Branden 0:00

I got a question for you. You mentioned RBI is probably the best technology that's been put in place over the years. have you come across any that are maybe a little too overblown or overused when maybe they shouldn't have been?

Terry 0:12

No, no. Consider angle that by some of your biggest struggle with RBI is your management

Branden 0:20

Oh, I'm, I'm sorry, not RBI. I'm saying tech- in general, te- any technology that, uh, that you see people using where you're like, "Eh, I don't know if I trust that."

Terry 0:28

Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, I'm not, uh, guided wave. I'm not real, I'm not real impressed with that. Guided wave is a good screening tool. I mean, it gives you an indication that something's out there, but you, you gotta do a lot of follow-up. And if you think you're gonna use guided wave underground, no. the sound attenuates into the dirt so fast, it's just not a viable option. So guided wave is a, that, I'm not impressed with that. Um, I've never been a real big fan of acoustic emission

Branden 0:58

That's the one I was trying to get. it's so, so split there,

Terry 1:17

yeah, you know, you get all these sensors that, okay, our sensor says between, in this four-foot square area, you might have a spot right over here that I'm like, you know, I, I like a little more precise and more exacting science than that,

Greg 1:30

It's, so-- Yeah. It's like Frank Ferillo at, at Mobil used to say that it's not what AE-- It, it's not when AE tells me there's an indication here and I go and I find something that bothers me. It's all the other places where it didn't tell me there weren't any indications because it's so hard to tie it to fracture mechanics. So we learned that in the perf projects at API many years ago and, and yeah, in perfect laboratory conditions maybe. You know, we had some success. There was a Dr. Weaver, I think at University of Illinois. Dave Wang was the, uh, chairman of that-- or the, the project manager for that particular perf project when he was at Shell. Um, but it's just so dang hard and, and I've worked with AE since my early, early days at Monsanto and, uh, yeah, you have to use it. It has its applications, but you really need to be realistic with yourself about what it's telling you and what it's not telling you

Terry 2:31

Exactly. you know, I'm not smart enough with it to, to really speak great intelligently about it. So I, you know, guess you, you tend to hone in on the things you're more comfortable with, and there's a lo- there's a lot of other things we can hammer out than that

Branden 2:45

Mm-hmm.

Greg 2:46

Yeah. What do you think about these, uh, technologies that are out there today? the aerial drones that can fly over equipment and take, you know, photographic records of everything and then compare it over time to look for changes and stuff. Do you... What do you think of that, s- the value of that?

Terry 3:07

there, there's some value in it. I know there's drones out there that'll actually take UTs for you too. I mean, it has a little coupler that outputs a transition should UT for you. I think the drone stuff is gonna develop more and more as we go along. Uh, it's kind of in an infancy stage, if you will. Um, it may become, the inspection method of choice in the future. Who knows? You know? Maybe we could drop a drone going down a, down a tower. You can drone fly in between tower trays and go and shoot UTs and whatever and, and do all the inspection for you. Keep people out of harm's way. It, it's probably coming

Greg 3:43

Where, where do you think we are and how much you can trust, um... Well, let me back up. So, you know, back in the late '80s, we were, and mid-'80s, we started, uh, using tools like automated UT, and we started using them to look for things like HIC and SOHIC and putting multiple transducers on there, you know, to go in, uh, like 90-degree different, you know, directions so that we get a good coverage. And I, I thought it showed a lot of promise. I thought we had some really good progress with some of those burst tests that the industry did and stuff and comparing, you know, what did, what did the AUT say? Did it find everything? So on and so on. Um, do you think-- Well, let me back up, too. So I think our vision back in those early days, like the early '90s and stuff, is, is if we got good enough at on-stream inspection, that should really go a long way, of course, with some other things, to help us avoid surprises during a turnaround. It's like we should really know what we're... You know, there shouldn't be much discovery work, right? do you think non-intrusive inspection has matured to the level yet that most owner-operators are using it f- and, and using it responsibly, today?

Terry 5:07

I, I think so, and that's something I'm a-- I, I push a lot, whether it be, you know, with API stuff or with the company I'm, I'm helping out with now And especially with turnaround preparation stuff, if you can do external non-intrusive inspection, whether it be using phased array and I mean, even checking for cracking, you know, for the OD cracking and use-- And you can use robotics for that with the tri-lat-trilateral machines that they have. There's, you know, Geckos doing that. Um, use that technology at the beginning of your work scope for a turnaround, you've got this much discovery. I mean, it, it's huge. The, there's potential out there that could get you. You need, before that turnaround hits, a year out, you need to start shrinking that discovery down to where your discovery, it's minimal. Because it's inspection's responsibility to, to limit the amount of discovery and limit the amount of exposure during a turnaround because the last thing you wanna do at, in the middle, two days or two weeks into the turnaround, it's like, "Oh, we found this in this pressure vessel. Now you need to replace it." Well, you could have found that six months before

Greg 6:10

Right,

Terry 6:11

Um, This is just my opinion, if your discovery increases your, your turnaround work scope by more than 10%, I think inspection is failing because there's so much you have at your hands, You know, I t- And I try to push the inspectors to get money from the turnaround group ahead of time, say, "Hey, you know, in order to get this cracking inspection done, let us do phased array six months ahead of time, and I'll, I'll do as many welds as I possibly can just to, to shrink that amount of discovery." that, limits your work scope.

Greg 6:43

Mm-hmm.

Terry 6:44

get that, get it off the list. You know, anything you can do that way. You know, whether it be automated UT, phased array for, you know, find those thin areas beforehand, find the cracking beforehand, whatever.

