What Keeps a Middle-Aged Engineer up at Night

The ASME Southern Alberta Section invites you to our upcoming lunch and learn event, where we will be exploring into the subject of geohazard management featuring Doug Dewar. This event is co-organized with the ASME Pipeline Systems Division, and will be the first series of the geohazards and strain community of practice.

Geohazard management is transitioning from being primary reactive to proactive within the pipeline industry. The transition is being driven by improved ground and pipe monitoring techniques coupled with near real-time data acquisition. Additionally, there has been a recent emphasis on geohazard management by regulators. There will always be a small component of reactivity due to uncertainties associated with nature, regardless of the sophistication of a geohazard management program (GMP). In most cases, being ignorant or blind to a threat is less of an issue for large operator GMP’s. GMP reactivity is often driven by:

1. Threat condition changes (i.e. landslides behaving badly),

2. Threat mis assessments,

3. Threat management gaps or errors, and/or

4. Threat mitigation challenges.

The presentation will detail case studies and present lessons learned from Doug’s past experiences.

Doug Dewar - Senior Staff Engineer - Pembina Pipeline Corporation.

Doug Dewar is a middle-aged practicing engineer who works in Pembina Pipelines’ geohazard management program. He received a bachelor’s degree in Geological Engineering from the University of New Brunswick prior to being deported from the Maritimes to complete a Master’s degree in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Alberta. Doug has spent almost 30 years working for consultants and the pipeline industry as a landslide mechanics/geohazard management specialist. Interests include incorporating inline inspection inertial measurement unit (IMU) and axial strain technologies into landslide management. Conference paper and joint industry practice publications include IMU feature, AXIAL strain feature and soil/pipeline interactions classification systems. Doug has also developed the first real time watercourse depth of cover tracking system for pipelines which has almost nothing to do with this presentation. To the best of his knowledge, Doug has never been hired for his looks.

Host or Publisher ASME Southern Alberta Section