Episode 5 - Boilers Were Blowing Up

In this episode of Upon Further Inspection, hosts Branden Stucky and Greg Alvarado discuss the evolution of mechanical integrity, exploring its transition from past practices to our current standards and regulations. They recount a couple historical failures (the Union Oil Lemont refinery explosion in 1984 and the Shell Norco explosion in 1988) that highlight the importance of developing stringent inspection codes. 

The discussion touches upon the role of standards, the shift from localized to holistic thinking, the integration of technology, and the critical importance of mentoring and the role of generalists in the industry.  The hosts conclude this episode with some advice for new engineers – be passionate about your work, seek to understand the link between data and wisdom, and ask guidance from experienced mentors.

00:00 Introduction to Mechanical Integrity Podcast

02:08 Historical Events Shaping Mechanical Integrity

04:47 Evolution of Codes and Standards

08:59 Understanding Recommended Practices vs. Standards

12:28 Regulatory Bodies and Their Roles

17:31 Boiler Inspections and Heat Treatment

25:19 Technological Advancements in PMI

28:06 Evolution of Mechanical Integrity Programs

29:06 The Role of Generalists and Specialists

33:12 Challenges in Implementing Predictive Models

44:24 Advice for New Asset Integrity Engineers

48:35 Conclusion and Final Thoughts 

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Episode Acronyms & Abbreviations

• 1910.119 - OSHA's process safety management of highly hazardous chemicals
• ANSI - American National Standards Institute (USA)
• API - American Petroleum Institute (USA)
  • RP - recommended practice
• ASME - American Society of Mechanical Engineers (USA)
• ERP - enterprise resource planning software
• FEA - finite element analysis
• LNG - liquid natural gas
• NACE - National Association of Corrosion Engineers (now called AMPP - the Association for Materials Protection & Performance, USA)
• NBIC - National Board Inspection Code (USA)
• OSHA - Occupational Health & Safety Administration (USA)
• P&IDs - piping and instrumentation diagram
• PMI - positive materials identification
• RBI - risk-based inspection (API RP 581)
• SME - subject matter expert

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Note: The views and opinions expressed by the guest are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the hosts or the Upon Further Inspection podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or professional advice. Listeners should seek their own qualified advisors for guidance.

Transcript

0:00

Upon further inspection, a Mechanical Integrity podcast goes beyond the data and dives into the people challenges and stories behind reliability and inspection. Whether you're in the field or in the office, this podcast is for you because mechanical integrity isn't about assets. It's about the people who keep them running. You are listening to episode five. Boilers. Were blowing up mechanical integrity then and now.

Branden Stucky: 0:39

All right, Greg, well welcome back Today today ki kind of wanted to try talking about the the idea of kind of the evolution of mechanical integrity. Kind of a a then versus now and maybe kinda what, what caused us to get to this point? I mean, you, you are gonna have a lot more insight into this than, than I will. But I wanna make sure, I wanna try and get some of that information out of kind of how, how did we end up where we are now? So, I mean, for you from, from. your experience or from your, what you've been a part of, what, what do you think were some of the biggest events that kind of happened that, that. Escaped the practices and the regulations that we have. Right. Because right now when we talk about inspection regulations, inspection practices, whatever you wanna call'em, kind of have API 5 10, 5 76, 53 you know, for our, our main pieces of equipment. but we haven't, we haven't always had those. So in your experience, what, what kind of drove the development of those

