UDC is happy to be a recipient of the American Gas Association (AGA) 2022 Distribution Achievement Award with PG&E. At the 2022 AGA Operations Conference held in May, PG&E’s Preston Ford and UDC’s Tom Robinson were presented the award for the improvements made to the utility’s Gas Corrosion Control Program, including the deployment of an Enhanced Cathodic Protection survey and asset inspection program. Through revisioning the current process and streamlining the Cathodic Protection (CP) Program, this joint initiative has significantly increased the safety and reliability of PG&E’s Gas Distribution System for its customers.
Prior to receiving this award, PG&E was reliant on a paper process for managing its CP Program, manually maintaining records throughout large, disconnected spreadsheets. After modeling was complete for the Gas Distribution GIS system at the end of 2015, PG&E turned its attention to verifying and improving the data.
In 2015, PG&E instituted a 5-year program to assess 21,000 miles of steel distribution pipe to determine location and cathodic status in addition to ensuring proper monitoring and tracking. Identifying 3,200 casings requiring assessment and 350,000 isolated steel risers needing yearly monitoring, PG&E’s CP Survey contractor leveraged UDC’s Gas Compliance Manager to automate and enhance the update of the CP Program. With Compliance Manager now in the field, PG&E can collect CP test point readings from integrated forms, add new CP test points, report exceptions, and visually view the statuses of all CP surveys in the dashboard.
To learn more about PG&E’s initiative to transform its CP Program, check out our Success Story. You can also download our eBooks to learn how the Cathodic Inspection crews streamlined the inspection process at PG&E – Mission Critical Gas Pipeline Integrity: An Integrated Solution Framework and Simplifying Inspections for Cathodic Protection Crews.