Branden 6:55

Have you tried going back and looking at the-- comparing the amount of discovery to the number of IOW excursions?

Terry 7:04

Not a heck of a lot

Branden 7:05

I mean, I know, I know people having robust IOW programs is still starting to happen, but I, I did, I did hear somebody just recently say, you know, if, if your IOWs, if you have a good handle on them, you know what they are and you manage them There really shouldn't be that much going on. What do you think about

Terry 7:24

it's-- that's good as long as you have a company that is following your IOWs and they, and they let you know what's going on. But there's so many refires and owner-operators out there, they're not that sophisticated. You know, it looks different. I mean, they're, they're geared dressed up.

Branden 7:40

Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was an interesting comment. They were-- It was somebody that was being challenged on RBI and having a backstop on their RBI. And if, if you've got your IOWs in check and you're managing them and you know what they are, why, why do you? Like, it was more of a thought, a thought experiment, right? Let's just talk through this. Why would you need that? And it was like, yeah, okay. Yeah, you probably-- That kinda makes sense

Terry 8:03

Yeah. Those IOVs are important and there was a time when we found out, you know, a couple months later, they said, "Oh, by the way, we, we, uh, we blocked in the filter on the crude overhead line, you know, for, you know, two or three weeks."

Branden 8:15

Yeah

Terry 8:15

So next thing we know, we're out there checking and, And, "Oh, we got it back on now." I said, "Yeah, but you went two to three weeks without filter at all." Well, what they had done is they'd taken like five years of life off the line in that, in that little bit of time. You know, and it's hard to explain to folks, you know, you, you gotta take care of your equipment, and when something goes down, let your inspectors know what's going on. a-another thing that I think is really important for inspectors is when you're assigned a process unit or two or three or whatever, those inspectors need to get out and know the operators. Go to the units, visit them, talk to them, say, "Hey, what's going on in your unit today? You know, what's good, bad, indifferent?" Get that relationship going because pretty soon their operators are gonna realize that inspectors are working hand in hand with operations to try to keep that unit safe. And they tell you, once you build that trust, the operators say, "Hey, hey, Lynne," you know, "a couple weeks ago we, we had this going on, you know. Do you think you might wanna check over here, check over there? Uh, you know, we had some excursion here." 'Cause they'll, they'll let you know before, you know, before they go, you know, let management know, say, "Hey, we have a little problem over here." They'll, they'll let you know as, 'cause you're working hand in hand together. So it's important for inspectors to get that, you know, inspector-operator relationship, just like it is inspector-welder relationship, maintenance guy relationship, turnaround guy re- You know, you've gotta be able to put on a lot of hats and relate to a lot of folks and that way they talk to you

Greg 9:45

Yep. And the other, uh, well, let me ask you this, Terry, 'cause I know, you know, the education could go both ways. I'll make a comment first when, uh, ear- I, I would say it was back about 20 years ago, we were doing some, uh, of that work in Illinois at one of the refineries there. And what was so encouraging is that one of the inspectors who was on the RBI team took it upon himself to put a schedule together to go deliver training to the operators and, and of the heaters because they wanted them to understand how much a little temperature difference can impact the remaining life of those heater tubes and, you know, a, a lot around that. So that was very... So I, I totally agree with what you're saying. But, uh, going back to the non-intrusive inspection thing again for a little bit is I think the vision always are, for a lot of us was that, hey, if we do a good job of, uh, the damage mechanisms review, the creation of the corrosion control document, there within that should be a collaboration between the, the metallurgist and the inspector because the inspector needs to understand where he needs to be looking and what he needs to be looking for. And sometimes it's hard to nail down a corrosion materials metallurgical engineer and have them, you know, really tell you where should... Is it this elbow? Is it that? Is it this? But that should be a collaboration. And I thought, well, if that process is working well and your IOWs are working well, your CCD is telling you where you got your hotspots or where the issues are in that unit as you step through each system, right? If I've got all that going for me, I'm thinking, man, if I've got that and I'm strategically using non-intrusive inspection, uh, I should be doing a lot to mitigate or limit the amount of discovery work in the turnaround. That ideal- ideally, you'd say, "Hey, look, we know we're gonna have to replace these two can sections. We know we're gonna have to, uh, s- pull this bundle and so forth and so on, uh, in advance." Uh, I think that's still the vision and, and I'm hoping to see more people taking advantage of, uh, non-intrusive inspection. It'd be interesting, I, I don't think Solomon does this, but it'd be interesting to find out, uh, people's turnaround performance versus their, mechanical integrity program, their non-intrusive inspection program. How much money are they spending on non-intrusive? 'Cause the other thing about non-intrusive inspection we haven't even talked about is if you're able to do that and actually not get in that tower or get in that drum or send other people inside of there, uh, or let's minimize the amount of people that go in and out of there because that causes risks too, right?

Terry 12:44

It does. Every time you show you, you gotta cause risk. There's risk to both. And that, that non-intrusive inspection, that's, uh, that's the way to go. The, the more of that you can do, the better off you are. And you're right, when you were talking about CCDs, uh, back in the day, we didn't have current control documents. And that should be the inspector's best friend. That should be the... Beside the code book, that should be his other bedtime reading document to make sure that he know what the heck is going on

Greg 13:08

I agree

Branden 13:09

Even, on the operations side, right? Op- operators knowing it, that, that gets into, right?

Terry 13:14

know, if the operators know what the controls and control document is, they can sure-- they can bring up and say, "Hey, you-- this, this is an area where, where we need to look at. You know, we, we had an explosion over here. We didn't, you know, we lost temperature up here. We got increased temperature." I mean, there's so many factors and that's all part of, you know, that collaboration with everybody.

