This episode of the Pipeliners Podcast features a conversation with Todd Lakatos and Mary Molina from the AGA Construction Operations Committee, discussing key themes in pipeline construction such as safety, human performance, inspection, and workforce development.

The dialogue explores how the committee collaborates across the industry to improve construction practices, recruit and train talent, and foster a culture of careful, methodical work to ensure long-term pipeline integrity and safety.

2025 AGA Construction Operations Committee Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Todd Lakatos is the Director of Capital Construction at UGI Utilities and Chair of the AGA Construction Operations Committee. Connect with Todd on LinkedIn.
  • UGI Utilities, Inc. is a natural gas and electric utility that provides energy service to approximately 700,000 customers across 46 counties in Pennsylvania and one county in Maryland.
• Mary Molina is the Senior Director for General Construction Distribution for Pacific Gas & Electric Company and the Vice Chair for the AGA Construction Committee. Connect with Mary on LinkedIn.
  • Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) is a California-based utility that transmits and delivers natural gas and electricity to approximately 15 million people across northern and central California.
• AGA (American Gas Association) represents companies delivering natural gas safely, reliably, and in an environmentally responsible way to help improve the quality of life for their customers every day. AGA’s mission is to provide clear value to its membership and serve as the indispensable, leading voice and facilitator on its behalf in promoting the safe, reliable, and efficient delivery of natural gas to homes and businesses across the nation.
  • Construction Operations Committee: A specialized committee within the AGA focused on pipeline and distribution system construction, contractor oversight, inspection, safety, scheduling, and forecasting.
• Pipeline Construction: The process of installing or replacing pipeline infrastructure, including new pipe laying and distribution construction.
• Distribution Construction: The construction activities related specifically to the distribution portion of the natural gas system, often involving smaller pipelines delivering gas to end-users.
• Contractor Oversight: The process of supervising contractors to ensure they follow safety, quality, and procedural standards during pipeline construction.
• Inspection: The act of examining work to verify compliance with procedures and quality standards, as well as gathering information for assessing overall system performance.
• Human Performance: A safety and operational concept emphasizing training and empowering workers to make the right decisions independently, including recognizing precursors to potential incidents and applying tools like the “two-minute rule” to pause work if necessary.
• Process Safety: The safety management of processes to prevent major accidents or catastrophic failures, distinct from individual worker safety (slips, trips, falls), particularly in construction and pipeline operations.
• Near Misses: Safety incidents that could have resulted in injury or damage but did not; used as learning opportunities to improve human performance and prevent future incidents.
• Two-Minute Rule: A human performance tool encouraging workers to take a moment to pause and assess safety before proceeding with critical tasks.
• Swiss Cheese Model: A risk management metaphor illustrating how multiple layers of defense (like inspection, human performance, procedures) work together to prevent failures; holes represent weaknesses that can align to cause incidents.
• Job Plan: A documented plan outlining tasks, roles, and responsibilities for a particular workday or construction activity to ensure clarity and safety.
• STAR (Stop, Think, Act, Review): A human performance methodology for safely completing tasks by systematically pausing and assessing each step.
• Peer Checks: Safety practice where coworkers verify each other’s work or decisions to prevent errors.
• Recruiting: The process of attracting and hiring new employees into the pipeline construction industry, often challenged by workforce shortages.
• Training Towns: Simulated environments or facilities designed to train workers in realistic but controlled settings, such as underground construction or regulatory station operations.
• PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) is responsible for providing pipeline safety oversight through regulatory rulemaking, NTSB recommendations, and other important functions to protect people and the environment through the safe transportation of energy and other hazardous materials.
• Emergency Response Training: Training designed to prepare workers and teams to effectively respond to pipeline emergencies or incidents.
• Reg Station (Regulation Station): A facility along a pipeline system where pressure and flow are regulated for safe distribution.
• Contractors: Third-party companies or individuals hired to perform specific pipeline construction or maintenance tasks.
• Vendor: A supplier or service provider that supports pipeline construction and operations with products or services.

2025 AGA Construction Operations Committee Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat: Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast,” episode 390, sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, driving safety, environmental protection, and sustainability across the natural gas and oil industry through world-class standards and safety programs.

Since its formation as a standards-setting organization in 1919, API has developed more than 800 standards to enhance industry operations worldwide. Find out more about API at api.org.

[music]

Announcer: The Pipeliners Podcast, where professionals, bubba geeks, and industry insiders share their knowledge and experience about technology, projects, and pipeline operations.

Now your host, Russel Treat.

Russel: Thanks for listening to the Pipeliners Podcast. I appreciate you taking the time. To show the appreciation, we give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener every episode. This week, our winner is Jerry Presley with Williams. Congratulations, Jerry. Your YETI is on its way. To learn how you can win this prize, stick around till the end of the episode.

This week, we speak with Todd Lakatos and Mary Molina about the work of the AGA Construction Operations Committee. Todd, Mary, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.

Mary Molina: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Todd Lakatos: Thanks, Russel. It’s great to be here.

Russel: Todd, I understand you’re a longtime listener?

Todd: I am. I’ve probably been listening for probably the past five years now.

Russel: It’s good to finally meet and good to finally get you on. For all you guys who have been out there listening for four or five years, you should reach out. You probably have something valuable to share. I’m always looking for guests. Glad to have you here, Todd.

Todd: It’s great to be here.