Greg Alvarado: 1:49

There were, there were safety issues and there are also business issues, right? So five ten's been around for a while a lot longer than five 70, but it just again, points to piping and, and the personality of piping too. So I'll get to some of that. But, so in about 1990, excuse me, 1984. We had the event with the Indian contactor at the Unical Refinery in Lamont, Illinois. That blew up, that had to do with environment and, excuse me, environmentally assisted cracking being present in there. And that vessel exploding, I think, I think there were like 17 fatalities there. And that was in 84. Then in about 19. 89, 88, we had the Shell Norco explosion, which was huge. That was in a refinery there where there was a, a, a hole that was corroded through in an elbow that allowed hydrocarbons to get out, that found a detonation source. And there we had a couple of major considerations. One of course, was the corrosion issue that I think a lot of it boiled down to it. To an injection quill that had been corroded at the tip and the droplets that were entering through that were no longer being atomized, and those droplets were causing some erosion, corrosion in an elbow downstream, but there were multiple fatalities there. And then around the same time, 88, 89 Phillips chemicals had a huge explosion. I think killed around 20 or 24 people in Pasadena, Texas. That was due to more work process type of issues and how they were decommissioning and commissioning equipment for an outage. And then, and I mean, this are just a few examples off the top of my head, and then there was another explosion I wanna say. In the early two thousands in Nigeria at the Skidrow refinery where they were processing l and g. Actually I think it was before that.'cause I know the whole liquid mercury in brittle mint, you can also call it liquid metal in Bri, in Brittle.'cause Mercury's not the only element that can cause this problem. And that was in a cold box that that sprung a big leak and it got everybody looking for mercury and trained in. LNG. So, you know, these things were happening. There were other less big events happening, plus our, our facilities were all getting older, right? Some of these things were built around turn of the century, some of these facilities early 19 hundreds. And then from there on, I think I know API has done a, I think a great job with the premier jobs of writing codes and standards and rps to try to help us manage those processes better, avoid those kinds of issues. And then you had OSHA come along back in the, like, say 19 91, 92 timeframe. Answer to some of those earlier failures. And there were other failures going on too, just again, not as big. That came out with the Pro 1910 0.119 process safety management rule, which obviously includes a section in there on mechanical integrity. So we saw those things happening prior to that too. A lot of, and I was an owner operator for many years and, and a lot of management, I think had the initial. Attitude of, oh, regulations are just going to strangle us. It took a while I think, for the industry to see that, that things like mechanical integrity and reliability can not just peacefully, but successfully coexist when done right. So anyway, I, I think, at least for us here in the US and simultaneously, I mean, we had the the failure in the. Of that Oxy platform that there were a lot of fatalities there, just like the perfect storm. Again, not so much anything related to corrosion or something, but just work processes and the left hand, not knowing what the right hand is doing, and realizing too that these failures don't happen in a vacuum. So back in the day. The, the inspection people were talking with the corrosion materials people, at least in the owner operator places that I worked at. But we weren't always talking with the process people or the operations people. We weren't being synergetic, we weren't being holistic about the way we implemented MI at the time. They kind of did their thing and we did our thing. We knew. How they operated the equipment had an impact on us, but we really weren't working together as a team. So that's another evolution I see we've gone through over the years is realizing that we need to work together as teams. We need to be more understand the interdependencies of what we do and how that can affect things. And, and so at API, you know, today, now you see because of that. Rps around things like integrity, operating windows, which really speaks to how process impacts things. We have 5 79 the fitness for service document now, which evolved out of that atmosphere. And, and really one of the organizations that was responding early on to some industry explosions is New American society, mechanical engineers. Of course there's the famous, I'm trying to m the Aldon, the Sultana, there was the infamous Sultana Steamboat explosion that occurred on the Mississippi River somewhere between like St. Louis and Memphis after the Civil War. That killed a whole bunch of people. And that's, you know, around and of course we had steam locomotives and, and other things, and, and we were seeing failures. Boilers were blowing up. And that would, you know, eventually spur some of the boiler rules that we have that came directly into our world, right? Because some of those behaviors and activities, metallurgies, inspection, all that kind of stuff are, are similar. You know, you can, you can migrate those from the steam industry over to the process industry. Just add a whole, whole lot more chemistry and metallurgy.

Branden Stucky: 8:51

Yeah. That, that's why it's boiler and pressure vessel code. Right.

Greg Alvarado: 8:55

Correct.

Branden Stucky: 8:55

we had a lot of issues with the boilers in the past. Yeah. Let me, let me back up. You were talking about API so you mentioned rps. Those are, are recommend recommended practices.

Greg Alvarado: 9:06

Yes.

Branden Stucky: 9:06

What is the difference just for anybody listening that doesn't know what's, what's the difference between an RP and a standard or a recommended practice and a standard?

Greg Alvarado: 9:14

A standard or a code.

Branden Stucky: 9:16

Well, the five ten's a standard, isn't it?

Greg Alvarado: 9:18

Five 10, the inspection code and it is a standard,

Branden Stucky: 9:22

Yeah.

Greg Alvarado: 9:22

there's a pressure vessel inspection code, and so

Branden Stucky: 9:26

yeah. Talk, talk, talk about those. What, what's, what's the differences between those? What.

Greg Alvarado: 9:29

yeah, typically speaking codes are at a minimum what you have to do, and those are usually referenced in regulatory documents or requirements, whether it's osha, absa in Alberta. The Australians are in the EU and the countries that belong to the eu, they have their basic rules. Those are not optional. If you say you do it, you have to do it, and you have to do something. So most people have adopted those like API for instance. Those are APIs, an ANSI accredited organization. Those are considered consensus standards, and that's why you'll see those typically followed. But you know, that was always the case. There was a transition there too, even after the existence of those codes. So for a while in the United States, in our territories, whether it's Puerto Rico St. Croix, whatever, and some states, they would follow the National Board rules instead of the 5 10, 5 70 rules or five 10 rules. But eventually the National Board realized that. Things like the five 10 code were more applicable than rules about boilers for heavy wall reactors making you know, cattle and catalyst ca catalyst reactions for refinery. So anyway, there, there were these things going on, and so the codes are things you have to do. So if, if you, in general, okay, there are a lot of ca but in general, and it's relatively accurate that a code is mandatory and a RP is a suggested, recommended practice you can use to not only comply with the code, but work smarter. Okay, so they're usually optional. A code's considered by most people a license to operate. If you don't comply with the code, you can be shut down by the regulator for not following the code. The RPS are optional.