Branden 13:32

That's a best practice though, right? I mean, that's not the normal. Um,

Terry 13:36

the places I've been to, no, they don't have that luxury. Um, but we're getting there. I mean, it's, it's gonna be a long time coming

Branden 13:44

so probably CCD, I, I guess I don't wanna lead you on this question, but which, uh, of RBI, CCD, and IOW, which would you say is the most important?

Terry 13:54

Well, man I'm, I'm gonna say the CCDs, your frozen control document first, and then RBI, and then the IOWG because I can talk to operators. You know, if you, if you got a good open relationship with your operators and your process engineers, you can pick up a lot of IOWG stuff and, and go that way. But knowing where to look with the CCD, that's, that's really important. But, uh, RBI is an... just such an excellent tool. I mean, it's, uh, and if you can combine your RBI with your CCDs, And if you happen to Cadillac it out and do RBI, CCD, and IOWG, oh, you're sitting in tall cotton there

Greg 14:31

Have, have you seen many plants where, uh, they didn't, put the, CMLs in the right locations?

Terry 14:40

Yeah. What's the right location? I mean, you know, that's the age-old question. I mean, uh, there's some places you, you get that, but as we all know, uh, most plants have too darn many CMLs, and a lot of them are not in the right spot. But, you know, it's, CMLs are a tough deal. I mean, you could have 10,000 of them, but, uh, in one process unit, but really how many of them are telling you the truth? Maybe 1,000 of them or 500 of them. It's not all of them. I mean, uh, there was a facility, I think Jim McVay did a, a study years ago out at Cosoro. don't quote me on it, but I think he said like 93% of the CML were not telling anything.

Branden 15:21

Yeah, that falls in line with what we, uh, what we've seen and, and anecdotally others have seen

Terry 15:27

Yeah. And then when, when I was at Borden, we did CML off from his agent. We went through them, we were looking at all the CMLs and if they didn't show a deviation of, of more than three, three mils, we, we got rid of it. You know, we can't-- it's not, it's not helping you. It's costing you money.

Greg 15:43

Mm-hmm.

Terry 15:44

there was a while when I was budgeting stuff, I would figure for every CML, you're, you're looking at 50 bucks. So that's, that's significant

Greg 15:55

Yes, it

Branden 15:55

when you got 500,000 of them in the plant

Terry 15:58

Yeah

Branden 15:58

and you're looking at 100,000 every year,

Terry 16:01

Yeah.

Branden 16:02

good luck

Terry 16:03

Yeah, it, it adds up pretty quick. and you gotta remember, in inspection, we're, we're a game of percentages, you know? And, and that's hard for a lot of people to understand. They think, "Well, you, you do 100% inspection on everything." I said, "No, no, we only do a small snippet." You know, Like I say, we're a game of percentages. Even when you're original fabrication, you're only 5%, 10%, finding that needle in the haystack sometimes it, uh, w- I'll take luck over, uh, precision any day

Branden 16:30

So why not RT everything?

Terry 16:32

Well, sure you can, but, uh, you're still gonna bankrupt your company

Branden 16:36

Would you though, if you were to go through and optimize and only do the CMLs that are showing active corrosion and just switch those on RT?

Terry 16:44

Oh yeah, you can do that going to six-inch diameter below. I-- you can get eight-inch diameter below, but once you start getting over eight inch, you're, you're below 10 too much. But you can get, uh, six inch and below, you can get darn good readings. In fact, if I was a chief still, I would mandate that anything six inch and under would have to be RT,

Branden 17:01

Yeah. Yeah. So your run and maintain would all switch over to RTS?

Terry 17:06

Yeah. Like six inch and under, definitely.

Branden 17:08

Yeah,

Terry 17:09

Yeah, as opposed to shooting at one little spot, I get a big area

Branden 17:12

I mean, That's still a decent percentage of your piping that's six and

Terry 17:16

yes. And a plant that I'm helping right now that's, that's under piping, it's, it's almost 90%

Branden 17:21

I believe it. Yeah.

Terry 17:22

Yeah

Branden 17:23

I mean, that's a different right? That's the-- I, I had somebody, they're like, "Oh, you're-- we're, we're," we were bidding some work or something, and they were like, "Oh, it's, it's a small plant, whatever, it's this." And I got into it, I was like, "Yeah, it's a small plant, but that just means the volume of, of the equipment itself is smaller. There's still, there's still the same number of pieces of equipment. It's just a little bit smaller size and diameter and stuff." So yeah, I mean, you still got all the same pipes, all the same equipment, so

Terry 17:48

Exactly. And it, and it's, uh, exactly. That, that's where it's at. You know, and, and when you get back into cost, I mean, it's, uh... Then, then you come into another phase, and then, uh, you're gonna, you gotta take your successes where you can. And that's where I pushed a lot of, say, develop a saves list. So when you go out and you shoot that RT, and you find something, and you get it repaired before it shuts down or before it fails, that's a save. "Okay, on line such and such, we found it before it failed." Now I go back to my process, take my planning document and say, "Okay, if we, if this line would've failed, I would've had this line down for two weeks. It'd cost this much throughput. I could've had a fire explosion." And, what I would calculate out is, for this line, if I lost processing it for two weeks at, at X amount of barrels a day, that's half a million dollars a day. Here, here, here's my savings Yeah, you count your saves up, and then pretty soon you're, you, you go back to your management and say, "Look, over the last year, we had X amount of million dollars of save because we found all these items before they failed, and we got them repaired before they failed. There's your justification for your inspection program."

Greg 18:58

Do you find management accepts that and appreciates that?

