The winners of the 2020 Australian Pipelines and Gas Association (APGA) Annual Awards have been revealed at the APGA 2020 Virtual Convention.

This year Australian Gas Infrastructure Group (AGIG) took out the APGA Annual Environment Award for Hydrogen Park South Australia (HyP SA).

Located at the Tonsley Innovation District, HyP SA is a $11.4 million demonstration project delivered and funded by Australian Gas Networks (a part of AGIG), supported by a $4.9 million grant from the South Australian Government.

The proposed facility comprises a 1.25 megawatt (MW) Siemens proton exchange membrane electrolyser, the largest of its kind installed in Australia.

The project will showcase to the world how electrolysers can integrate gas and electricity networks to support whole of system energy stability, particularly as more renewable electricity generation capacity comes onto the grid.

It will also demonstrate the feasibility of blending hydrogen into the broader South Australian gas network and inform the State Government’s planning on how it transitions to a low carbon gas distribution network.

MPC Kinetic won the inaugural APGA Annual Diversity and Inclusion Award for a package of policies and action plans that make up its Workplace Inclusion and Diversity Programs.

The action plans cover attraction and recruitment, professional development and retention, inclusivity leadership and inclusivity culture.

In addition, a range of activities developed under the Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan aims to achieve the company’s vision to build respectful, lasting and equally beneficial relationships through dialogue internally and externally on a shared journey with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) peoples.

In one year of implementation, the company has almost doubled its previous ratio of ATSI employees and all new ATSI employees are participating in either traineeships (particularly younger employees) or skills upgrades.

This success has spurred the company’s leadership team to increase and enhance its engagement of ATSI people and set higher targets for the next step in its plan, the Innovate RAP.

Moreover, APA Group took out the APGA Annual Safety Award for its Process Safety Fundamentals program.

The program was carefully planned and rolled out over 2.5 years and achieved a step-change in the awareness and engagement across the organisation.

The rollout overcame many challenges posed by a geographically distributed workforce.

This cultural change was successful due to a coordinated change campaign across three key fronts:

• make the content simple, clear and relevant;
• deliver the content in such a way that maximises engagement; and
• back up the training and roll out with strong underlying systems and processes.

Among other things, the program used clear and simple language, used story-telling and real-life experiences, and targeted at-risk behaviours – focusing improvements on behaviours that are relevant to the APA business.

It also focused on delivering geographically specific systems and processes and documentation that incorporated a two-way interaction with the frontline teams.

As a result, the process safety roll-out program shifted APA’s understanding of process safety from a low level of awareness, to the level where it is now, a commonly socialised term spoken by executives to administrative staff, from asset managers to field technicians.

 

The awards also recognised the passion, wisdom and efforts of number of individuals in the industry:

This year the APGA Outstanding Contribution Award was awarded to Brian O’Sullivan.

Mr O’Sullivan has been a significant and constant supporter of the pipeline industry for more than 30 years. He has played a part in shaping the careers of many in the industry via the companies he established: OSD, OSD Asset Services and PIPEd, and now also via LogiCamms.

In 1992, observing that pipeline engineers frequently moved from service company to service company following the projects, Mr O’Sullivan created OSD to allow engineers to work on a range of pipeline projects and to provide both technical and managerial career paths for them.

In 2019, OSD was merged with LogiCamms, creating a company of more than 500 staff and further improving the service to clients and to grow the industry.

In 2015, Mr O’Sullivan was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to engineering in the oil and gas industry, and for support for people with muscular dystrophy.

The Jeff Shepherd Construction Excellence Award went to Graham Meers, who is known as being the first pair of boots on the ground in pipeline construction projects and the last pair to step off.

Undertaking the key role of Land Liaison Officer for Spiecapag Entrepose, Mr Meers successfully negotiates the difficult path between construction activities, the general public and the landowner’s interests.

He brings a unique understanding to his dealings with landowners and allays the concerns of the many stakeholders involved. His extensive knowledge of the pipeline industry, gained over three decades of involvement in it, enables him to respond to all issues raised.

Moreover, Nick Kastelein was the winner of the APGA Young Achievement Award.

Mr Kastelein has been involved in research via the industry CRCs for 12 years and is now the lead proponent of new projects in complex research areas such as the impact of hydrogen injection in high-pressure transmission gas pipelines on fracture initiation phenomena.

Since January, he has been the Chair of the Future Fuels CRC’s Metals Pipeline Assets Working Group and, in this role, he developed a research roadmap outlining the research questions, and approach to testing, experimental and theoretical study to progress knowledge of hydrogen embrittlement in transmission pipeline steels.

This research is critical to the industry, and an essential activity to help determine a pathway that will determine how high-pressure pipelines remain relevant in a low carbon future and a safe and reliable asset for hydrogen storage and transmission.

The full APGA Awards presentation can be viewed here.