While Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) continues to pay a heavy price in state regulatory penalties and fines for its response to the San Bruno natural gas transmission pipeline rupture and explosion, the San Francisco-based utility still struggles with an intensive effort to modernize its gas system recordkeeping.

One part of PG&E’s troubled response since the Sept. 9, 2010 explosion has been a paper chase that is targeted to end early next year and eventually result in a fully up-to-date, digitized recordkeeping system to replace a hodgepodge of paper and computerized files currently being used. Under mandate from state and federal regulators, PG&E is attempting to make sure “no rock is left unturned,” according to Sumeet Singh, director for asset knowledge management, who has been managing the records review.

PG&E has scanned and indexed about 70% of the records required for validating the maximum allowable pressure (MAOP) in critical parts of its 6,750-mile transmission pipeline system. This has led to MAOP validation for about 40% of the pipeline system.

The utility developed a “sound and robust process” for developing a “traceable, verifiable and complete” chain of information on each component of its vast transmission system, Singh said. That means every valve, fitting, elbow and pipe segment has to be clearly marked in the electronic system and accessible.

That was not the case for the critical segments of PG&E’s 30-inch diameter (Line 132) section of transmission pipe that failed in San Bruno, and in fact, what information was eventually retrieved was incorrect. PG&E has accepted responsibility for the failure to live up to its pipeline integrity management program (see Daily GPI, Dec.15, 2011).

Some 98% of PG&E’s disjointed field pressure test records were found in 41 offices spread about its service territory. To get at the last 2%, the utility rented part of a former San Francisco conference and entertainment center, the Cow Palace, to establish a 24/7, five-day operation using 1,500 utility employee volunteers to cull through company-wide financial records for its gas, electric and generation operations.

PG&E chose a vast public meeting structure because the financial records were housed in a “Costco-like” warehouse facility in South San Francisco where there were narrow aisles and boxes stuffed with individual files that literally were stacked 10 feet high. “All we had were vast boxes of records in this warehouse,” Singh said. “There was no ability for us to maneuver with that facility.”

“We went though all of those past job files to identify if there were any pressure test reports that we may not have been able to locate as part of our other search efforts. What we identified as a result of that were the rest of the documents that weren’t in the field information offices.”

He said the human assembly lines tearing through boxes, with engineers identifying the importance of the files, helped PG&E prioritize where it needed to put its focus going forward. It also helps with the ongoing hearings by the California Public Utilities Commission on PG&E’s $2 billion pipeline safety enhancement plan, Singh said.

Ultimately, all the records found to be critical for keeping track of the pipeline system are going to be centralized, scanned, indexed and stored in an electronic data base, Singh said.

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