Terry 19:02

You're right Dave. I, I got a prime example. That one has a Cheyenne in our, in our LP unit when we did our, uh, 100% component, uh, profile X-ray program, we documented $16 million worth of saves.

Greg 19:15

Well

Terry 19:16

Yep. And that's just throughput. That's not counting fire rebuild, uh, equipment replacement. That was strictly throughput

Greg 19:24

Yeah, that was just like, okay, if the worst thing that happened is we had the leak and now we gotta fix it, right? What's that gonna cost in lost pro- product or production opportunity or prof- And stick with it, 'cause you can't argue with that. They could argue with, "Well, how do you know someone would've got hurt? And how do you know that it would've found an ignition source?" That doesn't matter when you do it at this si- It's hard to argue with it. So like you said, that number could easily be multiplied times 100 if

Terry 19:53

easily. And I didn't take, I didn't take credit I just said, "Here's the fact. Here's your throughput. I got this right from the planning guy. He said we'd have lost this much money for X amount of days because you say it's gonna be down for two weeks." That's the truth 'cause I, you know, 'cause I know the business and I know exactly what it would probably take, you know, to, to replace a line from point A to point B and how long it'd be down.

Greg 20:14

And that's the ROA that-- the ROI they got because of their inspection program and their

Terry 20:19

Yep. Yep. Well, you can, we can lay that in front of somebody and say, you know, like we did, I said, you know, "$16 million of save just in the HFOP over that." We did that in a year and a half just by that program, one program

Branden 20:33

What, what program was it again? Sorry

Terry 20:34

That was the 100% component inspection Mary Jeff Valtee. But transfer that too to all-- You can transfer that to all your other ends. any other end you have. If you're doing small bore inspecting, you're doing CMI, and you find it before it fails, how much did you save the company be-because you found it and got it repaired before it failed?

Greg 20:52

Yeah.

Terry 20:53

Document it

Greg 20:54

We have to be good at doing that. We need to

Terry 20:57

Yeah.

Greg 20:57

that

Terry 20:58

You know, and that's a cool thing, and I'm-- and I can, I can show anybody how to do it. Pretty, pretty simple and easy.

Branden 21:04

It's just arithmetic. At what point did it take for you to start thinking that way? 'Cause at some point, right, you go from thinking about not fighting against management, but you know, the, the-- There's, there's a different, uh, mindset. So what, what did it take for you to get to that point of understanding like, "Hey, this is how I need to try and present things"?

Terry 21:24

You know, I was a chief inspector for 29 years at Duke for facilities, and when you're fighting every year for a budget, you know, 'cause I used to have to put the budget together for, you know, for a long time. I always pretty, for the most part, you justify your budget to the nth degree. when you start going in with management and say, "Well, Clayton, why do you want, uh, $300,000 to do, to do profile RPs in this area?" I'll say, "Because I'm looking for this, this, this, and this, and this, and then here's why." And if you start documenting everything you need to do it, why you need to do it, and you say, "This is why the industry's doing it. We're gonna do this profile RP program because this is industry best practice, and we're behind the eight ball." And, or it's, or I'm gonna do X amount of CMLs or profile RPs in, on UK because that's, that's required by code. And if you justify every single dollar you are asking for by either code requirement or industry best practice, it makes it really hard for them to cut your budget. Then, and all of a sudden they're saying, "You know what? I'm gonna give you all the money you're asking for because you're going above and beyond to justify every line item in your budget," and they'll go searching for somebody else to cut their budget. That's the way it is. I, I could tell you, it got to the point where 99 times out of 100, uh, they left my budget alone. That's because I justified everything

Branden 22:46

Ja. Det er important

Terry 22:47

Makes it hard to argue because when the line of cuts start coming and cutting your budget and say, "Okay, as long as you understand if you cut my budget here's what's going to suffer." Then they say, "Oh, wait a minute. May- maybe I don't wanna do that. We'll go find the money elsewhere

Branden 23:02

I've talked with folks about walking into, uh, RBI inspection plan meetings. Um, or I guess coming out of inspection plan meetings, I've talked to people about walking into turnaround meetings and, and having those what-ifs already available. If you're gonna cut this, here's what is gonna come up next. If I can't do 100%, I can't get that A, uh, level inspection credit, here's what that means. I'm gonna have to go back in in three years instead of eight years.

Terry 23:30

That's right.

Branden 23:30

Yeah. Yeah. And

Terry 23:32

But, you know, whether you're justifying your budget or you're justifying your turnaround, uh, it, it's the same. Okay, I need to go into this piece of equipment because it's code required because of this, this, and this. Again, I need-- I'm looking for all this different damage and you're applying. It, it makes it easy. They, they can't argue with it. That, that's the one cool thing about, thing, one thing about RBI. So you bring your list in and you have X amount of items that say, "Well, here, based on RBI, here's the period, and you're gonna cut everything operating, do everything from B and I to I." Uh, you know, it makes your list real easy. and you got your justification. they're black and white, so they can't really cut that. Well, then all of a sudden you're saying, "Well, based on RBI, I don't have to go into this drum because I've already inspected it seven times in the last nine years. It hasn't broke, it hasn't done anything. I don't need to get into it." Pretty soon operations is, they're like, "What? What? What? You don't have to go into it? Well, we gotta get everything out." I said, "Dude, I don't have... From a mechanical integrity standpoint, I don't need to get in that drum. If you wanna get in that drum, you justify it." Then the onus is on them

