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Protective Coatings Asset Management: Maximizing the Investment

By D. Terry Greenfield, PCS | Published: September 20, 2016

Lou:

Welcome again everyone. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening to everyone who has joined us worldwide for what we believe will be an excellent presentation on “Protective Coatings Asset Management”. I’m Lou Frank, publisher of Corrosionpedia, the world’s largest web-based platform designed to help corrosion professionals. Corrosionpedia is honored to host today’s presentation featuring Terry Greenfield, a globally recognized expert in the field of protective coatings. He will address some of the latest technologies available for asset management, as well as tried and tested methodologies, especially with an eye on how asset owners and engineering firms can approach the topic in ways to maximize their investment. We’ll address several perspectives during the presentation.

Terry is well qualified to speak on this topic. He’s been working in the field for over three decades, he has earned virtually every NACE certification on the topic of coatings and is a NACE CIP lead instructor. He has authored several training courses for NACE International and was Chairman of the NACE CIP program for three years. Personally, he has worked with applicators and owners, some of the largest in the world through his firm CorroMetrics to assist in the development of effective asset management processes.

Terry, you and I have known each other for a long time, and it’s truly a pleasure to welcome you today.

Terry:

Thanks, Lou! It’s a pleasure to be here today. I’m looking forward being able to offer my perspective for our viewers today, sharing information on excellence in protective coating asset management has been a personal endeavor for many years, almost to the point of evangelism. Thanks for making this opportunity possible.

Lou:

You’ve got it, Terry. We’re excited to have you here. And we’re really pleased to have such a dynamic audience. Looking over the list of attendees, we’ve got professionals from all over the world joining us. I’m sure some of you in the audience have come with questions already in hand. Others of you I’m sure will have questions that arise during the presentation. At any time, just use that dialog box on the right side of your screen to post those questions. We encourage them. I promise, we’ll get to them immediately at the end of the presentation.

Terry, you’ve been in and around the coatings industry for a long time now. How long has CorroMetrics been around?

Terry:

CorroMetrics has been around for over 15 years now, Lou. We’ve been lucky enough to work with companies throughout the US, as well as many significant customers outside North America. In fact, our first customer, the work was in Asia.

Lou:

Wow! During our preparation for today’s webinar, you told me a funny story about a customer who called saying he’d done all the preps for a corrosion assessment, he performed the assessment, and then he had a real funny outcome. While we’re waiting for the rest of our audience to join us, how about telling everybody that quick story?

Terry:

You know, I have to be careful in telling the story, so we protect the guilty. But the situation was, a regulator had imposed a grading system—which we’ll talk about grading systems a little bit in the presentation under the Condition Survey portion—but they’d imposed a grading system for an industry that was basically work driven. Example being, if work or repairs to the coating systems had to be accomplished within a year, then it was a C, Charlie, or a lower grade. If work had to be accomplished within 3 years, it was B, Bravo, which is kind of a middle road grade. And then finally, if everything was great and there could be no foreseen work within three years, it was considered an A, Alpha. The regulator was talking to the owner and looking at their reports, and he noticed that all the facilities, the owner had listed has A, meaning there was no work needed to be done. The owner said to him, “I know your facilities and I know there’s a lot of work to be done, how can it be all as?” And the owner’s response was, “Well, I don’t have any money. I don’t have any money, I can’t do any work. So, they have to all be As.” We’ll talk about that a little bit when we look through this, and that theme, but the moral of that story is, it didn’t work out so well.

Lou:

Yeah, ouch, no kidding. That’s funny, Terry. Well, I think we’ve bantered long enough to allow for any late arrivals. Let’s move on with the presentation. We’re here today to talk not so much about you, Terry, but more about the opportunities and technologies available to those who are responsible for asset management.

One thing before we get started. Today’s presentation is sponsored by CorroMetrics. CorroMetrics provides technical and consulting services for industries utilizing protective coatings and linings… staff include certified Protective Coatings specialists and NACE Level 3 certified inspectors. The principle to have over 75 years of experience in the coating industry and provide services worldwide. The firm has extensive experience in a broad range of coatings related issues, even including failure analysis and expert witness services.

And one last reminder to everyone in the audience. Please, if you’ve got questions, post them anytime they come to mind during the presentation. There’s that dialog box down at the lower right side of your screen. I promise we’ll get to them right at the end.

Terry, it’s all yours.

Terry:

Thank you, Lou.

Okay, I guess to start a little bit, and we hear the word “coatings asset management”, we think it’s pretty easy to understand asset management when you look at trying to protect the fabric or the structure of various facilities, the process, equipment. I mean, those things, we understand that value, but we also look at typically coatings, protective coatings, or the method we use to mitigate and prevent corrosion on those materials. So, this is kind of a little thought and actually looking at the value that’s invested with coatings, as far as the insulation and how to best manage and get the biggest bang for the buck.

You know, one thing to understand, this has been something I’ve done really since about 2003. In a lot of the NACE conferences, we’ve had ongoing forums on coating asset management and looking at how industry was handling issues from different perspectives. So, there are some things that are common, and those are the things we really try to focus on. But one of things we’ll first look at are why coatings are important.

