It wasn’t too long ago when pipeline public awareness programs, in many cases, began and ended with the actions of pipeline company land agents routinely interacting with landowners. The messages being delivered, lack of documentation and the propensity for messages to differ from one company representative to the next, were sketchy at best. For many years, however, these individual actions met the requirement to promote awareness of the presence of the pipeline to the public and inform them how to live and work safely near it but several key events changed that - some of those events, such as ongoing audits and inspections, were gradual while others, such as the Whatcom Creek incident in Bellingham, Washington, were immediate.

Fast forward 20 years and a lot has changed - for the better! Pipeline companies have come full circle - first asking “what will a public awareness program cost?” twenty years ago to asking “what is the cost of not promoting awareness?” today. Dedicated positions within the pipeline industry have emerged and evolved to manage public awareness programs and the collective experience and knowledge of the persons occupying those positions have matured their line of work into a front-line damage prevention and pipeline integrity tool.

But how to assess a public awareness program? How to determine effectiveness? Those questions have plagued the industry since the term “assess the effectiveness” appeared in National Energy Board (Canada) legislation in 1988 and in API 1162 in 2005.

Public awareness used to be referred to as not being “an exact science” but given the amount of data accumulated by individual pipeline companies and the industry as a whole, it certainly can be. Several key elements to assess program effectiveness are:

1. General assessment: Establish the goals of your company’s awareness program and determine whether it meets and supports those goals
2. In-depth assessment: Determine baseline public awareness data through a survey. Based on survey results, revise your awareness program to target areas that fall below program goals and expectations. After promoting your revised awareness program, re-survey your audience using the same questions to determine whether your company’s efforts have augmented awareness for those categories that were initially identified as ‘deficient’.

Clearly, these are high-level ideas to gauge and assess awareness but they will get you started. Once a company begins to assess available data, it will begin to understand and consider other avenues that enable program measurement and support.

HMA Operational Services can support your public awareness efforts through detailed gap analyses and program assessements to developing, implementing and managing your company’s public awareness program. Unlike other companies who appear to offer similar services, HMA’s Team consists of individuals who have unmatched experience as auditors and inspectors for federal pipeline regulators and who have also worked for the pipeline industry in Canada and the United States; designing, implementing, managing and defending awareness programs. In addition, we also employ knowledgeable and experienced Land Agents and field staff who are available to work directly with your company to carry out field activites related to your awareness program.

If you are interested in learning more about how HMA Operational Services can assist your public awareness goals, please contact us at opsservices@hmaland.com.