Greg 24:37

Yeah, that's when things kind of... If you're not managing the communications right, there could be a lot of misunderstandings, right? And it's... I, I've seen before where turnaround after turnaround, they keep wanting to go back inside of this equipment, claiming it's because of wet H2S potential damage, and it's really just because operations wanted to get in there. But no, nobody fully understood that, and so until... That's another great thing, right, about RBI, is now you can document all this stuff, and you can have the justification at your fingertips. And, and you've got the critical logic path that you can use to talk with maintenance about and talk with operations about, and here's why. And then maybe if you've got a good program in place, you can say, "Okay, but if you don't want to do it, sign this." And, you know

Terry 25:30

You know, that's, that's what deferrals are all about. I mean, if you don't wanna get into it, here, here's a deferral. But, um, and, and inspectors have, you know, as an inspector, you got the option not to sign the deferral and push it up the chain

Greg 25:43

That's

Branden 25:44

What do you think of it? Hold-- Of the whole deferral concept and having to push it up the chain? I mean, have you ha- right? I mean, gives you the ability to, to sit there and say, "I'm not comfortable with this," and, and have somebody else have to work their, work its way up on the, on the signature line.

Terry 26:03

Uh, the, the thing about deferrals is as long as the inspector does his due diligence upfront, "We need to get this piece of equipment." And okay, uh, we can't get to it. operations and maintenance say, we need to defer this piece of equipment." What-- At that point, then the inspector needs to look at it and say, "What can I do non-intrusively and get all the documentation put together to where I can say I can sign this deferral?" So you gather external inspection, phased array, uh, whatever else you can do, automated UT. You gather all the information you can and you get it all put together and you document it with your deferral. so it starts with your inspector. if it's a low enough level deferral, the inspector, he said, "You know what? We've done all this inspection, but I don't feel comfortable." So he's pushing up to chief. The chief, the people inside says, "Yeah, but we still need internal by code. we can push it off six months." Maybe he'll sign it and you can move the deferral, stop the deferral right there. That's fine. But if you can't and he still doesn't feel comfortable, you don't, you can't get enough external inspection, you can't get enough backing. You know what? Chief doesn't have to sign it. You have to go to the plant manager. At that time, there's a discussion, say, "Look, Mr. Plant Manager, I've done all this inspection, and, you know, to, to get us to where we can push it off six months. Either you either feel comfortable with it or you don't feel comfortable with it, but I'm not signing it." And I can tell you, the plant manager, he's the next level. He may not feel comfortable signing either. But you know what? You push it up the corporate. It takes it out of his hands, and it, you know, eventually somebody's gonna say either, "You either inspect it or we're gonna move with the deferral. So it's a pretty good tool, it starts putting the onus where it really needs to be. So six months, it might not be bad, but if you're trying to push a year, hey, it, uh, might get a little sketchy sometimes.

Branden 27:52

turnaround's

Terry 27:53

I've had-- If you ask, and I've had, uh, I've had, uh, one piece of equipment one time where my inspector wouldn't sign it, I wouldn't sign it, and I advised the plant manager not to sign it. He wouldn't. And it went to corporate and, uh, they ended up signing it. But, you know, they're the ones that took on that responsibility and that took, took all the way off my shoulder. So, and I, I'm as, as funny you're talking about that because I'm just writing a thorough procedure for a plant I'm trying to help out right now. It's, it's in the process of getting approved long term right now. I'm doing now as a, as a consultant or whatever, is just I'm, I'm helping write a lot of procedures you know, and, and then train it on those procedures. It's one thing to write a procedure, let's say, and then dump it on, but you gotta take that procedure and then you gotta start training people. I like the-- Another one I just wrote is the injection point mix point. So I'm gonna put together a PowerPoint presentation of, and pictures of showing what happens if you get your injection point in the wrong spot, you know, and how crucial it is. So, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna present that training to, to the entire refinery because I want the operators to know about it. I want the mechanics to know about it, how important it is to get that injection point right where you want it. And inspector, you know, that's what it's all about

Greg 29:08

Yep

Branden 29:08

You mentioned PowerPoint. Do, do you find PowerPoint and the ability to put pictures as opposed to going and having a conversation with somebody provides a better training, um, communication? Or have you found something else that you like better than PowerPoints and pictures?

Terry 29:23

Mm-hmm. Yeah, PowerPoint's just a little tool. You can put the pictures together and you can put a little bit of dissertation there. But the biggest thing is, you put a little bullet and you don't read directly off your PowerPoint. You might have your bullet item as a reminder, then you expand on it, and you, you really get into it, you know, verbally with the folks and explain to them what's going on. Show them the picture And then really talk alive. PowerPoint's just a small tool. You can sit there and yak all you want, but if you, if you can get a PowerPoint, show them a picture. So like a, like the back end of a T or elbow that's corroded like the dickens because of a wrong injection well, tell, it tells a heck of a story. Pictures tell a heck of a story.

Branden 30:01

They do. I find when I give training classes, honestly, the best, the feedback that we get is the stories, the anecdotes are the best, and I find that the class engages the most when everybody else is starts... It's usually like day two. Day one, everybody's feeling every- feeling out the whole situation. day two for us in our, our larger courses, it's everybody starts opening up. Maybe they've had dinner together, they know each other. That's when you really see the engagement a lot more happen.

Terry 30:29

Right.

Branden 30:30

so yeah

Terry 30:32

and, and samples. Um, I did a presentation at, uh, one of the summits on HF alkine corrosion on low RE versus high RE, and I had a couple samples where I-- it showed, I mean, one side was corroded like, like you couldn't believe. I mean, it was all thicker than the other side was almost full thickest. And it was, you know, because of the highest percentage of low RE versus high RE, and one side corroded more than the other. And you take that sample, pass it around, it opens people's eyes. Then you show an X-ray of it and say, here's the X-ray of that piece of pipe

Branden 31:02

my, my smart ass, I'd come in with one, uh, hold it in my hand, and then I would hold an empty hand and say, "Here's the other." With HF, you know? Here it is. Here's the other one. It's gone. It's completely gone. Yeah.