They’re a huge investment, if we fairly look— especially today with a high-performance coating systems and what it takes to install them—the cost, there’s a value within that of itself. When things go wrong, we really see that value when it has to be replaced. So, the first consideration is that they are a major investment and have a tangible value. They also provide that final look when we see storage tanks. When you see the condition and that presents… Very often, there’s—finding the right word—there’s an associated situation with that, that we look at if it’s in good shape, and it’s not rusting, and we tend to believe that it has integrity, and it’s doing well. So again, it’s that final, observable attribute that we see.

One of the things, too, there is typically today complex chemistries involved, and they’re assembled on site. One of my old analogies was looking at Christmas, when people would put together toys for their kids to see how many parts were left over at the end of the situation. Today, we have materials that show up as multiple components, they have to be mixed properly. they have to be installed for a set of process and certain parameters. There’s a set of rules to follow in the process, and because of the human involvement, it sets up a lot of variability that can create problems. Ultimately, they protect even more valuable resources. The consequences can be drastic when coatings fail and lead to corrosion, and there is penetration either from a structural standpoint and loss of structural integrity or loss of containment with vessels and piping. So, they perform a huge and valuable function in protecting the resources and the assets that they’ve been applied over.

The real value and the advantage comes at maximizing service life. We see a lot of, when looking at design memorandums and various things, we only see what the intended service life is. The intended service life is 15 years, and that’s achievable without extensive maintenance. That’s a huge value if it… Then you can look at the economics easily. If it fails in five years, then it has to be replaced—excluding the cost of litigation and everything along those lines, it hurts.

So, a lot of the ideas we’re going to present aren’t necessarily new, but they need to be ideas that are reheard and reiterated and driven home that they’re important is that, doing it right the first time is where we see the greatest advantage. So again, service life. And some of the things we’re going to look at with maintenance is really how that helps in maximizing and extending service life because that’s really where you’re going to see the large economic return for that investment. And again, consequential failure. Failure is never good, whether it’s with direct issues of structural failure or loss of containment, or the indirect associated with litigation and what it takes to remedy that situation. So, it’s one of the first things that’s why we say coatings and not paint. There is a huge investment, there’s a huge element of protection that they provide, and consequence of failure can be significant.

When we look at coatings asset management, one of the first things that I really want to try to hit home is you have to accept responsibility. Today, one of the trends that I see a lot, especially with design build or situations where the entire process is turned over to one party, and they’re expected to come up with the best solution and then held responsible. It may work; it may not. Some of the things we look at in most corporate environments, we’ve learned a lot of lessons. And we’ll talk about lessons learned a little more in the future, but accepting responsibility, where it’s a corporate philosophy that we’re going to use the lessons we’ve learned, we’re going to carry forth with how we do the bidding process, and low bidders aren’t always successful. Accepting responsibility and how we do the work.

In the past, I’ve always heard the term. We’re going to give it to a low bidder and hold their feet to the fire, and make them do it right. I can tell you from experience, that rarely works. That usually ends up being a problem. It’s understanding that the contractors have to be able to make money. If they bid the work where they can’t make money, they’re not going to utilize the resources that are going to be most advantageous to your project. So, responsibility means that that we—ultimately, it’s going to have that effect on our facilities—speaking as an owner—and we have to accept the responsibility to carry that forward. So, that’s a commitment to responsibility.

Philosophy is how we’re going to do things. We’ll talk about this, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time with that right now, but it’s understanding what we’re going to try to achieve within this corporate philosophy on coating Asset Management.

Execution. You know, it’s easy to talk about things and come up with great ideas; it’s another thing to actually follow through and execute. So, execution and follow through are going to be absolutely some key components.

Now, consequences of poor coating practices are pretty straightforward. I mean, the biggest one is going to be failure—structural failure, safety consequences, environmental consequences, operational failure, and they all tie with financial consequences. So, there’s a valid argument to look at how we install coatings within our facilities and how we manage those installed coatings for a return, to get the best return on that investment, which is really going to carry forth into the life cycle and how long it performs.

Straightforward, we’ve talked a little bit the benefits to the owner or the maximized service life. With good maintenance, maybe even beyond what we anticipated from a design standpoint, reduced lifecycle cost as a result of that, preservation of the assets, scheduled performance of operations, minimizing impact on operations. You know, painting crews coming in to do work are never welcomed with open arms in most facilities. It’s usually a trying time. If the work can be done during construction and fabrication and installed right with the immediate maintenance, then it has a great minimum impact on future operations throughout that facility, and ensure regulation compliance.

It’s interesting some industries, there are drivers in how coatings are supposed to be managed, and that’s usually come from some failure that causes the regulators to step in and effect rules and processes and how things will be done. Ideally, that’s not the way to do it, but unfortunately that’s sometimes the way it works.