Branden Stucky: 11:35

Okay. there's a lot of effort that's put into those rps,

Greg Alvarado: 11:38

Absolutely.

Branden Stucky: 11:40

just because they, people recognize that there is value right. In, in continuing to develop them and potentially, I mean, some of them have moved into standard form, haven't they? Or quote into a code.

Greg Alvarado: 11:51

They, they do, they do sometimes shift into a code. But what the RPS do is they help you, they give you options to operate smarter. So instead they, they help you. Like for instance, the five 10, you know, code has a 5 72 rp. The five 70 code has a 5 74 rp, so the RPS also help the users of those codes get their heads around the codes better so that they, they, it gives them more direction on how to do it.

Branden Stucky: 12:27

Okay. And, and you, you, you also mentioned national board, so I've, I've heard some people say, or state is a national board state.

Greg Alvarado: 12:36

Yep.

Branden Stucky: 12:37

what, what, what does that mean when people say that

Greg Alvarado: 12:40

That typically means that the chief boiler inspector for the state is much more heavily involved in what they're doing. The program has to be approved by the Chief boiler inspector of that state, not so in non code states, but.

Branden Stucky: 12:59

in, yeah, and so in non code states then who, who then decides

Greg Alvarado: 13:05

The non code state is typically totally governed by osha. So whereas, so that's a federal entity, right? Whereas the codes are a code state. Now you can have code counties are code cities where certain cities in that state aren't covered by the boiler code for that state are. What? What's called the chief inspector. The Chief boiler inspector for that state.

Branden Stucky: 13:35

Okay. All right. So I just, I wanted to make sure those were a couple terms that we talked about that you, you threw out there. So I wanna make sure that we, we at least kind of talk about'em and cover'em for anybody.

Greg Alvarado: 13:46

Yeah. And another important thing is that most operators who fall under OSHA 1910 0.119. Which is based on what kind of chemicals are you processing and how much of that chemical is there? They they at a minimum have to follow 1910 0.119. For us, it's paragraph J for mechanical integrity. And of course they have a whole lot of, you know, 13 or 14 other elements they have to comply with too. But what I've seen happen over the years is for the National Board to gradually turn more of that responsibility over to 5 10, 5 70. And in fact, in the National Board Inspection Code, there is a code book for the NBIC. They'll often now say. We recommend that if you're operating a chemical processing facility, you know, such as the refinery or a LNG plant or even a gas plant in the middle of nowhere, that you follow the more suitable codes like five 10 or five 70, for example. So five 10 especially pressure vessels. That's the other thing too about jurisdictions is some of them only handle pressure vessels. Some of them handle pressure. Our oversee pressure vessels and piping. So you kind of, kind of pay attention to each state and what they regulate.

Branden Stucky: 15:13

So, so bringing this back to kind of then versus now, I mean, it seems like. Right. Way back in the day, you mentioned the Steamboat incident during the Civil War. So from there forward, there was probably some level of people trying to figure out the jurisdictional pieces. Is it just that different places, different states, different cities are still continuing to try to figure out how they're gonna be governed? Or is it, you think it's more just they've been grandfathered in different ways? It seems like there's been a transition in a lot of different. Ways of transition.

Greg Alvarado: 15:50

Yeah. Well, I, I think another thing that's changed over the years is that we've done a good, a better job of educating the regulators,

Branden Stucky: 15:57

Yeah,

Greg Alvarado: 15:58

over time. And so they're willing to abdi, I don't know if abdicates the right word, but they're willing to let go of certain things as long as they go into a more logical bucket, so to speak. So, like I said, there's a national board inspection code. Which if you went back 15 years or so, they held on that stuff. Whereas about 15 years ago, we began seeing them let go of some of that and even write it into the code again. You know, we think it's more appropriate to you follow API types of codes for, you know, this type, these types of facilities.

Branden Stucky: 16:37

Yeah. Okay. How, how else have you seen.

Greg Alvarado: 16:42

The national board and the state boiler inspectors still pretty much hold on to boiler. So if you've got a plant with a code stamp boiler they're typically gonna go through whatever that frequency is. Every two years, they gotta have a boiler inspection. And that's usually a combination of, of the state boiler inspectors rules oftentimes being applied by authorized inspectors who work for. The underwriters. So usually the authorized, the asme, the national board authorized inspectors are either an owner operator or an insurer or work for the state boiler agency.