Greg 31:19

Do you think HF/Alky units are, um, They, they present a lot, uh, a lot of challenges, uh, for the inspector, Terry?

Terry 31:29

Oh, yeah. Yeah. put it this way. Uh, an inspector who has an HFLP unit, it's the same as having at least three process units because of all the special emphasis programs you gotta go on between flange inspection, lowery, 100% component, then your general inspection. It's, it's, you know, all the stuff that they gotta do, that's equivalent to about three units.

Greg 31:50

Yeah. And then we've got all those new rules around, uh, if you're gon- if you're thinking of doing RBI on one of these units, there's extra rules, right?

Terry 32:01

Exactly. Exactly. it was put to me one time very, very well. Um, our industry, you know, we gotta be careful with everything we do. We can have fires in crude units, we can have fires in cookers and burn things down and blow things up. But if you have one major failure in an HF alkie, that can not only devastate your local facility, that could put your whole company under. Look what happened to that, that company in Philadelphia

Branden 32:28

Yeah, PES is a perfect example of

Terry 32:30

Yeah. Yeah. And that's why that executive, uh, leadership guy says, "Take care of your athletes," you know? The, the other stuff we can deal with,

Branden 32:38

Do you think they're worth the trouble?

Terry 32:40

Yeah

Branden 32:41

When you're, When you're, experienced, what do you think? why don't people-- Like, with all the extra effort and all the extra stuff you have to go through, should we keep building HF plants or should we just move to sulfuric?

Terry 32:52

Oh, no, I My personal opinion, I think HF is a better way to go. When you start dealing with sub-theric, then you gotta transport, you gotta regenerate so much more. You're exposing people, you know, on the other end. Uh, and you're still frozen. I mean, HF is a, it's very dangerous, but you, you gotta respect it. I've often told a lot of people I'd rather do two turnarounds in an HF Valkyrie than one in a Cobra. respect HF Valkyries. I've never had a problem with them. But, you know, you, you gotta know what you're looking for and, and, uh, and work it that way

Greg 33:23

Does that mean you don't respect cokers? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, dude.

Branden 33:29

that's one of those gotcha test questions, huh?

Terry 33:31

is, it is. Yeah. Okapis are just, they're everything big, bulky, and filthy. It, uh, just, they're just nasty.

Greg 33:40

They make a lot of money though

Terry 33:42

They do. They do. And, uh, when things go bad, I mean, in a, in a coker, it g- it gets ugly real quick.

Greg 33:49

Yeah. You've had some experience there it sounds like

Terry 33:52

Yeah, a little bit. I, I, uh, you know, I was an assistant fire chief for 25 years in my first fire race, so I've, uh, I've fought a lot of fires

Branden 34:00

would you say that HF, uh, behind that HF, uh, I'm gonna call it a boil. You were calling them blisters, but that sounds like a, a boil to me. Yeah. What would be, uh, what would be another cool, one of the, another highlight? You know, when you talk to doctors and you're like, "Oh, I had such a great day. I had, uh, you know, all these crazy terrible things that happened for other people." But for you from, from an inspection standpoint, what were some of the really cool things that you found that, uh, you know, other people might be a little scared of, but that you, you look at and you're like, "Man, that was a really cool thing from an inspection standpoint"?

Terry 34:31

In our gas plant off our cat cracker, we had, uh, two exchanges off our cat was a, I think it's a Dubuque, Dubuque card over in the condensers and, uh, we found, um, uh, H2S cracking all, all over this stuff, all over the, the shell. It was just, it just open cracking on the ID circuits. It was, it wa- it was cool. It was midget destroyer. I waited out, I replaced those two shells. another time found a lot of, uh, items and glitches in a bullet tank. That was, That was, pretty cool. Uh, laminations, found a lot of laminations, a lot of dirty steel. You know, when, when you f- when you're out there as a young UT hand shooting UT on a bullet tank and you come across a lamination and it's, it's, uh, five foot in diameter, you know, you're, you're starting to freeze down, then you get on the inside and you say, "Oh, there it's-- if you find out it's just lamination, Those are kind of cool things. Um, yeah, nothing like finding cracking in a vessel for the first time when you're doing wet magnets. That's always pretty fun, you know? It's always exciting. "Oh, yeah, we found cracking," you know? And you're so excited as an inspector, you found some kind of damage mechanism and your manager is going like, you know, "Why are you so excited? you know, you realize what you're doing?" I say, "Yeah. Oh, shit.

Branden 35:44

is that, was that how you found the, uh, the cracks in the exchanger? Was, was wet mag or were they big enough you could actually see

Terry 35:50

visible. Yes. No, yeah. I'll tell you another really, really bad issue we had. This is our coker unit. Yeah. This is why I love cokers. We had, uh, ammonium bisulfite corrosion. we were running the top part of our fractionator at too, too low a temperature, and we were getting ammonium bisulfite corrosion. So what ended up happening is we got into the top of the tower, and we did have a 405 stainless steel liner in it. Well, that was gone. It ate that to the dickens. We ate the, uh, shell up like crazy. We ended up going back in and having to do a weld buildup with WSI, uh, weld overlay, and then put, uh, more liner up, you know, and, and reline that. And then, uh, oh man, another one, coker again. Um, I pushed the issue because below the oil tray, the twenty-fifth tray on, on the fractionator tower, the coker. I said, "You know, I really need to inspect the bottom of this tower. And it, it's got-- we had lined with coke. It's got... I want it cleaned out, and I want it sandblasted and get it cleaned that way I get a good inspection of the shell." And thank goodness we did, because we got it all cleaned out, and pretty soon I got a holler over the radio, said, "Hey, McLean, you may wanna come over here and take a look at this." So I go over there, and here's a piece of the 405 liner in the bottom of the fractionator coker, and it's split. It's a rolled line cladding. It split off, and it allowed carbon to get back in there, just eat on that carbon steel shell. And we were within, uh, less than an eighth of an inch of pulling through on the bottom of that tower. And if we wouldn't have cleaned it and sandblasted it, we never would've found that. We'd have had a hole through it and probably a fire.

