Risk Profiling for the Pipeline Industry: Application of Best Practices From the Aviation Industry

Abstract

Enbridge partnered with Aerosafe Risk Management to perform risk profiling to assist strategic planning activities aimed at safety performance improvement. A preliminary risk report, the first step towards an Industry Risk Profile (IRP) was the outcome. An IRP presents a strategic view of the risks within an industry sector at a point in time, requiring input from many stakeholders including operators, associations, and regulators. Most importantly, an IRP facilitates joint solutioning of risks to achieve improved safety performance and industry wide risk reduction. The preliminary risk report considered Enbridge data in addition to publically available information from associations and regulators to produce a preliminary risk report. The data gathering process considered information related to governance and oversight, compliance regime, assurance model, asset capabilities, industry operating environment, industry safety profile, and operator profile. Results of the preliminary risk report are shared in this paper, with applicability to other operators, associations, and regulators. Providing the first building block of the IRP, these results focus on how organizations like Enbridge who aspire to participate or lead industry level reform or change can use the data to reshape their corporate risk based decision making. This approach, if adopted more broadly across the industry could provide as far reaching results as those seen in the aviation, military and transport sectors. The IRP methodology and approach developed by Aerosafe in the mid-2000s, is now well entrenched in the aviation industry and is used by regulators and industry alike to create a pathway for industry level risk reduction and notable reform. The use of an IRP is considered best practices by the aviation, transport and regulatory sectors in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and after being in use in some sectors of aviation around the globe since 2008, the results are now measurable. These results provide a strong and clear link between safety performance improvement and the management and reduction of the industry risk profile.