Branden Stucky: 17:27

Ha. Have you been a part of any of those boiler inspections

Greg Alvarado: 17:31

Yes.

Branden Stucky: 17:31

in the past? Yeah.

Greg Alvarado: 17:33

Many years.

Branden Stucky: 17:35

Do, do they tend to be routine? They're, they, they happen. So I guess my question is they happen so frequently. I've never, I've never been a part of it, but I know that, you know, they have such short frequencies on those boilers I feel like, I feel like now compared to back, you know, in the 18 hundreds we probably have. A bit better granted due to the progression in the codes and the standards. But like a, a two year interval seems so, so frequent based off of, you know, what we know now about the way things are designed.

Greg Alvarado: 18:13

Well, yeah, good point. I mean, there are times on certain types of boilers that an owner operator may justify an extension that usually takes a type of very scrutinized fitness for service. And then you present that to the state boiler inspector our chief. And oftentimes companies can get a deferral on those, or there's another name for it. I'm trying to, an exception to those if you can justify it. But yeah, I mean, I've been there with them and they're poking their heads inside the steam drums, the mud drums, the fireboxes, they're looking at the economizes, the Super eaters. They're looking at everything and, and we oftentimes, and the de aerators deaerator, remember, those are all part of that too. And we have had industry incidents back. I don't know of any recent, recent ones of de aerators blowing up because of corrosion fatigue, cracking and de aerators That's.

Branden Stucky: 19:15

there, there's a, there's a NACE document out about it, right?

Greg Alvarado: 19:18

Yeah. Yeah, we've, I think we tackled that a while back and

Branden Stucky: 19:22

Mm-hmm.

Greg Alvarado: 19:22

the importance of things like heat treatment. You know, that's another thing too I've seen happen over the years is we've learned, you know, after incidents like where you get failures with hydrogen induced cracking stress already, and hydrogen induced cracking, our corrosion, fatigue, cracking, and there are other ones, but we've learned over the years the importance of heat treatment and how heat treatment can get us out of susceptibility. To certain damage mechanisms. But then there's, was the heat treatment done right? Was it done thoroughly? Did we get everything we needed to? And that oftentimes was something difficult to to manage because sometimes repairs, even something as simple as a fillet weld on a vessel with wet H two s in it could lead to a cracking problem because. You thought the whole thing was heat treated, but somebody had done some repairs on it in the past. It wasn't really documented well or wasn't heat treated and you wind up with cracking issues.

Branden Stucky: 20:26

Yeah, lo, local heat treatment obviously can have its own, own issues of,

Greg Alvarado: 20:30

Yeah, yeah.

Branden Stucky: 20:31

stress, gradients.

Greg Alvarado: 20:32

But it can be a good practice as long as it's managed correctly.

Branden Stucky: 20:35

I, I once had somebody ask me, and I'll ask, I'll, I'll pose this question to you too and see what your thoughts are, but I once had somebody ask me if cost was not a factor. Is there any reason not to heat treat a piece of equipment before install and, and I'm not talking local, I'm talking the whole thing, right? If you had an oven large enough to be able to heat treat the entire thing once it's been fabbed up, if cost wasn't a factor, is there any downside?

Greg Alvarado: 21:06

Not that I'm aware of.

Branden Stucky: 21:07

Yeah. Right. So it's interesting when, when you start thinking about it, I, I, I couldn't come up with an answer, right? Stress, stress relief, heat treatment causes you know, solves a lot of problems when it comes to the, the stress radiance and, and cracking and, and resi, you know, all, all of the other issues that you can create. but it was an interesting question. I had somebody ask me, and, and I. I had the same answer as you. I, I don't think there's, I couldn't think of any reason why you wouldn't if, you know, if cost wasn't a a concern.

Greg Alvarado: 21:41

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would, I would reserve that for a bonafide metallurgist or experienced metal or blacksmith. Metallurgist. Those are the best ones. The, the blacksmith, metallurgist to me are, are worth their weight and gold. Yeah.

Branden Stucky: 21:58

What, what is what's the difference between a a, a regular metallurgist and a blacksmith metallurgist?

Greg Alvarado: 22:04

Well, somebody who's, for instance, gotten their degree and as a welding engineer is gonna be much more familiar with the, the heat impacts on metals than non and and the welding engineers, which I call the blacksmith types. They're gonna have a, in my opinion, the ones that I know have had a lot more hands-on experience with welding, seeing the impacts of welding. You know, that can be a pretty hairy thing. I mean, there are some huge, heavy pieces of equipment out there that in addition, or in the absence of heat in service may have, and, and chemicals may have some tremendous structural stresses on'em, like, big ions. With huge axles on them holding up hundreds of thousands of pounds of weight. I mean, when you consider, you start to get cracking in something like that and you've gotta repair it, and then if you've got some temperamental metal allergies out there, that can be a huge challenge. So, like I said, I'm, I mean, there's a lot of good metallurgists out there, but they all don't have that practical hands-on experience in the field. Some of the heat related issues.