And you know, we’re going to talk now this Critical Program Elements. This is nothing new. These are things that I’ve been taught from the beginning of my 30-plus years in the industry and I’ve heard of over and over, but it’s funny how often we see parts of them fade away through different cycles and how we look at things trying to do business differently. And I was always taught, and I believe, that they’re all necessary, that when we remove—you know, I’ve seen it described as the spokes of a wheel, I’ve seen it described as pillars that support the building. But the idea being when we lose any one of these, that we don’t have the sound program that we really need. So, the first one is understanding the… an accurate understanding of the conditions in which the work has to be performed, and we’ll talk more about each of these after I’ve introduced them as a group.

Knowledge-based standards, you know, lessons learned, the things that we’ve done right and the things we’ve done wrong. We want to repeat the things we’ve done right and leverage those, and we surely don’t want to repeat the things that we’ve done wrong.

Requirement based specifications. It’s funny how difficult it is to drive this one home. Today, in the world of cut and paste, we see specifications carry legs and being reused and leveraged for many projects. In some cases, that’s okay; in most cases, though, what is missing from that is taking a look at, again, the understanding the conditions that this coating system has to perform in—you know, temperatures, acidity, pH. All these things have an effect, and understanding it completely means, when we understand the requirements of the conditions that it has to function, then we can write the best specifications. And it’s all a lot of work. it’s not necessarily easy.

Qualified materials. A lot of corporations have invested a lot of time and money and effort into testing and qualifying materials to be used based on anticipated performance through testing programs, and in some cases, through their own history, you know, historical use. But they know that in those situations, as far as the conditions go, so they can expect a certain performance out of these qualified materials. Experimentation is great, but it has to be controlled within a testing environment because we don’t experiment necessarily on large-scale projects. So again, having qualified materials that we’ve got history with. And that doesn’t preclude using new materials because there are products coming to market that are interesting and have a great promise, but the key is to make sure that we’ve qualified them in some way. We’re essentially minimizing our risk, right? We’re trying to ensure that whatever materials we use can perform as expected once they’ve been installed correctly.

You know, training qualified personnel—I was asked to do a round table with one magazine on the state of contracting today and looking at some of the things that contractors face and what they’re looking at in the future that can be problematic. And one of the big issues is really having good trained, qualified personnel. You’re seeing various organizations coming out today with training programs to qualify applicators. Today’s generation doesn’t necessarily want to do painting work, but if there’s still a need that when we have people applying high performance coatings, that they have training and they have a good understanding, and they’ve got the history.

I’ll throw my own little thing about experience. Experience is good, provided it’s good experience. If you’ve got applicators that have done things well for ten years, then that’s good. If you’ve got an experienced applicator that hasn’t done it well for 10 years, then that’s not necessarily good. So, it’s really important that you’ve been able to qualify the personnel, either through training and experience if they have a high probability of being successful for the installation of the project.

Quality control and assurance. You know, it’s interesting to watch… I’ll go through the old guy thing again. I walk by the mirror and I see that guy in the mirror, and I’m trying to figure out who he is. But as I’ve gotten older and I’ve seen things, I get to watch and see the cycles. My origin—the first book I did was as a contractor in the in the Kennedy Space Center world, and at that point in time, they had really embraced the NACE CIP Level 3 quality control third-party inspection because they had had so many issues at one time. And watching through that, it got to the point where the pendulum swung so far that everything was being—it was requiring quality control. Even lab carts were being painted, which was the extreme. Then it swings the other way because now everything is successful. You know, they haven’t had catastrophic failures on their launch towers and other elements. So, things—once they start to perform well, we sometimes, we lose the understanding of why we were doing quality control in the first place. And I see today where we look at ISO 9001 and other quality control programs and how we try to implement those, but the truth is, quality control and insurance with protective coatings is extremely important. I’ve got a bad habit sometimes of caring too far. So, let’s try move into the next.

One is data management tools we’ll talk about. Again, I’m going to go through these each again in a little more detail.

Continued maintenance effort is an absolutely critical element of a program, too, because that’s where you going to see the continued performance of the coatings, and we’ll talk a little bit about that.

So, anyway, we’ve talked about the understanding, the asset conditions, performance requirements. Again, temperature, pH. Is it in the Mid-West, is it coastal? Is it going to be… is it snowing, is it tropical? All these things are going to have a huge performance—and especially upset conditions where we may see temperature spikes that could be detrimental to installed coating systems. And that’s really the lessons learned. We pick these up because we’ve worked with other projects, and we’ve seen where we’re successful, and again, where we’re not successful. Those are the things we went to capture.

Condition surveys. We’ll talk about in the second half. That’s how we understand the maintenance work we’re going to do, how we prioritize and try to best utilize the funds that are available. Once again, benefit from lessons learned. I’m going to keep hitting hard on that.

Selecting the coating systems. They’re going to be required.

Optimize the work sequence. You know, knowledge based standards become the repository of corporate memory. Again, the lessons learned, these are the things that inform the designers on the standards of excellence. The things that we’ve done well, it’s so easy to forget these things. And you know, one element on lock as well on the reason for a program is, a lot of times, these things—although we claim as a program—they’re people specific, where it’s not really something that’s driven hard where it can be shared and handed off to the next group, the next generation that comes in to take over what we’ve been working on. So, we’ve incorporated these lessons learned over time—the good ones and the bad ones. And the most important, though, is someone is got to be paying attention to incorporate those lessons learned.

