C-FER Technologies and Allied Engineers are partnering to provide a Pipeline Integrity Management System (PIMS) to India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). The project brings together Allied Engineers’ pipeline integrity and management expertise with C-FER’s PIRAMID risk assessment software to analyze ONGC’s pipeline data conduct risk assessments and integrate the system into an easy to use portal for managing the integrity of the pipelines.

Allied Engineers and C-FER have a long-standing relationship marketing to the Southern Asia region. When ONGC indicated their desire for a complete GIS-based management solution for their pipelines, Allied Engineers saw the opportunity to combine their pipeline integrity knowledge and experience with C‑FER’s advanced quantitative risk models to propose the best pipeline management solution to ONGC. Combining each organization’s expertise on this project was a natural fit.

“We are excited about this partnership with Allied Engineers,” said Chance Wright, PIRAMID product manager at C-FER. “This project demonstrates how pipeline companies can integrate PIRAMID’s advanced quantitative risk assessments into their current GIS framework to provide a seamless integrity management tool.”

While his home in Houston was on the brink of flooding, Marcus M c Donnell was half way around the globe in India; eating a Maharaja Mac! Marcus is a man of few words, so all he had to report was “I had an Indian Big Mac today… chicken instead of beef, jalapenos instead of pickle, orange curry sauce instead of white mystery sauce. LOL”

Marcus did not travel all that distance just to test a new variety of McDonald’s, he was actually initiating the new Spectrum XLI service provider, Allied Engineers, who will provide our services to India and the Middle East. Marcus was there to provide training to the veteran Allied Engineers cathodic protection, coating survey technicians and Direct Assessment team who will now be using two shiny new Spectrum XLI kits to provide PureHM-level XLI inspections for the region.

This was PureHM’s second exploit overseas to set up local service providers for the advanced Spectrum XLI technology; a year ago PureHM’s Wei Feng Wang travelled to China where he trained and set up Pure China technicians and engineers to perform inspection. Wei was held ransom by Sinopec, who insisted that his two week demo be extended by a month to allow Wei to personally oversee as much XLI inspection as possible before he returned to Canada! Pure China has been completing river crossings, depth of cover profiles, coating inspections, even close interval cathodic protection inspections for pipeline giants like Sinopec ever since.

Taking advantage of having a 20 year veteran on site, Ashish Khera, the Director of Allied Engineers, coordinated demonstrations of Spectrum XLI for senior management of GAIL India Ltd. and other large Indian pipeline operators and regulators alike. Ashish wrote back to us “Was already quite impressed with XLI systems but after this training loving it even more! Some amazing developments you guys have done and looking forward to taking it through and bridging the gaps in the CP survey industry”

Marcus is currently travelling back home to America, where his house and our Houston office have been miraculously spared from Harvey. We’ll let him rest on the flight, but as soon as he lands we have to ask him to help ensure the rest of our employee’s homes and family are all safe and dry, before we assign him on his next adventure. All in a day’s work for a pipeline superhero.

"Since 2005 (3+ years) for the TPS and Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) ‘Total Pipeline Integrity Management Services (TPIMS)’ contract, Allied Engineers our approved Sub contractor have provided and continue to provide the following services for Tuboscope Pipeline Services (TPS), a National Oilwell Varco company. This Integrity Management contract includes 280+ pipelines ranging from 4” to 48” in diameter, out of which 200+ pipelines are non-piggable. Allied conducted code compliant specialized pipeline integrity studies for the non-piggable pipelines, where they were responsible for all aspects of the program that is from field data collection to final presentation of report to client. These programs included:

• Turnkey Direct Assessment study which included a Pre-Assessment, Indirect Inspection and Direct Examination program.
• Data integration for baseline Risk Assessment study for the complete system.
• Above ground GPS survey for the complete system.

"Allied Engineers provides ExMag with ongoing SCC Modelling and reporting services for our clientele in the North American pipeline market. These services include the following:

• Design, maintaining and upgrading the in-house SCC Modelling software
• QA/QC of field survey and chart data
• Detailed assessment report generation along with all susceptibility details

ExMag has a 3 year relationship with Allied and during this time services were provided for 60+ pipelines totalling 4,000+ kilometres in length.

Over the term of our relationship Allied has provided quality services, in a timely manner. Allied has a professional approach and good understanding of the integrity business which helped ExMag deal with unforeseen issues and problems. Allied proved to be extremely flexible and accommodating when dealing with us, even when the issue was clearly ExMag’s. ExMag values our relationship with Allied and would highly recommend their services to prospective clients."