It was great for the Esri pipeline GIS community to be back in person at the Esri UC! Throughout the conference week, it was inspiring to hear first-hand about the awesome work being done by so many to solve business challenges, and for all attending to exchange ideas, knowledge, and common workflows.
Here’s a quick summary of some of the highlights:
Pipeline Kickoff Session
Jeff Allen’s “Location Intelligence Strategy for the Pipeline Industry” kicked off our pipeline industry-specific track. This hour-long session focused on the latest about how ArcGIS can best be applied to pipeline industry common workflows and tasks. A look ahead to program offerings for the balance of the week and year acquainted attendees with other sessions and activities of probable interest.
User Presentations
Williams Utility Network Implementation on PODS – Kelly Brawn described the experience of Williams as an early adopter of ArcGIS Utility Network on the PODS data model. Lessons learned through this experience may benefit other pipelines as they upgrade to the new pipeline data management capabilities available in the Utility Network.
Placer County Water Agency’s Evaluation of Aging Assets – Jeremy Shepard and Mackenzie Collins of the Placer County Water Agency talked about how they used ArcGIS Insights to identify and prioritize pipeline assets that needed replacement due to certain criteria. The process identified inaccurate data and further analysis showed what factors were and were not important. The result was a better understanding of prioritizing pipeline replacement needs.
Energy Transfer’s Digital Wall Map Solution – Adam Thomas of Energy Transfer, supported by Roxanne Burridge and Mike Wager of Tetra Tech, shared how Energy Transfer developed for a 360-mile project a digital wall map solution that enabled all project personnel to work from the same continuously updated dataset. The digital wall map helped Energy Transfer increase sustainability while efficiently maintaining continuity and accuracy.
ExxonMobil’s Stakeholder Engagement Program – Jamie Lambert of ExxonMobil presented how multiple field and office components of ArcGIS were leveraged in an integrated way to support real-time monitoring of pipeline easement stakeholder engagement. This allowed staff to monitor deadlines and track outstanding issues wherever they were working.
SAG Award
Boardwalk Pipelines earned the pipeline industry’s 2022 Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) award for its ongoing expansion of ArcGIS as their system of engagement. At this point, Boardwalk has implemented ArcGIS Enterprise portal and multiple web and mobile applications accessed by many of their employees across their wide geography. Included among these are a main web mapping application, multiple dashboards, real-time dashboards, and applications for such tasks and workflows as risk management corrosion compliance, anomaly digs, T(raceable) V(erifiable) and C(omplete) regulatory compliance. Now, Boardwalk is integrating ArcGIS with their IBM Maximo and Oracle accounting systems.
Successful and broad adoption of ArcGIS as their system of engagement had led to numerous stakeholders from across the organization to come forward with creative ideas on how to best leverage the platform to increase pipeline safety and carry on Boardwalk’s core mission to deliver energy in a safe and reliable manner. Using their configure first approach, Boardwalk IT and GIS staff can now rapidly prototype and deliver completed solution to the business faster, and more reliably, than ever before.
Pipeline Special Interest Group Meeting
Pipeline industry attendees spent time in this participatory meeting prioritizing trends and technology discussion topics of interest and then exchanging information and views on them. It was encouraging to see the high level of group energy and free sharing of knowledge and opinions.
Socials
The pipeline community continued its tradition of gathering on the Marriott Coronado Terrace for good food, music, and conversation. Best of all, it was a chance to get to know one another better and build community.
Sponsors
We want to give a special thanks to our sponsors who contributed to our socials, SIG, and with insightful presentations. Your contributions enhanced the quality of our pipeline track and was received with gratitude and appreciation.