Branden Stucky: 23:23

Gotcha. Yeah, there's I mean some, some facilities, they have people where their only job is just writing welding procedures. you know, they, they. Know the, they know the, the need the heat put, the heat input, the flock. They know all of those pieces so well that, you know, anytime they get to do repairs, like that's that person's job. Writing up the, writing up the procedures.

Greg Alvarado: 23:47

And cost is always an issue. Right. And that's why over the years I've seen too, we've been learning from one another. And now you see people that are able to affect the residual stresses in a heavy weld by doing temper bead welding, where they're actually using subsequent passes of welding. And heat treating and preheating and during welding heating to control the amount of residual stress in a weld

Branden Stucky: 24:22

Hmm.

Greg Alvarado: 24:23

or other things like soaking up hydrogen and then having hydrogen cracking problems later too. But I think we got most of those covered and, and, and there's all kinds of now micro alloying that can go into different metals and things like. To affect heat treatment, cracking, susceptibility, and corrosion. You know, like we learned about the residual elements, issues associated with equipment and hf alki service, right? We learned about the effects of micro alloying and high alliy furnace tubes, heater tubes like in pyrolysis. Furnaces are in reformer furnaces, catalytic heaters. So we've, I've seen a lot of improvement over the years in these things.

Branden Stucky: 25:11

It. And it's interesting how, it's interesting how those, those learnings that we've had have also driven technology. You know, PMI. ability to do PMI, I mean, that's such a cool, such a, for me, it's a, I don't know why. I think it's just really cool that you can just take A-A-A-P-M-I gun and all of a sudden it just tells you the whole. of of your piece of metal. So now you know that technology allows us to do a hundred percent PMI in our alies. You know, whereas 40, 50 years ago maybe not having that level of technology. You know, we don't really have the ability to figure that piece out. So now we gotta come up with a different way.

Greg Alvarado: 25:52

Yeah, that was, that was huge. Back when I started, we used to use these things called IDQ test kits, and we had basically one of those big block, what are those? Not nine volt batteries, but you know what I'm, I'm talking about like a half a brick, and they had.

Branden Stucky: 26:09

the, yeah. That you, that you, yeah, you put'em in like the little the little kids cars that that

Greg Alvarado: 26:14

I mean,

Branden Stucky: 26:15

around,

Greg Alvarado: 26:15

yeah, I'm not, these, the ones I'm talking about are like four inch square around, and they stand about five or six feet in six inches high. They have two tur. They used to be in the big floodlights or, and you know, the floodlights you could carry, they'd put those in there. But we used to hook those up to a a metal electrode and put some chemicals on a piece of Watman paper and see what color that turned and go through different chemicals to tell, Hey, does this have moly in it? Does it have nickel in it? But now we have, like you're saying, these different types of test instruments we can use for PMI. Are based on different principles, and you have to pay attention to those too, because sometimes some of the most important elements for us to know if they're in that piece of metal or not can't be detected by certain other tools. And the rule of thumb I always use is things like carbon, things like sulfur. If you really need to know the amount of those elements in a, in a piece of metal. Then you might have to use something that's more like a an emission spectrometer type basis. But then some of the other ones, you can get 90% of what you need or even a hundred percent out of those. But carbon and sulfur are really important because you can't measure them with the other tools and you have to really pay attention to technique because there's so much carbon just in the atmosphere. You've gotta do a good job of surface preparation and, and technique and some of these things, technique matters.

Branden Stucky: 27:55

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Six volt battery is what you

Greg Alvarado: 27:58

That's it. Yeah. Thank you.

Branden Stucky: 28:03

So what, what else, I mean, in your experience, right? You've been, you've been in the industry for a long time, and what, what else has changed as far as mechanical integrity over the years for you?

Greg Alvarado: 28:16

Well people, I think people have gotten smarter and got their heads around looking at things programmatically.'cause now we're talking programs. And I don't mean computer programs, but I mean the way these things. These programs are structured in corporations and in plants and facilities. Like for instance, with 1910 0.119. Now you have to have a mechanical integrity procedure or a mechanical integrity document. Now you'll see in most companies, they'll have a corporate level policy document, and then they'll have a local level mechanical integrity procedure document that supports the corporate policy document. I've seen that evolution happen over the years that I think has helped. I think another thing that's that's happening today is we're becoming more holistic. We were tending toward hyper-specialization, but I think now we've seen the pendulum coming back the other way a little bit and realizing generalists do have an important role and they're the ones who have to figure out how all this stuff fits together.