Greg 37:29

哇。 Yep.

Terry 37:33

keep pushing for the right inspection

Branden 37:35

That, that's that

Terry 37:36

Yeah. It's things like that where when you hear that radio call and it said, uh, "Hey, McLean, we need you to come down here and take a look at this." I said, "What do you got?" "You just need to come down here." As, as soon as you hear that, you know, you know that there's... that happened to me in our AMU unit, too. I wanted to degas an area on a tower. Well, for some reason, our pulse heat treat contractor got cross-wired and said, "No, we're not gonna degas. This is the bottom, bottom third of the tower." They did a full-blown pulse heat treat of a section. Well, you know what happens then? We wrinkled the tower, and it tipped, it tipped it a little bit. And they said, "Uh, you might wanna come down here." I said, "Why? What do you got?" He says, "You just need to come down and take a look." And boy, next thing you know, we're shooting UTs and measuring bulges and wrinkles, and we send it off for fitness for service, and it's, yeah, it's, yeah, it's a big deal

Branden 38:30

The, the metal, so let me just for, for those who are listening that maybe don't totally understand, like me. So you heat treated the bottom section and, and just a straight cut off of the temperature, and when it cooled it, it contracted and created those, a wrinkle, literally like a wrinkle

Terry 38:49

it was the bottom third of the tower, and it was almost half. It was like about an eight-foot section of this tower where we just all we wanted to do is a little big ass, you know, 'cause I think we were adding a nozzle or I can't remember exactly what we were doing now. But, uh, when they put it in the pulse of heat treatment, and mind you, There was no support for this tower. We were-- We had no intention of taking it to, to, uh, 1,100 degrees, let alone almost 1,200 degrees. We're only gonna take it to 600. So when you take it up to, uh, 1,200 degrees, um, you know, it turns it red hot at the top. Well, you know, with as much weight of that tower and, and you only pulse heat, you know, that pulse heat wave's on one side of the vessel, it just kinda wrinkled it and kinda like nice little-- I tipped it over a little bit.

Branden 39:33

Wow

Terry 39:34

Makes for a real bad day

Branden 39:36

Wow. Okay. Good thing it wasn't any windier that day

Terry 39:40

Oh yeah. Not that the wind blows in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Branden 39:43

Not at all.

Terry 39:45

it does

Greg 39:46

Nah, Yeah Well, Terry, what would you tell our listeners about, uh, the future? What your thoughts are about the future, what your thoughts are about what to watch out for, what to not abandon, what to do, you know, from a positive perspective. What, what would you have to tell them?

Terry 40:09

now that I've been on this side of the business for a while, I'm out there a companies out there that don't have MI programs. our smaller companies out there need to pay attention to the inspection, mechanical integrity area and get involved with it and make sure that you get a good mechanical integrity program going because it pays dividends. That's what keeps your plant running. That's what keeps you out of trouble, whether it be regulators, whether it be auditors, or whether it be failures. Support your MI programs. Learn from the inspectors. Learn the codes and learn welding. Get into everything and make sure that you understand that stuff. The oil business, whether a lot of other people like it or not, I think the oil business can be around for another 50 to 100 years. So we need to take care of it. I mean, there's not enough out there. Alternative energy is not going to take it over anytime soon, that's for sure.

Greg 41:10

Yeah。 嗯

Branden 41:12

if it does, there's enough derivatives of, of-- Right? I mean, uh, plas- all the plastics. It might just mean, you know, if, if, if alternative fuels and alternative methods do come around,

Terry 41:25

Yeah

Branden 41:25

we still haven't found a better way to make plastics. So we might, it just might mean that we, we are re-piping our processes to, to do that. But the, the, the facilities themselves, I mean, we're, we're,

Terry 41:36

Oh, yeah.

Branden 41:37

going away for a while

Greg 41:38

No

Terry 41:39

no, no. And companies need to embrace all the new technology they can. I mean, whether it's, whether it's UT or new, you know, computer RT and digital RT and, and, uh, RBI and CCDs, they keep, keep up with the times, keep up with technology because it's, it's important.

Greg 41:57

Absolutely

Terry 41:58

keeping up with technology, you fall behind, and that's not a good thing to do

Branden 42:02

It's moving so fast these days too that, uh, it's easy, it's easy to be left behind

Terry 42:08

Oh yeah. You got it right, I guess.

Greg 42:10

Yep. And there's so much now that you can, um, not just technology to take advantage of, but sometimes people might try to use technology to take advantage of us. Um, yeah, um, pretty pictures, right? Because we're so visual, but I think it's still important to understand what's the substance behind the pictures. Whether it's, uh, a half a million A scans or whatever, what's behind the picture, that's important. We can't just settle for something that's pretty, you know?

