Equity Presents at the International Asset Integrity Management Forum in Abu Dhabi

Equity Engineering's Greg Alvarado presented at the International Asset Integrity Management Forum on May 13-16, 2012 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. His presentation, Key to Demonstrating Value from the RBI Process - Understanding and Managing Uncertainty, was delivered on Monday, May 14th.

This presentation covered the impact of uncertainty in the Risk Management process and discussed practices for creating and interpreting inspection effectiveness tables that comply with API 580 and API 581. As Bayesian logic is used in both the 581 RBI technology and process, a thorough explanation of the sensitivities and importance of realistic and consistent application of rating inspection effectiveness is critical to accomplish a credible, effective and sustainable RBI program. All RBI practices in the process industries are based on relative risk. As a result, if we lose consistency and credibility, the risk rankings are of little practical good. The focus of this presentation demonstrated value in the RBI process via effective management of uncertainties, and how to achieve this credibly and consistently.

Mr. Alvarado also facilitated a post-forum workshop, Integrating API Industry Standards Into Your Risk-Based Inspection Program. This workshop provided an overview of the API Standards for Life-Cycle Management, with a focus on API 580 and API 581 for Risk-Based Inspection. The API 580/581 portion of the workshop gave the student a basic understanding of API 580, which provides minimum guidelines for developing a RBI program, and API 581, which details a method for quantitative RBI. Together these two documents comprise a widely-recognized standard for industry accepted RBI practices.

This workshop also provided an overview of the API-U programs, which include a number of formal training courses on a variety of disciplines for plant Life-Cycle Management. The workshop was led by industry experts in the areas of RBI, who discussed methods for ensuring sustainability of API RBI in plant operations. The day concluded with a panel discussion on forming a local API RBI User Group in which all speakers and the audience participated.

For more information on the conference, please visit www.meassetintegrityforum.com