Branden Stucky: 29:27

I, I was just gonna say, do, do you think that we're realizing the generalists are important or do we think that, do you think maybe that the drive of having to appease shareholders keep costs down has driven need for, you know, or keeping a handle on expenses and so has by, from that then caused us to just have more generalists and our generalists are having to just figure it out.

Greg Alvarado: 29:55

It's a combination of those things. I, I think one of the big changes I have seen, I don't think I know, and I'm glad you framed it the way you did, is we see less and less mentoring going on. I. People are just being thrown. Oh, you have a certificate, that means you can do it. Oh, you have a degree. That means you can do it. Just throw you out there. And we've lost the mentoring, which means we're losing critical thinking skills. We're losing the ability to capture past learnings and to pass those on so that people can have better critical thinking stills. And there's a myriad of reasons why I think that's happening. But again, the hyper special. I remember I read an article in Harvard Business Review about 15 years, 10 years ago that was talking about this, and they said, we need more general. We're afraid we're gonna lose the generalist, the people, because imagine the generalist is usually gonna be a specialist in some area. First of all, I, and one of the other things too is I think we undervalue the generalist. We think they don't, they don't add value. They're not really working. They're the general guy. They don't understand the difference between a face centered cubic crystal and a body centered cubic crystal and metallurgy or metallurgy or whatever. Oh, they don't know OMS law, you know, if it's an electrical type thing. So, you know, but usually the type of person I'm talking about is gonna have a strength in a particular area, whether it's. Mechanical, chemical, whatever, are a really seasoned inspection person, but they're gonna understand how all this stuff fits together. And so they're gonna help us create effective overall mechanical integrity or fixed equipment reliability programs, and now enter the enterprise asset management programs. So now we have computers. Back when I started, we didn't have computers at, at our desktop. And, and now too, we have with that CAD programs and the ability to create drawings and to manage drawings and the store drawings and things like in the old days we had blueprint machines and I could probably smell those things going down the hall with the chemicals in'em. And you'd come out with these three by five sheets of paper. With, you know, the, essentially the equipment drawings on'em or maybe some PFDs P and I Ds. So that's another thing that's happened too with OSHA coming along. Now you have requirements to have UpToDate P and IDs process and instrumentation diagrams, and people are being forced to, to understand the thermodynamics and the interdependencies in these units and how they operate. And I'll tell you, I think RBI had a huge. Risk based inspection had a huge positive impact on the industry because it forced people to try to understand how these things play on one another and lead to equipment degradation. So, and, and the other thing too is don't underestimate the value of the SME. So I see another potential pitfall is we become so dependent on. The latest shiny rock, which right now is is ai that you can't, you can't get everything out of ai. You know, you, when you get it outta there, you gotta validate it, make sure it's credible, but then we use models to be better predictors of how long a piece of equipment is gonna last. And then now we have onstream monitoring. We look at reliability, operating limits or integrity, operating windows, whatever you wanna call'em, safe operating limits, all kinds of stuff out there. Really, really good stuff with a lot of good promise. But if the generalist isn't there to help people understand how this stuff all fits together, we're, we're gonna lose the effectiveness. And I think we're gonna lose efficiencies. You're gonna see a lot of rework being done because we painted ourselves in the corner. Before we started this big, let, let's say it was an automation implementation, say an enterprise asset management program. But if we didn't understand the work process from beginning to end and how it comes full circle, we may be doing a lot of rework. And wishing we'd have say, created our equipment hierarchies differently. Our naming conventions. People talk about like one real popular tool is SAP and they talk about functional location numbers on equipment. You know, I've had, I've seen people have to go back and take years to totally redo the way their equipment was organized to effectively implement an initiative. It's, but they could have anticipated if they had the right people engaged in the beginning, but they.

Branden Stucky: 35:01

or, or they didn't know, right. I mean, or they didn't know. I mean, how many, how many companies out there do you think if you asked them if they, knowing now what they know, would they have changed the way that they set up their SAP Maximo ERP, whatever, right? Like, yeah. At the, at the time when you set it up, you're like, all right, this is the best path. This is the best option we have. it may not be the best, but the best overall, but it's, it's what we got for right now. And as you start building those things, I mean, they become behemoths and so difficult to try and, and make those changes after the fact. You, you, you, it's, it's really difficult to have that foresight. It, you know, 10, 15 years out of how you're gonna be using it and, and what it's gonna look like.

Greg Alvarado: 35:43

I had a good buddy ask me the other day, Hey Greg, you know,'cause there's people that naturally debate over different aspects of technology. I'll just use example. The generic failure frequencies and API RRP 5 81, the RBI document, Hey, we're gonna go to this other, we think we're gonna go to this other technology That calculates it a different way, right? And they're still not systematizing their circuits correctly in the refinery. I'm like, we gotta get the blocking and tackling right first guys. Okay, let's get the blocking and tackling right. First, let's get our heads around this stuff, then let's move in. This that reminds me of too often we try to be efficient before we're effective, and when we do that, we may catch ourselves doing the wrong thing faster.

