Making The Most Of Our Pipelines

As pipelines from bygone eras have started to fail and we have entered what many consider an asset management crisis, many believe it’s a matter of aging infrastructure. Travis Wagner, vice president of asset management with Pure Technologies’ engineering division, takes a different view.

“I’ve seen hundred-year-old pipe that looks as good as the day it was put in the ground and I’ve seen 15-year-old pipe that was Swiss cheese,” said Wagner during an interview with Water Online Radio. “It’s all dependent on site conditions, how it was installed, all kinds of different elements that cause pipe to deteriorate and fail.”

Along with the sweeping digital revolution, the focus on maintaining buried infrastructure has come to involve robust data collection and management. To narrow down the real root cause of failures, a comprehensive knowledge of the pipeline has become essential.

“We just need to think better, think smarter, and put the right tools in the right place to get the information we need,” said Wagner. “Think about it in terms of your house or car. You put a little investment in and now it’s going to last years and years longer than it would otherwise. We need to be thinking about our pipes in the same manner.”

To hear more about how investing in pipeline data can save on repair costs, tune in below.