The clock is ticking ...............................................and it's your move!
As a result of legislation which extended back as far as 1992, on August 27, 1999 the United States Department of Transportation through the Office of Pipeline Safety published a final rule entitled "Qualification of Pipeline Personnel" in the Federal Register. The effective date of the rule was October 26,1999.
The full text of the rule and the preamble to the rule can be seen by clicking http://ops.dot.gov/qual.htm The Qualification of Pipeline Personnel rule is the result of a "Negotiated Rulemaking" whereby industry, the Office of Pipeline Safety, state regulators and other interested organizations met together over several months and negotiated a rule that all parties could support. While the rule is less prescriptive than the typical pipeline rule, it imposes an added burden upon the pipeline operator in that the operator must develop its own plan and covered task list.
Two important dates to remember are April 27,2001, the date your plan must be complete and October 28, 2002, the date that all individuals performing covered tasks must be qualified.
Are you ready?......Have you identified all your covered tasks?.....Do you have a plan?
If the answer to any these questions is no, thenyour move should be to call or E-mail OPS for assistance in getting your program going. We have developed a comprehensive list of pipeline personnel tasks and identified regulatory references for each task......this will save time as your task list is developed. We have prepared a comprehensive questionnaire to guide you in deciding exactly how your program will be designed..... the questionnaire ensures that the plan captures the required elements. We have prepared a shell plan.....this speeds up the task of writing the plan itself.