We’ve talked about requirement specifications. Again, the big point here is that we understand where we’re using the coatings to what we expect them to do, specifically to the project we’re working on. And qualified materials, we’ve talked about right material, right place, right time.

Suitability, testing, performance history, the technical merits. There’s a lot of standards that have been put together for evaluating and testing coating materials specific to different industries. Those are things we look at to make sure that we’re using the best material and we’ve made a good decision. So, that’s one of the variables we’re going to take out of play in the coating installation. At least we have the right material selected. And that may involve the manufacturer’s involvement. They’re going to be doing testing; they may be required to do the testing.

The IMO, International Maritime Organization, they implemented the protective… PSPC (Performance Standard for Protective Coatings). Didn’t have that written down so we had to actually remember it. But the point there, they were looking for a 15-year service life, and based on either historical use or manufacturer testing, they would qualify the coatings. That’s a requirement today, but there’s huge manufacturer involvement in that process. The standards for selection can carry through with those industry standards we’ve talked about.

Training qualified personnel, and that comes from understanding who has to write the specifications and having that background through the contractors, the manufacturer’s representatives that actually aren’t just sales people, but the technical representatives that have that background, and then qualified inspection personnel. Contractors, we look at—we know they’re accountable for quality control, and it’s important that they have a good program even for themselves, that they’re doing things per the manufacturer’s instructions, and most importantly, per the specifications as far as the installation. Quality assurance is really a process. We’re making sure that the quality control happens and that things are installed as they’re supposed to. But, you know, when we’ve heard this term before, “you get what you inspect, not necessarily what you expect.”

Now, corporate maintenance philosophy. No, [inaudible 00:28:50] strategy and goals, responsibility. And this may come into as well as what’s going to be contracted and what may be internal responsibility. But again, that’s past the important elements. And again, we haven’t looked at things that are necessarily at this point fundamentally different. We’re looking at a lot of pieces that all have to fit together to provide the intended result. Three out of the seven or eight may get you to a percentage of the goal, but it’s not going to carry you to the same level of accomplishment, and including all aspects of those critical elements.

Budget driven and operational driven. I always look behind the power curve. This is my dad, was an engineer, he was also a pilot. That was a term he always used, and I finally got to understand what it meant. And what it really means in a nutshell is that, you get to a point if you’re not really aware of the situation, you can get to the point where no matter how much more power or money you throw at it, you’re not going to make it. And that’s ultimately one of the things we’re looking at in maintenance is staying ahead of that effort. When we’re looking at things… Yeah, we may only have so much money to work with, but if we understand the work we have to do, and we think about it for several years in advance, then we really might be able to have a realistic understanding of the money we need. And maybe more today, that can be less later, but it’s going to be important to really look and understand the actual numbers and the actual values you’re going to need to be able to get ahead of any issues. Now, the best way to do this is to start off correctly, have it installed properly, and then it just takes a small maintenance effort.

One quick little story to the people at homes. About 15 years ago, I did surveys of some platforms in the South China Sea. I won’t name the owner, but at that time, it was a joint venture between a US and a Chinese company. But I was astounded when I looked at it. It had been in service for 12 years, and through the evaluation, if they stop doing anything, they could see probably another eight years out of it. But what they had done is, when they built it, they had good inspection, they used qualified materials, they made sure it was properly installed. After it was placed in this location, there was an initial effort to bring all the coating systems up to par to make sure that there was minimum deterioration. And then over the years, they did a small maintenance effort every year, and they really received the value because they didn’t have to…

One time, some of the majors were — you know, 15 years ago, some of the majors just re-blasted and painted platforms every 7 to 10 years. In this case, this group, by doing it right, will probably see—the reservoir was still viable—they will probably see 20-25 years out of that initial coating system easily.

So, a typical coatings maintenance approach unfortunately is painted when it looks really bad or after its failing significantly. That’s typically not the best way to do it. At that point, we may already be behind the power curve, which means we’re going to do a complete installation.

I like to include this bathtub hazard rate curve because it kind of gives a little bit of how maintenance operation should take place. On a lot of high performance coatings, after it’s been initially installed and you see performance or facility modifications and other issues, you’re going to see some damage. Things that weren’t done properly, you’ll see manifest usually within the first year. So, there can be an expectation of a little greater maintenance effort within that first year, first 18 months. Then, as it moves in to the second phase, things are performing pretty well, and you don’t see a lot of further degradation. Again, there’s always be a continued maintenance effort. It doesn’t always take a lot, but you want to make sure things are captured and remediated before they become out of hand. Then, eventually, everything does have an end-of-life point, and that’s typically moving into phase 3, and then exponentially, you’ll see more and more failures appear and more degradation of the coating film.

So, if we’re looking at planning, we obviously want to try to get the biggest bang for the buck, meaning we’re going to spend the money where it’s most valuable and not just throw money away—a consistent effort. You know, it’s typically a little bit all the time, and that may mean a couple of weeks a year. It depends upon the facility, depends upon the size, but a consistent effort in making sure that small areas that were damaged either from mechanical damage, operational issues, but we fix those and we keep it in a good condition.