Branden Stucky: 36:33

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, RRBI has been, i'll, I'll call it a buzzword. I think people, maybe it's losing that, that piece. It's'cause more people, more and more people are moving towards it as opposed to, you know, AI's a real buzzword. But can't tell you how many times I've had people come to me and say, Hey, you know, we wanna start an RBI program. The first question I ask, you know, here's the list of things that you need to be able to do that. And, you know, they may not have all they're, they're missing you one forms, they're missing design drawings, you know, they're missing some of the basic pieces or, you know, they're, they're still trying to get their p and IDs updated, you know, to, to match what, what they have. It's, they're, there's a lot of things that you gotta get, as you said, the blockchain tackling in place first. Go. Going back real quick, you mentioned generalists. It, it, it, it sparked something in my brain. I'm reading a book right now by Reid Hoffman, called blitzscaling. And, and so he's a, a VC guy venture capital guy. He is part of Air, Airbnb and LinkedIn and whatever. And it's interesting you talk about the role of generalists because in, in the book he talks about how. If you're trying to get going and trying to get started, having a generalist or a group of generalists, he feels is so much more valuable than specialists because you can give a generalist, right? That we're, we're putting people into groups here, but, take being able to take a generalist who can kind of do a little bit of everything. If you're trying to develop something into being more, like developing a, a mechanical integrity program, are important to be able to deal with those those nuances and, and like what are the technical pieces that we need? But the generalist is there to be able to understand how everything is involved, how all those different pieces touch each other. And that's kind of what he was getting at in the book, is having a a, a group of generalists to be able to, to scale something up is important because they can do that. They think that way, they can see that way. And then once you get through a certain point, then you start bringing in some of the specialists to help drive more of the, I'll call it the technical piece. It's, it was just interesting that, that you, you called out generalist and that was just a, a part that I had just gotten through in that book. And then the, the SME piece, you know, I think we're starting to see, know, I, I guess I don't know in the past, did we have the types of SMEs that we have now, or did we really truly have a lot more generalists? Back in the day

Greg Alvarado: 38:52

Oh no. We had SMEs and we had ULAs. Oh yeah. And, and if you look at things, if you look at models, predictive models, those predictive models need to be acid tested by the SMEs in that area. Right. And the generalist at some point will get engaged from, you know, how does all this stuff fit together? And then your costing engineers or your cost people, which your generalists may have that kind of person there too, but at the end of the day, the juice has got worth the squeeze, right?

Branden Stucky: 39:31

Yeah, always.

Greg Alvarado: 39:32

And so what, what, where I see us moving today, and what made me think about this mainly is financial management, but it's in these predictive models identifying uncertainty in the model. And then managing that uncertainty based on the criticality of the decision that needs to be made with that information. So sometimes it's important to get really accurate or maybe even precise, but most of the time it's probably not. And it's understanding when it's worth it to be more accurate and when it's not. But that also to me, says. I gotta have a good model. I gotta have a model that's considering the things that could affect the output or the answer so that I can manage this thing better with this information and this answer it's just that I don't wanna be any more accurate than I need to be.'cause I don't wanna spend any more money than I need to in order to achieve the desired level of reliability or safety.

Branden Stucky: 40:37

I mean, the crux of that right, is, is fitness for service level one, two, and, and three, assessments, right? I mean level, level one assessment. don't need a lot of information. You're just looking, you're looking. Things up in a, in a table or you know, on a, on a chart or a a, you know, a graph. You're, look, you're, you're looking at comparing, but then you get to a level three assessment. If you don't, if, you know, if you fail the one, the two, and then you get to a level three, I mean, you're going through full on FEA meshes, you know, now that level of accuracy, that level of precision goes up. And to, to be able to, to figure out if you, you know, where you're at. So I, I, I think that's a, a, a really good, a really good way of saying that. Figuring out, you know, saying that you want to have the right level of accuracy for, for, for the right level of reliability.

