WATERLOO TECHNICAL SOCIETY

July 8, 2025

Pipeline Integrity Engineering:
Defect Assessment Capabilities

Speaker: Lucy Smart, Principal Engineer with Kiefner and Associates, Inc. Lucy began her career in 2010 at ApplusRTD in Houston, working in the newly developed engineering group as a specialized Integrity Engineering Data Analyst. As a mechanical engineering graduate from Iowa State University, her part-time job at the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation helped her secure this role, as many oil and gas pipelines use these evaluation methods to assess them. Primarily, she has worked with inline inspection methods, such as ultrasonics and magnetic flux leakage, as well as in-ditch NDE inspection methods. She has expanded her skill set beyond just ILI and the associated statistical data analyses, by participating in PHMSA research projects involving in-line inspection data, presenting at several industry-relevant conferences, developing and leading training workshops, and earning her master's degree from Iowa State focused on material properties of carbon steel pipeline. As a principal engineer at Kiefner, she now assists with root-cause failure assessments, risk assessments, integrity management procedural development, and more.

Description: We'll talk about how we obtain information on the fitness-for-service of buried carbon-steel pipelines, which technologies are used, and how we know whether that information is correct. Every measurement system contains error, and the tools that have the robustness to withstand launching in a natural gas or liquid carbon steel pipeline need to have the accuracy and sensitivity to give reasonable information - which can be difficult! This will be a brief overview into the world of Pipeline Integrity Engineering: defect assessment methods from an in-line inspection perspective.

More details to appear here soon.

Reservations: reservations@waterlootechnicalsociety.org, by 11am Monday, July 6, 2025

Social period: 5:30 P.M, July 8, 2025, 

Dinner: 6:00 P.M.

Program: 7:15 P.M.

Program Chair: Steve Crouse

Guests are always welcome. We need your reservation to enable us to have a name tag for you as well as to send you a reminder in email.

You are welcome to make a reservation for dinner or just come for the program. A program-only reservation is appreciated for a head count.