Available funding. Again, very often with a level funding, we understand as we fight for money—because it’s always a fight for money. As we fight for to get it and we use it to the best of our abilities, we get to the point where you can minimize into a level effort, then things become a lot more functional.

The tools for planning, we’re going to talk about today, and that’s really—I’ll talk more about that on the survey side and reporting, but today, we’re seeing a lot of tools as far as data collection tools, and software systems and things that make it a lot easier to manage a coatings program and plan the work, and plan the work far out 3-5 years within your strategic planning to be able to look and see how it goes. And we’ll talk a little bit about in that condition survey and planning phase data and collection of data because it is, that’s an old adage, “garbage in, garbage out”. It’s important as we look at the facility and look at collecting the data, that we have a good understanding.

I always like to throw this out because it’s something we don’t always consider when we’re thinking about planning for maintenance, but we saw the slide, you know, the rolling snake eyes when we try to wait and paint, and it’s too late. We’ve already seen so much damage. Very often, the optimum time for maintenance, especially on a large scale when there’s overcoating and other things involved, is to catch it before there’s not extensive active corrosion and deterioration. Capturing it in an early phase and being able to spot repair as an overcoating can be a significant amount of money. So, where you get into the paradox here is that, you just may have one element of facility that’s really deteriorated and you’ve only got X dollars, but you’ve got another larger part of the facility that with the dollars you have today, you could do spot repairs, completely overcoat and get another 8 years life extension. That’s where you have to look within this philosophy of where that money is best spent. So, there’s really a lot of things to consider. And I think, we’ll take a break at that point. Lou?

Lou: Terry, thanks for powering through that first half—really nice job. Your presentation is outstanding as always. We already have a few questions that we’ll address as your presentation concludes.

For all of you in the audience, please keep those coming. And just as a reminder, today’s presentation is sponsored by CorroMetrics. In addition to providing technical services to support coatings program management, CorroMetrics’ principles are recognized as experts in coatings failure analysis and expert witness testimony.

So, Terry, what do you think? Are you ready to get in the second half, or do you want to take another quick drink of water?

Terry:

Nah, we’re good.

Lou:

Excellent! It’s all yours.

Terry:

Okay. Now, one of the things that we’ve talked about—again, a lot of the basic elements and doing the planning and execution, we we’ve talked about qualified materials, good specs, knowledge-based standards, qualified people, inspection, so we’ve got it installed. Now we kind of moved into maintenance, one of the things that’s really important within the maintenance aspect is doing condition surveys to understand what we’re looking at, how the coatings were performing, then that’s ultimately going to be how we schedule the work and prioritize the work, and also look for funding.

One of the thing that’s really important though is consistent evaluation enterprise-wide. What that really means is, it all has to be measured the same way as far as when we look at grading systems and standards, we want to make sure that whether it’s one person or 20 people, when they look at things, they’re all going to be able to consistently evaluate it.

Long, long time ago, one of the first ones we ever did was a powerplant, and we used seven different inspectors, and we sent them off on the first platform, turned them loose, and we had written definitions for what the five different grades of coating condition would be. And when they came back, that wasn’t consistent. So, we took a big effort at that time of just going around together and essentially calibrating those seven people to look at things the same way. So again, what’s really important is that when you’re looking—especially enterprise-wide multiple facilities, you know, a lot of assets—when you’re looking at a big budget and you want to make sure it’s going to the right place, you’ve got to make sure that the reporting or the grading that’s come back is all going to be consistent. So, that’s part of the execution as well.

The other elements to the execution are going to be the economics, that we understand how to do the surveys to make them as economically beneficial as possible because it can be a pretty great expense. We’ll talk more about that. But also, the data collection which we’ll look a little bit and what’s necessary as far as being able to gather the information that you’re going to need to make good decisions.

Standards for data collection—apples and oranges. This is one of the things that being able to look at written and photographic standards. There’s ASTM D610 which is grades of rusting. There are standards that have visual aspects that you can use beyond just a written definition to try to get a consistent evaluation, and those are valuable tools.

Procedural standards. As far as how we’re actually going to do the data collection, you know, what’s going to be collected. I remember reading an article a long time ago that said, you need to collect all the data that you can and then overtime, let the important data become more prominent, and then you can discard everything else. Well, the day we’ve learned enough, I think we pretty well know. Because there’s a cost associated with collecting data, so we can understand the data we really need to collect, and we want to limit it to that. Because again, there’s a huge cost associated with data collection.

Consistent evaluation, consistency. We’ve talked about one surveyor or 20, you want to make sure they all see it the same way. Standards for evaluation are written and visual and ultimately comes down to training. And there are training programs out there that deal with assessments. NACE has one for offshore. They’ve also got when they work with US Navy for tanks. So, there’s ways to look at it within the training to give that base calibration and how we’re going to look at it.

