PODS - PODS 1Q12 Newsletter

We asked our members about table usage, database platforms, visualization tools, performance and modeling concerns, and general feedback on the Association.

2012 Member Survey Results

You will be prompted to log into the PODS website in order to download the report.

The results are broken down between Pipeline Operators and Service Providers.

PODS Board of Directors Election

Six Board of Directors positions were decided in the 2012 election, held from February 13-27, 2012. A record thirteen nominees submitted their candidacy for the six available Board seats, and record voter turnout resulted in the election of the following individuals to the PODS Board of Directors.

Rob Brook, Pacific Gas & Electric
Paul Herrmann, Chevron
Mike King, BP
Dominic Palazzolo, Williams
Tim Willms, Boardwalk Pipelines
Elizabeth Ziemer (formerly McCord), Enbridge

Each elected Board member serves a two-year term. The next Board Election will be announced in January 2013, when five Board seats will be up for election.

The Officers, including President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer, will be elected by the Board at the April 5, 2012 Board of Directors meeting.

Standards Leadership Council for the Oil & Gas Industry

Senior executives of the leading standards bodies in the oil and gas industry met recently to form a Standards Leadership Council (SLC) aimed at enhancing collaboration on standards for the benefit of the industry.

The participating standards organizations at the inaugural event were:

Energistics (Jerry Hubbard)
PPDM Association (Trudy Curtis)
PIDX (Tony Aming)
Open Geospatial Consortium (Mark Reichardt)
OPC Foundation (Tom Burke)
PODS (Janet Sinclair)
POSC Caesar Association (Nils Sandsmark)
MIMOSA (Alan Johnston)

The SLC will collaborate to identify areas of intersection to avoid development duplication, address mutual challenges like determining business value metrics for standards adoption, enhancing membership benefits and maintaining financial sustainability.

Read the full article on MSNBC.com

Help Plan the 2012 PODS User Conference

From bowling to belly dancing, we have had some fun activities at the annual PODS User Conference.

Please join the 2012 Planning Committee, we need your help! This event attracts PODS members from around the globe, and this year will be our largest event ever.

The committee will be determining the content and format of the conference, deciding on event details, and will also help to run the conference.

This is an easy way to engage with your colleagues in the pipeline community. It's also a lot of fun. We will meet via conference call twice a month starting in April. Please email Janet Sinclair if you're interested in joining the committee.

PODS ESRI Spatial 5.1.1 Release

The PODS Technical Committee has completed the PODS ESRI Spatial 5.1.1 Release. This release addresses some minor issues as detailed in the change log and release notes. The Technical Committee and Board of Directors are currently completing the review and voting process for this Release for Member Comment.

Look for the PODS 5.1.1 Release for Member Comment notification before the end of April. PODS members will be able to download the 5.1.1 release, and will have six weeks to evaluate, test, and provide comments back to the PODS Technical Committee.

Industry Data Standards for New Construction of Onshore Pipelines

The PODS Association has teamed up with the International Pipe Line and Offshore Contractors Association (IPLOCA) Novel Construction Future Trends and Innovations Group to develop Pipeline Industry Data Standards for New Construction of Onshore Pipelines.

The goal is to improve cradle-to-grave data management processes in the pipeline industry and to address challenges in integration, timeliness, efficiency, and accuracy.

The New Construction Data Standards will help to streamline the flow of key as-built information which must be maintain for the life of the asset into the Operator's enterprise GIS, and will also allow companies to leverage the powerful PODS database architecture during the design and construction phases of a pipeline project. The result will allow Pipeline Operators, Engineering Companies, Construction Contractors, and Survey Companies to speak the same language in terms of data and metadata requirements throughout the project.

If your company would like to participate in this important industry collaborative effort, please send your contact information to Janet Sinclair.

The Work Group will begin meeting in April. PODS Work Groups are open to both member and nonmember companies.

PODS Open Spatial

The PODS Technical Committee is working to finalize the release of PODS Open Spatial, which is an implementation of the PODS standard using the SQL and Oracle spatial data types. The team has worked hard to come to a consensus on how best to implement a spatial representation of PODS data and has addressed both technical implementation details and best practices.

The PODS Open Spatial Release should address two common needs of all PODS members:

How to load sample spatial data to PODS
How to map PODS data

The PODS Open Spatial Release will include release notes and scripts for both SQL Server and Oracle. The release notes will document options and implementation decisions. The scripts will add spatial columns to the PODS 5.1 Data Model and optionally populate sample pipeline data which can be viewed with OGC-compliant mapping viewers. Please note this release will not provide a data loader utility to load your own data to PODS and will not address Alternative Reference System needs.