Greg Alvarado: 41:27

Yeah, that, that's basically you wanna achieve whatever level of reli. Let's say I wanna, I wanna run my chemical plant or my refinery at a 95 or 97% reliability, but I wanna spend as little money as possible to do that. That's fair. That's fair. You know, with this level of safety. And naturally I want to have a license to operate. I wanna do it safely. That's all those all need to be considered together and that's fair. I think what's happened to come full circle back to where we started in this conversation is if we look at if we understand what we want to achieve from the get go, that is gonna frame a lot of what this generalist, who's putting these things together. Really needs to be aware, has to be aware of here's what we ultimately wanna accomplish right now. Let's put together something that's gonna make that work. Another thing that I think gets lost is when people are coming up with these big integrated software programs, which by the way is pushing holistic thinking and holistic integrated management, is you gotta think about how people work. At the end of the day, these initiatives have to be sustainable. And if I'm gonna be pushing this down on top of people, that they're pulling their hair out, trying to make it work, what good is that? They're not gonna do it. They're gonna look for workarounds. They're gonna look for shortcuts. I mean. I've heard these kind of complaints about it, about things like well, I don't wanna mention any software programs, but you can fill in the blank from the biggest, from an from enterprise resource planning and ERP perspective to an enterprise asset management perspective. Those things get more complex, but the people up at the top that are making these decisions, a lot of them have no earthly idea of how to. The troops in the field, the ground level people, what they have to do to make this happen. So I think a good generalist is going to think about that too, and help build work processes that actually make these people on our programs more effective and more efficient.

Branden Stucky: 43:51

I totally agree. The, the number of times that I've heard people complain about their programs and they say, well, this is what we got. This is what we were handed. We can't do anything about it. Just because I. Executive level or, or somewhere in that area was sold on, you know, certain features. And, you know, they haven't been in, those folks, haven't been in the trenches in, you know, 20, 30 years. Things have changed. So yeah, I totally agree with you on

Greg Alvarado: 44:16

User. User experience is huge.

Branden Stucky: 44:19

Mm-hmm.

Greg Alvarado: 44:19

friendliness. User experience is huge.

Branden Stucky: 44:22

Yeah, it's massive. So. All right. So, so to finish out here, you know what? What do you think for, for looking to the future, what do you think would be a good piece of advice to give to, let's call it asset integrity? Engineers, inspectors, somebody just coming out, maybe just coming out of the OUTTA college, just coming outta technical school, whatever, just got their cert. Knowing what you know now compared to. 25, 30 years ago, would you tell those folks as they start their journey in mechanical integrity? What, what to look out for, what to pay attention, what to, what type of attitude? What, what would you, what type of advice would they, because we've talked about, if we knew now what you, you know, what you knew then what, what advice would you give to folks now?

Greg Alvarado: 45:11

Well a lot, but one of the big ones up front is if these facilities were operated the way they were designed to be operated, if they were designed correctly, we wouldn't be seeing the failures and the problems that we are seeing. So pay attention to what goes bump in the night. Understand that equipment failures typically rarely happen because of one thing. Usually there's a series of things that break down, find out who the qualified people are that you can go to, and I don't mean qualified by certificate, the qualified by experience and proven performance, who you can go ask the questions of when you need to and don't make decisions you're not qualified to make. Nobody's making you do that. Go find the right people or in the right sources of information to help you do that. And the other thing too that I am, I'm concerned about going forward is the role of data. I think data is vitally important. It's very important. But data in the absence of knowledge, wisdom, discernment, can be very dangerous. We need to know context. Again, don't go get data that isn't gonna have value. I see people oftentimes recommending doing some type of inspection or buying some software program'cause they fell under the spell of some slick salesperson. Make sure you find some mentors that you can grab onto some sources of information you can grab onto to help you with your critical thinking skills.

Branden Stucky: 46:55

Those are all very, very good pieces. I think the, the last one, finding a good mentor. You, you mentioned it earlier in this discussion that, you know, mentorship isn't something that's happening very often now. but I think having a good mentor something that can. Help you so much, whether it's a mentor that's in this field, a mentor personally, professionally, whatever, somebody to be able to to use as a sounding board and to, to hawk through decision making, building your skillset, working with a person. I, I think, having mentors is, is like. Really key. Now I come from a, I come from a, a, you know, a, a past of coaching. So, obviously I'm gonna think that that mentorship is important. But I really, really do think that it's something that is, is, can, can help turbocharge people in, in not just, not just their careers, but also their lives too.

Greg Alvarado: 47:57

Yeah, I, I think two, two other things that are even more fundamental, Brandon, but they go hand in hand is to have a passion about what you do and have a good work ethic and, and don't get so in a hurry that you sacrifice quality of whatever it is that you're doing.

Branden Stucky: 48:18

Yep, exactly right. That's exactly right. Alright, Greg. Well as always, it's good, good chatting with you and you know, until next time.

Greg Alvarado: 48:29

Thanks, Brandon. Good chatting with you too, buddy. Looking forward to it.

Branden Stucky: 48:33

Yeah. See it. Bye.

Greg Alvarado: 48:34

a good one. Bye now.

48:35

Thank you for listening to Upon Further Inspection, a Mechanical Integrity podcast. This episode was co-created by inspection, hearing, and Core solutions. Our producers are Nick Schmoyer, Jocelyn Christie and Jeremiah Wooten. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or professional's advice. Listeners should seek their own qualified advisors for guidance. If you enjoyed this episode. Please join us next time wherever you listen to your podcasts. Until then, stay safe and stay informed.