I’m going to present, without going into a lot of detail. This was a photographic assessment guide we worked on. At the time, it was with the Mineral Management Services, but it was an effort to provide some consistency and how they look at offshore platforms. And in here, with looking at a specific type. In this case, it was a structure. There were some various grades set up where at least you could look at it and try to have a consistent evaluation of A, B or C. Because again, that’s what’s driving the work that’s going to be done and the money you’re spending as how you set that grade. I was also looking at whether it was process equipment and other types of structure that give as many different views and different types of pieces of that asset that were going to be evaluated, or again, we wanted everything in well and consistent so you could export good information to carry forward and make good decisions and how you’re going do…

So, there’s basically the baseline data setup is the huge effort. Here you’ve got to be able to catalog all your assets. You’ve got to have a look at everything initially. So, in any kind of program where you’re now going to do condition surveys to set up a long-term maintenance program, that’s going to be the big effort. Beyond that, the follow-on surveys can be risk-based. Some things can be looked at—depending upon regulation, some things can be looked at every several years, some things could be looked at yearly. So, back in help within the cost controls while still accomplishing what you need to. The planning for maintenance and ultimately measuring the performance of the coatings you’ve installed, that data all comes from the condition surveys.

Just real quick, I want to hit with a condition surveys: in-process versus the in-service inspections. Most of you are probably familiar with the NACE CIP program probably which is, when coatings are installed, the preeminent program in the world for qualifying and certifying individuals to see at installation. In-service inspections or condition surveys, and that’s going to be a typically little different animal because you’re doing visual assessments of how things are performing, in addition to potentially some normal coatings type testing. Qualifications and that training is important. That can be an in-house element, or again, there are some industry association training programs for that.

The inventory of the assets is the big one, and looking at that and how you’re going to do it with regards to the level of detail can be challenging. Typically, if you look at something, how it’s going to be a painted item and think along those terms, it can be a little easier.

Inventory, the assets as far as from drawings has built is a way to start, but how are you going to break it down and catalog it. It has to be consistent and well-thought-out because that’s what you’re going to live with for a long time to come. And that’s at facility breakdown and organizations, kind of the next element that we talked about beyond the inventory of the assets. Consistent evaluation and data collection. Whatever testing requirements may be there, and the data management systems.

And today we’ve seen a lot more, you know, there’s proprietary programs on the market place. Materials Performance magazine did an article on software utilized at Kennedy Space Center that has been in service for quite a while that did a good job. There’s other vendors that are bringing products to market as far as how to manage the data and look at it. So, what’s important is, again, the data collection, what you’re going to grasp, think of it in terms of standardized forms, what are the objectives for data collection because it can be paper. But if it’s paper, usually you think about most good systems are designed on paper, then they’re automated. And one of the things we found is you’ve got to be able to force the surveyors to make choices. You don’t want to leave open-ended potential answers. Sometimes you’ve got to make comments; for the most part, you want to be able to categorize the data collection to where they make choices from check boxes, and even in the case of electronic collection, that they’re going to be doing it from radio boxes or drop-down menus, or other things, so you can control and categorize the data that you’re collecting very easily. The challenge itself to do in the surveys, really the first one is efficiency—being able to make it economically viable that you’re going to get the data you need.

Reproducibility. Ideally, someone could go in at any time using the process you’ve put together and the training that’s necessary and get consistent results because that’s really what’s going to lead to the accuracy and being able to do the forecasting. You’d be able to carry it forward and make the decisions on a maintenance.

This is just a good thing to look at because this drives home why it’s important, that things are consistently evaluate and they’re accurately evaluated. The green shows good and we found things that are—you know, we inspected them and determined they were As and Bs, and the actual condition was A, B. That’s what we want. The actual condition is C—the determined condition is C, is accurate. That’s good. Now we get into where the yellow one down in the lower left where we’ve determined it to be a C, but it’s actually an A or B. We’re doing work we don’t need to do. We’re spending money we don’t need to, and the bad thing is that may relate to the top right one which is in red, which usually means bad, where the actual condition was a C greater than the A or B. That was where we needed to spend the money. So, these are the consequences that can come if it’s done right or if it’s done wrong. So, those are the outcomes.

And you know, we really look at when we’re doing surveys, you’ve got to remember that it’s a visually based system which can be complicated to make good decisions just based on visual analysis of the coating condition. So, you delve into the process. Some additional testing may be required. It’s interesting to look at this picture because although there is some degradation, a lot of it is staining from the rusting. So, understanding really what we’re looking at is going to be really important when we’re doing the surveys.

Failure is never good, but if it’s expected based on age and other issues, then at least, we did expect it. So, in a case like this where it’s premature and unexpected that we see usually extreme cost associated with it.

One of the things, too, that it’s important to understand failure is, when we’re doing condition surveys, one of the things we look at is when there’s failure, is trying to understand the root cause. And that goes back into the lessons learned that we put into that corporate depository, so we cannot repeat that problem in the future when we write good specifications that are specific to the projects, that we have a clear understanding of the service condition and the service environment that that coating has to perform in. Again, that root cause analysis in the failure is what gives us the information to not repeat our errors and make good decisions in the future.

