Case Study: Alyeska Pipeline Service Company | Compliance Management: A Comprehensive Approach to Assuring Management Actions and Commitments

Case Study: Alyeska Pipeline Service Company
Compliance Management: A Comprehensive Approach to Assuring Management Actions and Commitments

One of the longest, most important and most regulated oil pipelines in the world faced a significant challenge: after a comprehensive internal audit of the corrective action process, it was discovered that Alyeska Pipeline Service Company (Alyeska) had more than 60 different methods of identifying problems and correcting them. Officials at Alyeska knew that they needed to streamline their approach to monitoring safety issues, environmental surveillance, maintenance and overall quality efforts to operate the safest and most efficient pipeline system possible.

The good news is that Alyeska found a solution. The product selected by Alyeska was CATSWeb by AssurX. To learn more about how Alyeska selected CATSWeb and leveraged it to significantly improve its operations, read on.

Understanding the Challenge
After an internal audit of the corrective action process a few years ago, Alyeska’s leadership knew they wanted to improve in some important areas. But when your “office” stretches across more than 800 miles of pipeline, crosses three mountain ranges and 34 major rivers and features the work of 2,000 employees, that’s a pretty tall order.

But understanding and addressing challenges is nothing new at Alyeska. Since pipeline startup in 1977, Alyeska has operated with an innovative, positive mindset based on the concept, “As long as there’s oil…we’ll continue to move it.”

And move it Alyeska does. The Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is an engineering marvel that today moves approximately one million barrels of crude oil per day from Alaska’s North Slope to the Port of Valdez. And don’t forget that TAPS must work closely with more than twenty primary regulatory bodies, including the Department of Transportation, Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Coast Guard.

It’s a big job to manage. In order to improve their operations, Alyeska wanted to better define how their formal business processes should work and then find a tool to adapt to their process – not the other way around. Key to Alyeska’s needs was flexibility, said Mel Jessee, Regulatory Compliance Specialist. “The process always comes first, the tool comes second,” he said.

More than crude oil flows through TAPS; there is also a heavy flow of information and regulatory commitments. In 2002, Alyeska set a standard to close 90% of high and medium priority commitments in a timely manner for regulators.

In early 2003, the overall monthly delinquency rate ranged between 5% and 20%. Alyeska knew it could do better, and sought a partner to help it reach that goal.

Addressing the Challenge
In order to improve their operational efficiency, Alyeska knew that it must first get a clear understanding of its strengths and weaknesses, then invite service providers to show how they could help address those issues, and finally conduct a rigorous evaluation to find the right partner.

The Alyeska team identified four key shortfalls in their process:

Lack of an intuitive tool, linkages to other processes, and standardized prioritization
User difficulty with the current tool has led to the creation of duplicative tracking databases
Reporting lacked an easy way for employees to gather data and create adhoc reports because of the difficult user interface; and
Lack of linkages with other processes has led to commitments to regulators becoming unfunded during the course of the year, making compliance more difficult.

Alyeska’s overall commitment was to develop a Management Actions and Commitments (MAC) program, that would provide assurance to regulators and the public that environmental, technical and safety related commitments and corrective actions are being effectively managed.

“Adequate and appropriate means and procedures for the detection and prompt abatement of any actual or potential condition that is susceptible to abatements...which at any time may cause or threaten to cause a hazard to the safety of workers or to the public health or safety, or harm or damage to the environment.”

“We take this commitment seriously,” Jessee stressed. “We wanted to back our strong words with even stronger actions.”

To do that, Alyeska used MAC as its corrective action process (CAP). The TAPS compliance model relies on formal business processes to monitor and ensure on-going compliance and conformance. When real or potential deficiencies are discovered, the CAP captures, tracks and helps ensure the resolution of the situation.

Continued