In October 2020, I had the opportunity to present at the GPA Midstream 2020 Virtual Fall Technical Conference on how to prepare the control room for a PHMSA audit. As we enter 2021, this topic is increasingly relevant as PHMSA continues to perform audits as part of their three-year inspection plan and increases the rate of inspections through virtual remote inspections.
That is why we put together a comprehensive new whitepaper diving into the most important areas related to preparing the control room for a PHMSA audit. I encourage you to follow the link below to download the whitepaper and share with your team.
*** DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER ***
What’s Included in the Whitepaper on PHMSA Audit Prep?
The new whitepaper walks through the entire process of advancing to the desired state of control room audit readiness. It doesn’t matter what your starting point is. You could be hamstring by manual processes that lead to error and disorganization. Or, you could be tabbing through multiple pieces of software trying to gather documents and records to satisfy an audit.
The whitepaper will answer your questions about how to arrive at the assurance that your control room is prepared to validate compliance in the control room. This requires a few critical prerequisites:
- You need a plan. Do you know what you’re supposed to be doing?
- You need documentation. Do you have evidence that you’re following the plan (e.g. shift notes, abnormal operating condition logs, and shift handover notes)?
- You need systems. Do your current systems support your ability to follow the plan and organically generate evidence?
In the whitepaper, I unpack how these questions drive toward what we call natural compliance. In other words, how do you blend together processes that support the work that needs to be done in the control room with the processes that support your ability to support compliance.
Here’s a sneak peek at the answer: natural compliance occurs when pipeline personnel perform their daily tasks using tools designed to streamline their work, and where those tools natively create and store records so they are available for audit and analysis. Basically, “I do my work, while records are created automatically in the background.”
Natural compliance is not a destination, however. It is an ongoing journey based on continuous improvement that requires constant self-evaluation to ensure that compliance is happening naturally in the control room.
The whitepaper addresses each of these steps on the journey to provide you and your team with guidance:
- Primary Challenges on the Journey to Audit Readiness
- Is your control room affected by common recordkeeping issues?
- Rooting Out Challenges in the Typical Recordkeeping Process
- What are the common errors with pen and paper recordkeeping?
- What are the common challenges with spreadsheet-based processes?
- Starting the Journey of Natural Compliance: The Ideal Recordkeeping Process
- Do you have a plan?
- Do you have a system?
- Preparing for the PHMSA Audit
- Are you utilizing the appropriate software tools?
- Do you have a single repository for documents?
- Are your internal policies and procedures linked to external regulatory documents?
Work With EnerSys to Achieve Natural Compliance
We recognize that preparing the control room for a PHMSA audit doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There are many moving parts — both from a program management perspective and a human perspective.
That’s why we developed multiple pieces of software that we package with our industry-leading advisory support to provide pipeline operators with an all-in-one solution to prepare the control room for the audit.
- POEMS ComplyMgr: Tools for program management.
- POEMS CRM Suite: Tools for controllers and control room managers.
- Compliance Log: ComplyMgr and CRM Suite share tools for audit support.
Our software tools are intuitive and appropriate for supporting both the needs of doing the job and supporting the audit. When harmonized, operators can achieve natural compliance.
– We invite you to download the whitepaper to find out more about the journey to intelligently prepare the pipeline control room for a PHMSA audit.
– We also invite you to schedule an educational demo of our software tools or schedule a consultation with our team. Our subject matter experts Dale Schafer and Ross Adams are available to discuss preparing the control room for an audit.
We will guide you through the process of using tools to gather people, teams, documents, and records to satisfy the audit, including helping you perform a mock audit. To discuss how we can help through software and support, contact Dale or Ross at 281-598-7100. Or, email sales@enersyscorp.com or complete the contact form on our website.