So, we’ve collected all the data. Now we’ve got it into some type of system. I remember one of the major oil companies, 10 years ago, used a 3000-line spreadsheet. It wasn’t necessarily the most efficient, but they accomplished what they need to do. They had some method of being able to manage the data and manipulate the data to determine the outcomes of what they wanted to do. In the best-case, it gives that assessment in the enterprise and provides us the ability to do detailed planning and budgeting, and really understand where our maintenance requirements are going to be. Instead of winging it every year with the money that’s available, we can sit down, and understanding where we’re at within that coating life, whether it’s the first year or of the third year, we can get a feel for the repairs we’re going to have to accomplish, maybe within the next two years, and create either a 3 to 5-year plan and have a good understanding of the dollar requirements and the efforts that we’re going to have to carry forward.

Overcoating. There was the one slide we talked about. One of the oftentimes and one of the great service life extenders is being able to capture when a coating can be refreshed or extended, where we’re able to do spot repairs, do a complete overcoating, and then move forward for another life cycle extension. So, that’s going to be a very important aspect. Long-term monitoring of how the systems perform, being able to take our own data knowing that we’ve installed these systems and they perform well for ten years, gives us good decision-making capability for future projects. And then that data utilization can also be based on whether it’s risk or regulatory frequency. We can go ahead and set up and plan our inspections and what we’re going to have to do next and when we’re going to have to do it.

So, again the time frame, you know I’m trying to keep—we could do a lot more on the data management, but ultimately summary reports. One of the things that I did experience in seeing from successful programs was, it made it a lot easier to get the money that was required to do the work because one of the things that comes out of a lot of the data management systems is you’re able to look at the cost of deferred work. So, if we choose not to do the work today, and we’re going to put it off another year or two, very typically it’s going to cost more, and very typically it’s an exponential factor of what it’s going to cost. So, being able to provide that kind of information to management and making financial decisions very typically can allow the manager of the coating program to get some of the funding they need if they can show they’re going to be more efficient and economically viable and how they’re going to handle it.

Planning reports. The work we’re going to do three to five years out, we’ve touched on these a little bit. And again, the monitoring performance as far as the coating systems, the methods that were used, the surface preparation, that coating system, how well it’s performing in that area, and how it’s going to go forward. Any kind of process we have should always be reviewed to look at the effectiveness, and looking surveys and what can we change. Do we need to gather more data, do we need together less, can we be more efficient in how do we take the approach, how we’re planning the work. Always looking at the things we’re doing, specifications, the materials selection, the contractor selection and qualification, having long-term data on a contract or how they performed on other projects. Again, this all gives us good information to make better decisions in the future.

So, we may modify the program. Based on what we found from the process review, we may change materials, we may change the survey techniques, the surface preparation, the application processes, and maybe inspection.

So, the point of the maintenance aspect is to stay ahead of the power curve. I hope you found some valuable information because, again, a lot of it isn’t so much that it’s new or profoundly ingenious, it’s just the fact that it’s just a good solid program. It’s the things we’ve learned throughout the years that we know works. Unfortunately, they come and go. So, the point I would make from this, you’ve got some good tools, you’ve got some of the basic ideas and the pillars and what would be necessary to have a program. Again, that’s a pretty quick synopsis out of the entire event, but I hope you found it valuable.

Lou:

Terry, wow! Thank you. What an informative presentation. You’ve covered quite an amazing array of issues. A lot of depth here for our audience to consider.

Thank you as well to the interested men and women in our audience for joining us today, and thank you to CorroMetrics, providers of technical services including inspection asset management consulting, failure analysis and surveys.

Terry, you have a really wonderful and engaged audience. Virtually everybody stayed only through this long presentation. But let’s power quickly through a few questions. We’ve got a couple of good ones. We’ve got a couple of different questions here. I’m going to try to throw them at you really quickly so that you have a quick sense of it. “What are the base data available to design the coatings for 15-year sustained performance?” So, it’s kind of an interesting question.

Terry:

Okay, the first thing I would go from looking at that is the base data. You know, is it going to be… is it atmospheric service or is it going to be a tank lining? You know, atmospheric service, there is a lot of baseline data that’s actually public domain. There’s a test lab at Kennedy Space Center that publishes their performance data for many different types of coating systems that they’ve had installed on the beach in Florida for many years. So, within the government world, there’s a lot of public domain testing that’s been done as far as in-situ testing where it’s actually been there and exposed for a period of time. So, there’s some of your baseline elements there within if it’s immersion or tank linings within the marine industry. Some of the qualification testing for the PSPC within the IMO, they’ve got most of the data with the manufacturers where they either had to show historic performance, or they’ve had to do testing per the PSPC test set to provide some indication of how that would perform.

Lou:

Yup. Interesting stuff. Here’s a good question, Terry. “How would an organization that’s responsible for big assets like this, how would they develop right from scratch? How would they develop where they start to do a list of approved materials and approved paint manufacturers?”

[inaudible conversation]

Terry:

Well, it’s like… I’ll use an analogy from an artistic standpoint. When Picasso would visit other artists, the other artists would all cover their work because Picasso had a history of being inspired and stealing from other artists. So, one of the things I can recommend is there’s a lot of information where people in the same industries have already done things, and some of those specifications probably are available. They would share as a starting point. To start from scratch is a pretty big calling, but through looking at some good government specifications, a lot of that information is all public domain. The Coast Guard had written some really good specifications for the marine industry. That’s a tough question to answer specifically, but I guarantee you could start doing some research. And again, attending association meetings, being involved in some of the associations and networking with peers within the industry. I would guarantee it, they’ll help you out with some of the starting points that you would need.

