Episode 9 - RBI Was the Way of the Future (featuring John Reynolds)

In episode nine, 'RBI Was the Way of the Future,' Branden and Greg continue their conversation with industry legend John Reynolds. Join us and hear about the evolution of mechanical integrity practices through John’s shared experiences and expertise. 

In part two of this three-part series, the discussion traces the history of risk-based inspection (RBI), detailing its evolution from the nuclear power sector to its codification in API 580 and API 581 standards. Discussing the early days of RBI in the 1990s, the transition from time-based and condition-based inspection to RBI's formalized process. John shares insights from his tenure as the API 581 committee chair, recounts how he advocated for the shift towards RBI to improve industry reliability and safety. This episode also touches upon the challenges inspectors face with data overload and emphasizes the need for effective data analysis to prevent major incidents.

The final episode, "Brilliant Whiz Kid" is now available, also if you missed part 1, "The Mountains We Still Need to Climb", please listen here. 

00:25 Early Days of RBI

03:35 The Evolution and Impact of Risk-Based Inspection

08:29 Challenges in Data Analysis for Inspectors

14:14 Conclusion 

+++++++++++

Episode Acronyms & Abbreviations

 API 580 – Risk-Based Inspection

API 581 – Risk-Based Inspection Technology

API RBI – Equity Software’s RBI desktop software available through PlantManager

CBI – Condition-based Inspection

CML – Condition Monitoring Locations

FEMI – Fixed Equipment Mechanical Integrity

MI – Mechanical Integrity

PSSAP – Process Safety Site Assessment Program

RBI – Risk-based Inspection

TBI – Time-based Inspection

TML – Thickness Monitoring Locations

Thank you for listening to Upon Further Inspection! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss the next one. 

 We’d love to hear from you—connect with us on LinkedIn and share your thoughts on the episode. Have ideas for future topics or guests? Email us at inspectionpodcast@gmail.com.

Join us next time, wherever you get your podcasts. Until then, stay safe and stay informed.

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

Branden 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.

0:20

This is episode nine. RBI was the way of the future. Today we are continuing our conversation with John Reynolds

Greg 0:43

Hey, John, I'm gonna ask a, a question here too, Branden, is, can you just share a little bit with us about your memories as the 581 chair? like when you took the A-P-I-R-B-I, chair position and what it was like back in the day with that RBI committee and you were there for a long time in that role. John, can you share some stories with us about that?

John 1:08

Well, that's, that's interesting that you should ask'cause I'm sure you have as good a memory of it as I do. But when it was back in the 1990s that we got together at API, and I had been looking at, RBI. In the power industry. They power industry was leading, was the leading industry in implementing risk-based inspection.

Greg 1:33

Was it the nukes, John?

John 1:34

Yes. You're you're quite right. It was primarily the nuclear industry in power. And, we got together and I think you were involved at that time as well as myself, and convinced the, the powers to be at the API that we ought to codify risk-based inspection within the refining and petrochemical industry. Yeah. And that, that then gave birth to API 580, which everybody's aware of has all the features and important aspects of RBI that all RBI processes must adhere to in order to be valid. And then eventually gave rise to 581, which was the, API methodology on which the, API software is built for risk-based inspection. So, yeah, that was what, 30 years ago or, or thereabouts, that we got together and, and convinced the API that RBI was the way of the future. And, we should, move from time-based inspection, TBI as we call it, into condition-based inspection, CBI, as we called it to this third method risk-based inspection. And the, the rest is history. Glad you asked about that, Greg.

Greg 2:54

Oh my pleasure, John. And you know, I remember the, some of the people involved, I remember, was it Ron, John Blackburn and, uh, will Carter and um, uh, Neil Horowitz. I think a couple of those guys may have held the chairmanship to the RBI before you came along, but as far as I know, you were the longest standing RBI group chairman. And it did start out. A lot of people may not realize that this is, it started out as, as owner operators only. It was an owner operator effort That changed later. But anyway, interesting stuff. Right? You are, thanks, John.

Branden 3:35

John, after going through the, the time-based and then the condition based and then being a part of the risk-based. what are your thoughts around risk-based method? The, whether it's 580 qualitative, whether it's quantitative, how do you feel having all of your years of auditing and your expertise on mechanical integrity do you think that there really is truly value there for people to move to that approach?

John 4:01

Oh, without doubt, I'm a big proponent of moving from condition based to, risk-based inspection. it focuses the mind on, where the higher risks are now. And it's not that some of that didn't go on, before risk-based inspection was brought about. but risk-based inspection, basically standardized the, procedures for how to focus inspection activities on the highest risk, issues. And, before that time, you know, it was in time-based and condition-based. There was a lot of wasted effort, spending a lot of, and wasted might not be the the right word, but efforts that could have been better utilized by focusing them on higher risk potential, as opposed to just, setting TMLs, CMLs, all over the place and taking tons and tons of data and, and having to work with it all on the same basis. It focused the mind on where are the really higher risk issues that could cause the largest cont catastrophes, the largest releases, and less, effort put on, lower risk issues that are more likely to result in just leaks or problems that, that wouldn't be the kinds of catastrophes that we really need to avoid. So there isn't any doubt in my mind that those companies that have higher risk, opportunities for, inspection practices should be and are moving to risk-based inspection practices. Is is that what you're getting at Branden?