Look for the PODS Open Spatial Release for Member Comment notification email in May.

First PODS Operator-ONLY Forum

The first PODS Operator-ONLY Forum was held on March 16, 2012 at the University of Houston. Goals of the event included identification of common issues and challenges, brainstorming ideas and solutions, and fostering an environment for networking and sharing among PODS Pipeline Operating Companies.

PODS Operators in attendance rallied around these areas:

Improved Interoperability
Better Management of Large Integrity Data Sets
Better Management of Historical Records
Quicker Response to Member Requests

The feedback we received during the Operator-ONLY Forum will help the PODS Association to prioritize and implement suggested changes. We express our sincere thanks to those pipeline companies who participated both in-person and remotely. This event will serve as a template for future events of this type, both in the US and around the globe.

Our thanks to the University of Houston, Bauer College of Business, for hosting the event, and to Williams for sponsoring lunch.

Modularization of the PODS Data Model

The PODS Technical Committee is making progress to modularize the PODS Data Model for a future PODS release. The team has elected to take an approach that includes tables to define the pipeline centerline and location tables for all stationed and non-stationed events, as well as metadata tables to support, describe and link all other tables in the model regardless of the tables logical purpose or schema, as well as required domain tables within the new PODS Core.

Working to Make Stationing Optional

The PODS Alternative Referencing Work Group is studying a data model design where engineering stationing is optional such that operators will be able to implement PODS without engineering stationing as a required element.

The Work Group is chaired by Gary Hoover, Enterprise Products, and also includes representatives from Enbridge, Chesapeake, Anadarko, Williams, Chevron, Coler & Colantonio, Eagle Information Mapping, New Century Software, Cylo Technologies, and Downtown Design.

The Work Group has finalized a Charter document, and the Charter has been approved by the PODS Board of Directors. The Work Group has been meeting twice a month since January, and has set-up a SharePoint site as a collaboration environment. Quarterly updates will be published to PODS membership on the Work Group's progress.

The Alternate Referencing Work Group has provided a guest login for PODS member companies to access the group's SharePoint collaboration site. If you would like to access the site, please contact Janet Sinclair for login information.

Gas Distribution Model

The PODS GDM Work Group is studying the potential integration of the Gas Distribution Model (GDM) into PODS. One of the first steps is to evaluate how well the GDM meets the needs of Distribution (or Dual) Operators in terms of DIMP Compliance, Integrity Management, and Geometric Network requirements. Following this initial assessment, the work group will evaluate the feasibility, effort, and potential benefit of incorporating some or all of the GDM into PODS. Finally, the Work Group will recommend the future roadmap of the Gas Distribution Model.

The Work Group is chaired by Andrew Vondrak,Piedmont Natural Gas, and also includes representatives from Atmos Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, NiSource, Enterprise Products, New Century Software, GeoFields, Aerometric, Cylo Technologies, Mahindra Satyam, Willbros Engineering, CSC and the Gas Technology Institute.

The Work Group has finalized a Charter document and submitted it to the PODS Board of Directors for approval. The Work Group is currently finalizing a survey to be sent to Distribution Operators to assess needs and interest level in GDM. The Work Group has been meeting once a month since December, and has set-up a collaboration environment on Wiki-PODS. Quarterly updates will be published to PODS membership on the Work Group's progress.

PODS Database Usage Scripts

The PODS Research & Development Committee is working to identify "ineffective tables" in PODS, and has developed database usage scripts which will analyze quantities of data stored in each PODS table and generate a database statistics report in Excel.

These scripts will be posted in the PODS Script Gallery on Wiki-PODS. PODS Pipeline Operators will be asked to run these scripts against their operating PODS databases, and to submit their results to the PODS Association. These scripts will return a list of tables, list of columns, count of rows per column, count of unique values per column, and total rows per table, and generate an Excel output report. The scripts will need to be run by a database administrator, will analyze the data as read-only, will not threaten the integrity of the database, and will require less than 20 minutes to execute.

PODS Pipeline Operators will be asked to return their results file to the PODS Executive Director, who will ensure confidentiality of this information and remove company references before forwarding this information to the PODS R&D Committee. The R&D Committee will analyze all of the submittals to determine industry-wide table utilization, and to identify those tables which are not well utilized. The results will be used in conjunction with the Member Survey results to help the PODS Association better focus future model development efforts.

A complete summary of the results will be made available to all participating Pipeline Operators.