Lou:

That’s good advice. Terry, with everybody that’s online with us today, every single person cites the budget battle. You’ve been in and around a lot of organizations, both large and small. What’s a good way to advise folks to consider how they get financial support to implement in a corporate program?

Terry:

You know, it’s almost the one group I talked about did it by threat. They set up and showed what was going to happen if they didn’t get the money to do the work they needed to do and how much more it was going to cost. But the reality is, and that’s really one of the things I didn’t really get the chance to talk about that I think is going to find it interesting right now is that, NACE International included their impact study this year, and it’s different in that, one of the things that it does as it took various industries and owners, organizations within various industries, and looked at how their corrosion management program. And they’re now moving forward to where companies will be able to, either through consultants or themselves, will be able to have access to a system that they can benchmark their own corrosion management systems, of which coatings is a portion of that. So, that’s really the thing. The more understanding, within management at a higher level is what it’s to get the funding, and that’s something that other organizations are working on because that’s where it has to trickle down from an understanding. So, at face value, the easiest solution, so you’ve got to be able to talk to the people that write the checks.

Lou:

Yup, makes sense. Here’s a good question about touch up procedures. I’m trying to paraphrase this so it makes sense to everybody that’s online with us. “How would you develop an asset management program where you’ve got stuff in really good condition, you just need touch up?”

Terry:

You know, you would have the same baseline element. I mean you’ve still got to be able to—if you’re just going to have to touch up, you still have to make a commitment to understanding your facility and cataloging your facility, okay? I mean you still have to be able to direct where the touch-up is going to be. I mean, you could theoretically say I’m going to do it. You think it’s pretty minimal, you could do a time-and-materials contract, and you could have someone go through the facility with them and do the touch up, but that gets you through that one year, which may be a couple of years. It’s really the same type of program, just to the lesser scale, and that you’re just managing…

Remember going back to the bathtub curve? You’re in Phase 2 at that point. You’re still managing it, but you’re just in Phase 2 where you’re right. You’ve only got some touch up to do—spot repairs, mechanical damage, whatever it may be—but it’s the same tools. It’s just going to be a lessor effort essentially.

Lou:

You mentioned the concept of tools. Here’s a good question about whether there are some good data management tools out there. Are there any that—I know you can’t recommend a particular brand. It’s not our focus here, but are there some good tools out there or there’s some ways that you could recommend folks that might develop with their own programs?

Terry:

There are absolutely some good tools. Again, throughout this presentation, say if you’re going to drop me an email, I can help carry that farther. If you really look at it today, if you understand what your facilities are and you have them cataloged, then you have some basic understanding of what you’re really looking at as far as conditions. Again, we talked about condition A, B, C, D. You can create your own conditions. It’s going to ultimately comes in to a number value that you’re placing. And then you could even create… It depends how deep you want to go, but some people have already done it. So, you can take it, leverage it. In in most of them, there are some providers that want to use it as a tool for their own consulting work where they try to continue to do all the follow-on inspections and everything else, or are providers that provide the software to the user that those provide software support and technical support if necessary. But that allows the owner to own their data and control their own destiny as far as how they want to use it. But you can create formulas, essentially looking at risk management. If you look at it, most things have a risk matrix in looking at the types of equipment, so you can leverage that into failure of a coating system to a certain type of equipment has a certain risk. So, within looking at a great value and looking at risk, then you can work at what’s necessary for prioritization. That could be another goal that–that could be a course of itself and how to that.

Lou:

I’m sure it could. Terry, we are already at the one hour mark. I don’t want to hold people for too long here, but a couple of folks have asked a question about how they might reach you. There’s nothing up on screen on that. What’s the best way for folks to reach you in particular if they have more questions?

Terry:

The best way is my email address, which I’ll give you. It’s dtg, my initials delta, tango, golf, and it’s @corrometrics, c-o-r-r-o-m-e-t-r-i-c-s.com, and I’m pretty good about responding. But if in the subject line, if you would put Corrosionpedia Webinar, I’ll give you a higher priority.

Lou:

I’ve got to have to remember that next time I email you. Alright, Terry, so, it’s [email protected], then you want Corrosionpedia Webinar in the subject line.

Terry:

And make sure you give me a phone number, too, because a lot of times it’s just easier for me to call you back and talk on the phone.

Lou:

Oh, yeah, appreciate that. For all of us, sometimes email just doesn’t work. Terry, I think it’s a good time to wrap up. We’ve run long here. Thank you so much, and especially thank you to all who attended today. Thank you CorroMetrics for sponsoring this highly informative event. Note that each of you who registered will be able to access this recording through corrosionpedia.com. A link will be emailed to you as soon as that link is available sometime either late this week or early next. Thanks to all, and from all of us at Corrosionpedia, have a good day!

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