Branden 5:49

Yes, it is. And, and do you think now I'm going, now I'm getting even further out here. Do you think that folks need to move to a risk-based approach to be able to become safer or, or to run safer and more reliably? Or do you think that there's a phase before that or, or even in conjunction of just being more intentional with their programs, to improve the reliability. Like do you think you have to have to do RBI to improve your reliability or do you think there's also a phase there before that where just being more intentional with your programs and and, and addressing a lot of, well, probably a lot of the things that you find in your audits, to, could, could help improve the reliability?

John 6:30

Oh, indeed. there are a lot of reliability issues within our industry besides. Risk-based inspection. And I'm, I'm also convinced that condition-based inspection based on, damage mechanism review and corrosion rates, et cetera, is, it's actually a type of risk analysis, but it isn't as formalized as RBI is. So yes, you can do a good job with, condition-based inspection and all the other codes and standards that we publish, and implementing all the other issues. you know, as, as I said in my first book multiple times, there are 101 essential elements of fixed equipment, mechanical integrity, and risk-based inspection is just one of them. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, you can do a really good job, without. Formalized risk-based inspection, but those that are dealing with higher risk, meaning the probability and consequence of having explosions fires, huge process safety events, yes. If you have those to deal with, you should be moving to, or, and implementing RBII am absolutely convinced of it, but those that don't have the high degree of risk, in other words, higher probabilities of failure, higher consequence of failure can probably continue to do as good a job with standard condition-based, programs.

Branden 8:06

Yeah. I've seen some really good programs out there that include RBI and I've also seen some, some really good programs that don't. So I was just curious, your, your thoughts after working through for as long as you have, being so involved with the development of pretty much all of MI here in, in our industry. Just curious your thoughts on that progression.

Greg 8:28

John, I'd like to get your thoughts on, I remember you gave a presentation at the inspection summit. I don't remember if it was at the one where you gave the keynote, but you, gave a presentation on some trends and result from results you guys had been seeing in the P-S-S-P-S-A-A. P audits or whatever the process safety audits. and I remember you, you had like a top 10 hit list of after somewhere near a hundred audits, here's what we're seeing and here's where we think are the 10 top potential areas for improvement. And I remember one of those was that inspectors are so busy today, a lot of them don't have the time to analyze the data. They're managing warm bodies, but they didn't have the time to analyze the data. And I know another one was that they have a mountain of data to deal with, and the data in there pointing to the bad actor equipment is only in about three to 5% of that mountain. And when I heard that, I thought, wow, you know, a tool like RBI where you're systematic, you're consistent. You go through the whole thing, you have the appropriate expertise, doing the appropriate checks in the different places that, that were really RBI is just one tool of others to help people screen and risk rank things that could help them find those needles in the, in the haystack or in that mountain that I think you were talking about. So John, would you speak to that a little bit and, and please correct me if I was inaccurate in anything I said.

John 10:10

No, no. I'm glad you brought that up. that is one of them, one of my concerns, long, longstanding concerns is that many inspectors are so overloaded with data taking that they don't have the time and emphasis from their management to spend as much effort on data analysis. Determining what all that data and information that they're collecting means as they do out taking the data. And I, I think we're making progress in that area with the many of the programs that are being implemented over the last decade or so. But, many of the incidents that we were finding in our audits, as a result of the investigations from, from significant incidents, we, one of the significant contributing factors was that the data was showing that there was a problem, but the data analysis wasn't sufficient to direct the attention of the appropriate people. To, to correcting the problem and implementing the, what, what should have been, those efforts in order to avoid, future incidents, leaks, major losses as much as there was on getting out there and, and taking more data. So I haven't said that as well as I would like to, but it, it was very true that, and I still think in, in a lot of cases today, that inspectors are overwhelmed with the amount of data that they have to take. that there, there isn't the, the, sufficient effort on, on the analysis in the audits that we were conducting for the P-S-S-A-P, the API Process Safety Site Assessment Program, one of the things that, that we, discovered was a few of the sites operating sites were having significant, improvements in, in this arena by focusing, senior inspectors and senior FEMI engineers on data analysis. While the less experienced, less knowledgeable, FEMI inspectors were out taking the data. So it was, they were, having some pretty good luck with the splitting the effort between data and those that should be doing data analysis and those, those that, could be out taking data and those, and as a result of that, they were finding more things that, that, they ought to be paying closer attention to. now with that said, I remember very well that in a very major incident that I was, on the investigation team, that was a huge loss of life and a huge, loss of, equipment as a result of an explosion in fire. when we went back in and looked at the data, the data in fact was pointing to the fact that there was a problem and that the corrosion rates had been increasing and some was likely to, to leak or in this case rupture. But unfortunately, the inspector involved didn't have time, or wasn't taking the time to look at the data, and, the result was a huge disaster. that had a huge impact on, on me, and that's why, you bring up the issue and I remember it well, that 20 years ago or whenever it was, I started to emphasize in, in my writings and in, in my talks to various groups, that we had to substantially increase the amount of effort and quality of, FEMI data analysis to at least ma match the amount of effort and, and, data quality that we were putting on taking the data. Is that what you're getting at, Greg?

Greg 14:10

Absolutely. Yeah. You hit the nail spot on. Thanks John

14:14

Thank you for listening to part two of our conversation with John Reynolds. If you missed part one, the mountains, we still need to climb. It's available now wherever you get your podcasts. And don't miss part three, the final segment of our conversation with John

Greg 14:28

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.