Terry 42:43

Yep, exactly. You know, there was, there was one other question in the prep stuff that she kind of threw at me and I got a kick out of it. Man, says, "When it comes to your professional success, who do you think you owe the most?" Man, I would have to say my wife for putting up with almost 45 years of a lot of overtime, traveling, uh, turnarounds and long hours. It's not only tough on the guy who's doing the inspecting, but it's tough on his family and his wife because they're the ones left home when we're working all these long hours, you know, 40 and 50 and 60 days in a row without a day off. And I mean, they don't do that anymore, but back in the day there was no such thing as a day off on a tour out here. When that plant came down, you were out there working seven days a week, 12, 14 hours a day. That's just the way it was. So, and that's my,

Greg 43:32

Terry?

Terry 43:33

my wife is, uh, Reba. She's, uh, yeah, she put up with me for almost 45 years now. she's been nominated for sainthood.

Greg 43:42

Hats off to Reba for putting up with you for all this time, right?

Terry 43:46

Yeah. it's a darn truth, I'll tell you. Yep

Branden 43:49

Yeah. It's all about... I mean, having a good spouse really, really helps, uh, with a lot of those.

Terry 43:54

a lot of understanding has to be out there.

Branden 43:56

Mm-hmm. It's a team

Terry 43:58

you know, you get somebody like me who, uh, retired once and you, you plugged retirement and, last year we were watching an episode of "Landman," and, uh, they're talking about, you know, about him loving his job. Sam Elliott looked at old Billy Bob Thornton, said, "It's not a job for you, it's a freaking addiction." And my wife looked at me, she goes, "Oh, my God, they just described you." So yeah, I reckon I resemble that part. So.

Greg 44:24

of us do,

Terry 44:26

But there's a lot, there's a lot of cool people that, that helps me along, you know. I mean, it's, uh, I've known Greg for, dear gosh, darn, since 1992 when we were first married. like I said, you know, Tommy Wasik he was the first one that got me into inspection. Uh, Garrett Buchan was taught me more about corrosion and, and, you know, with, with working with Garrett on, on numerous items. It's just, uh, a lot of, a lot of cool things out there. John Reynolds, I mean, years ago when I was first starting ICP, we were sitting there going through some stuff and, and we're going through a couple test questions, all of a sudden John Reynolds just stopped dead, dead in the middle and says, "Terry," he said, "you're an inspector." He said, "What, what do you think about this? What works in the field? You, you tell us." He said, "Us engineers gonna sit here and make all these rule go ones." Said, "I wanna know what works for you in the field." I thought, "Man," you know, for John to stop everything and say, and ask for an inspector's opinion, uh, that was, that was pretty cool. Yeah, and that, that's what John, that's the way John was. And it, you know, 'cause he, he wanted a well-rounded, uh, look at everything. It's, it's not just one group that, that has all the opinion. It, it's a collective bargain of everybody. You know, inspectors, engineers, uh, you know, it takes all of us. And then the-- Then I'll, I'll never forget it was, uh, I was doing a course at, uh, Equity one year, but it was, uh, old Phil Henry. I s- he, him and Matt were teaching a class, Matt Kacer. And Phil Henry says, "Hey, MacKay." He says, "Are you involved in API?" And this is before I ever knew it. He said, "Are you involved in API?" I He says, "When you get back home," he says, "you call this guy and you start showing up for meetings." He says, "I'll be looking for you." So I, I did, you know, 15 years later, here I am still involved in that. That's how I got started with it. It's, yeah, pretty crazy. All because of Phil. And, and on, to this day, Phil and I are great friends. He's a, he, Phil's an awesome guy.

Branden 46:15

Oh yeah, Uncle Phil. That's what a lot of us call him, Uncle Phil. He's

Terry 46:19

Yep. It's a, it's a cool business. it's a great way to make a living.

Greg 46:24

Yeah. Yeah. Well, well I guess part of, uh, of Reba's, um, consideration too in supporting you was enjoying the, uh, the life that you could give her through the job you had.

Terry 46:39

Yeah. You know, it's, uh, you know,

Greg 46:41

And your kids, you know?

Terry 46:42

yeah, it's, uh, gotten both my kids through college and give us, you know, it provided a good living for all of us, and you know, it's, uh, pretty cool. You ca- you can't complain

Greg 46:53

Anything else, Terry, that you'd like to talk about we haven't already? Is there anybody else you want to say thanks to?

Terry 47:00

No, I said thanks to the biggest people that, uh, you know, they're out there. You know, the, the Bill Henrys, the John Reynolds, the Gary Buchheims, uh, meeting you, you know, Craig. Um, and my wife, of course, she's my biggest supporter and, you know, many hours of studying and stuff like that, and she, she put up with me. So it's, uh, that's a cool thing.

Greg 47:22

Well, thanks Terry for joining us. Brandon, do you have anything else you wanted to ask Terry?

Branden 47:26

No, no, this has been great. I love, uh, I love doing these. I really do. I like, um, just getting to meet, meet folks and, and talk and just kinda learn, and I got tons of notes here to, of things that, uh, things I learned, so I appreciate it, Terry

Terry 47:42

Good. Guys, if you got any other ideas or questions, hit me up and I'll, I'll share wherever I got

Branden 47:48

appreciate it.

Greg 47:49

Thank you, Terry. Thanks a million.

Branden 47:52

Thank you for listening to Upon Further Inspection, a Mechanical Integrity podcast. This episode was co-created by Inspectioneering, and CorrSolutions. Our producers are Nick Schmoyer, Jocelyn Christie and Jeremiah Wooten. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or professional's advice. Listeners should seek their own qualified advisors for guidance. If you enjoyed this episode. Please join us next time wherever you listen to your podcasts. Until then, stay safe and stay informed.