How much time and money is spent QA/QC'ing inline inspection reports?
How many revisions are required before a correct report is received?
How many times do we accept a final report only to find more errors?
These are questions one client grappled with when we embarked on a journey with them to design a vendor portal - a webpage that allows for the exchange, review, and tracking of pertinent ILI information between vendors and operators.
Development
If you’ve tried comparing an inline inspection report across different companies or technologies, you’ll understand the importance of reporting standards, not just to ensure that the depth of a dent, for example, is in the same column for both reports but that the length of the dent is determined and reported in the same manner.
To that end, the client's first step was to create a comprehensive reporting standard that covers all aspects of an inline inspection report, including the correct vocabulary, reporting methodologies, calculations to use, units to report in, etc. The client designed an ILI reporting standard to apply to all ILI technologies employed by the pipeline operator and all business units
The client and our development team then designed a vendor portal within CIM that allows vendors to upload ILI reports and automatically checks the file according to the client’s comprehensive ILI reporting standard, utilizing at least 100 different validation checks. The portal then provides feedback when the ILI report doesn’t meet requirements until the client receives a report in the proper format.
How the Portal Works
An ILI vendor logs into the vendor portal and uploads a report. The ILI report is then reviewed in real-time, running a series of automated checks, including checking that the correct spreadsheet template was used, that the formatting is accurate and that all values are permissible. If any errors are found, they are immediately provided to the uploader, providing detailed information on the error, what it is, and where to find it, i.e., the column, row, or cell. Once the file is checked and there are no errors, a process button is activated. Upon clicking this button, the client is notified that a QA/QC’d file has been uploaded into CIM. The client can then access that file in Assessment Planning and conduct a pre-analysis of the data, e.g., check the GIS – ILI alignment, the alignment of the current ILI to previous ILI reports, etc.
Value Added
The client implemented the vendor portal in May of 2024. Since then, the vendor portal has:
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dramatically reduced the number of revisions from 3 revisions per ILI on average to 1 revision out of every 3 ILIs
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reduced the processing time from 2 to 3 days per inspection to now 0.5 to 1 day
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increased on-time delivery from 76% in 2023 to 92% in 2024
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replaced contracted supporting services totaling over $700K
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allowed for more rigorous data checking than what was previously being done
Other positive feedback received includes:
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The ingestion validation tab, which provides an overview of all the approved ILI reports gives the client real-time information about which reports have been QA/QCd.
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ILI vendors are provided error logs that provide useful information on how to fix the error (and not just that there was an error.)
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The ILI vendor only sees its data and not the data of others.
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Easy to use familiar interface
What's Next?
The client and CIM team are working to implement additional checks to ensure the correctness of the ILI data. The more data validation that can be completed upfront, the more efficiencies are created downstream.
Additionally, the CIM team is working to understand how to create a more generalized vendor portal where pipeline operators can select the rules and conditions they would like to apply upon adoption.
The Vendor Portal is available now in CIM. Contact marketing@onebridgesolutions.com for more information.
