, and that means that it is time for the NACE Conference in the USA. This time the meeting is being held in Denver, as was the case about four years ago. As delegates arrived at the airport they were greeted by ice, snow and wind. In consequence, I was not really looking forward to coming back to Denver this year (it is Wednesday of the Conference week, as I am writing this piece for ACMM), but on arrival we discovered clear blue skies and glorious sunshine. The cab driver even complained that the sun was "too bright" on Tuesday – we never have that problem in Manchester. You will have to wait until the next issue for a more complete report of the meeting, but I felt that you might like to be aware of the headline news.

The NACE meeting is always packed with information and interest for the practising corrosion engineer or researcher. However, this year two items stand out above everything else. First, the long-awaited Cost of Corrosion report is about to be published. Some of you may be aware that this new survey was prompted by the US Department of Transportation investigation into the condition of road bridges, many of which were built on the country's interstate network just over 40 years ago, and which now are nearing the end of their initial design life. Clearly, it is not an attractive idea to knock them all down, and an initiative has been led by Paul Virmani at the US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to assess what might be the best strategy to prolong their service life. During implementation, the scope of the project was effectively broadened to cover the overall cost of corrosion in North America. The bottom line? – conservatively estimated to have been US$276 billion in 1998 (the year of the study). The report is dated March 2002 and the reference documents are FHWA-RD-01-156 (the main report) and FHWA-RD-01-157 (the 20-page summary).

Two methods were used to assess the costs. The first examined the cost of corrosion control methods and services, and the second the corrosion costs of specific industry sectors. The total annual direct cost of corrosion, by summing the cost of corrosion control methods and services, was estimated to be US$121 billion, equivalent to 1.38 per cent of the US GDP (US$8.79 trillion) in 1998. In the second method, the US economy was divided into five sector categories ("Infrastructure", "Utilities", "Transportation", "Production and Manufacturing", and "Government"), which in turn were addressed in 26 individual sectors. The total cost due to the impact of corrosion for the analysed sectors is reported to have been US$137.9 billion in 1998. Since the sum of the estimated costs for the analysed sectors did not represent the total cost of corrosion for the entire US economy, the overall estimate of total cost was obtained by a conservative extrapolation of the figures for the examined sectors, giving the overall cost estimate of US$276 billion.

It is not my intention to try to summarise the document in this short piece – just to bring it to your attention. By the time you are reading this column a more comprehensive summary should be available on the Web at: www.corrosioncost.com, and the FHWA documents will be available for purchase. This is not small change by anybody's reckoning, and there is no doubt whatsoever that the FHWA appraisal will serve to bring corrosion back to the top of the agenda throughout the world in much the sameway that the original survey of UK corrosion cost, the Hoar Report of 1971, served to do just over 30 years ago.

The second headline item which will receive increased attention is the issue of pipeline integrity management. Two years ago saw the introduction of the so-called "Operator qualification" (OQ) strategy for inspection and operation of pipelines – primarily gas transmission pipelines. The change followed a number of serious incidents, which included fatalities, bringing to the attention of the authorities the fact that compliance with conventional inspection code requirements did not necessarily ensure complete safety and reliability. Indeed, it was probable that in some circumstances an operator might even suspect that safety and reliability could be compromised, yet nonetheless be in compliance with statutory corrosion inspection requirements. It was discovered that the situation had resulted from a combination of the huge volume of inspection, not all of which might be necessary or effective, which was required to be performed by the codes, and a lack of training and competence on behalf of some personnel to be able to undertake the inspection work to an adequate standard.

The way forward was to provide industry with appropriate training and certification in corrosion evaluation and assessment, and to empower operating companies to move away from the traditional code-based inspection procedures, provided that this did not entail additional risk of failure. The good news, therefore, was that inspection activities could be reduced and redirected towards areas where an operator might know or suspect safety and/or reliability to be in jeopardy, while reducing the degree of activity directed towards locations where the risk of failure was known to be low, thereby reducing significantly the cost of wasted effort and excessive maintenance. This change in approach could only be undertaken, if an operator developed a properly-constituted and approved safety, reliability and inspection programme, using personnel with certified training and competence – the OQ methodology. The bad news, however, was that a choice to remain with conventional code-based corrosion inspection, and not to move to OQ, would no longer absolve an operator from liability in the event of a catastrophic failure, which has meant that there has been a powerful incentive (not always fully welcomed by some in the industry) to introduce OQ.

This year's meeting has seen the next plank in the development of the OQ methodology. It is "Pipeline integrity management". In an excellent "Front page issue" presentation at the Conference, Richard Felder of Baseline Technologies (and formerly with the US DoT) gave a clear and hard-hitting insight into why pipeline integrity management is so effective. "You need data integration or you will get the enforcement letter" is just a sample of the no-nonsense style of his presentation. He continued: "Just like OQ, good companies with good programmes will be rewarded by integrity management. The decisions taken today should not be made in the IT department, or the corrosion department, or in nooks and crannies somewhere in the company, they should be done around the table. Good vision needs full management commitment and responsibility, vendor partnering, and all the available information on the asset to be properly integrated and appraised".

If you are in the pipeline industry, watch out, because it is coming to a government near you. But do not be frightened – pipeline integrity management is going to save a lot of money and a lot of pain. As Felder concluded: "Money invested in integrity management gives a much better rate of return than anything else you can do with your assets". That is a message that corrosion engineers the world over can sell to their management with pride and confidence.

William M. CoxTechnical Advisory Editor and Chairman of the Editorial Board, ACMM