Russel: If you would, would you guys give us just a quick introduction, a little bit about who you are and what you do with the AGA committees?

Todd: I’m Todd Lakatos, Director of Capital Construction for UGI Utilities in Pennsylvania. This year, I am the Chair of the Construction Operations Committee.

Mary: I’m Mary Molina. I’m the Senior Director for General Construction Distribution for Pacific Gas & Electric Company. I am the Vice Chair for the Construction Committee.

Russel: Tell us just a little bit about the nature of committee work. I’m doing a whole series this particular AGA Operations Conference. For the listeners, we’re sitting in a room doing this recording at the AGA conference in Denver on a Sunday afternoon. We should be outside enjoying the pretty weather, but these nice guys decided to do this.

If you would, tell me a little bit about what is the nature of the work you do on the Construction Committee.

Todd: It’s an opportunity to really bring other utilities and our vendors, contractors and support vendors, from across the industry together here to share information really focused on pipeline construction.

We do have a heavy focus on distribution construction, both new pipe and replacement, really focusing on contractor oversight, inspection, and then product management, scheduling, forecasting, completing work efficiently. Really, leveraging that expertise of all layers and digging in on what’s important to us from a constructability, safety, and quality component of our work.

Russel: What are y’all talking about? What are some of the key subjects that people in the construction space are interested in at the moment?

Mary: There’s always a common thread through all of these, where we talk about different aspects of the inspection process. Especially this time that we’re here in Denver, we will be having some conversations and roundtables around some topics around inspection.

Another common thread that we see through a lot of our meetings together is around safety and human performance of our workforce. One of the things that we started doing more recently was around sharing near misses or incidents that have happened and what concepts with human performance do those incidents relate to, how could we use human performance to mitigate those future incidents.

We have someone coming in this session to talk about an incident that they highlighted in a previous session, but there were members that wanted to hear more about it. We invited them back for…

[crosstalk]

Russel: I want to push into that a little bit more. I’m not sure I understand. We talk about human performance a lot in the control room, which is the area I play in. You’re talking about safety and human performance and construction. I’ll try to build a little context for the question I’m trying to ask. I’m going to stumble a little bit about how to ask it.

I think of safety, there’s two buckets of safety, generally. There’s the classic slips, trips, and falls, like individual safety. We don’t want to get people hurt that are doing the work. Then there’s the process safety. I’m not really clear what that looks like in construction. Can you elaborate that on a little bit, help me understand what that is?

Mary: Just to double-click on that, are you talking about the process safety from…Are you looking at the overall project or specifically adherence to procedures from the individual?

Russel: It’s a fair question. I don’t know. I’m struggling a little bit to ask. I’m seeking to understand. I make up that construction is one of the primary things that impacts overall pipeline safety performance.

Our mechanism is two things. We get the right people doing the right work the right way. Then we have inspectors to make sure that’s occurring. We gather information we use later to understand performance. You said we’re looking at safety and human performance. Elaborate a little bit.

Mary: For sure. I like what you did there, where you were talking about the inspectors and then the people in the field. What I like about you making that distinction is the inspection piece is almost like this QA piece, like are they even doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

When we talk about human performance, we’re talking about at the source so that…You’re not going to catch every little thing. When I think about human performance, it’s a concept where we are training and coaching our people to make the decisions, the right decisions at this moment in time, on their own, where we’re not holding…We can’t hold their hands.

Russel: Fundamentally, you don’t want to…

Mary: You don’t want to because you want…

Russel: …because people don’t like working in that environment.

Mary: Exactly. Because of all of those reasons, it’s a mindset. It’s this need and desire to take that two-minute rule, which is what they teach you in human performance, take that pause to recognize when they’re a precursor.

If everything’s going wrong that day, that’s your moment to say, “This is not the day I do this critical task” or “This is the time where I ask for help or someone to double-check me.”

Russel: I think I’m getting it. Let me try to play it back to make sure I’m understanding. I want to talk a little bit about inspection first. Again, I want to dig into this a little bit more too. It’s something I want to learn more about.

To me, inspection is not to verify all the work’s been done correctly. Inspection is more about gathering the information I need to assess overall system performance later. I think that that’s a healthier outlook about inspection. I’m not looking over the shoulder of the people doing the work. I have to rely on the people to do the work the right way.

I’m more looking at, as an inspector, are the policies and the procedures and the training, are they getting us the outcome we want.

Todd: There’s a little bit of both there, Russel. There is some component of looking over his shoulder, making sure that they’re following the procedure, what does that finished product look like.

There are other layers that the worker performs, whether it’s an internal employee or a contractor, but it is also the documentation of record. Do we have the finished product that we intended to build at the end of the day?

Russel: Do we have the records to operate and maintain it for the long haul? I was leveraging off what Mary was saying though earlier, about we want the people to be able to take a pause and think. We want them to understand what it is they’re trying to do and what they’re trying to accomplish.

We want them to be able to ask questions and know, “Am I prepared to do this task? Can I do this task, right now, in this situation? Is there something needed or required? Is there something I don’t understand?” That’s what you’re getting at in human performance, is helping the boots on the ground do a better job of making those kind of decisions.

Mary: Yeah, and it extends beyond that. That’s that moment in time, but when there’s a change in policy or there’s, not change in policy, a change in field conditions…

Russel: Situation.

Mary: You have a new, abnormal condition. Instead of moving forward and building it as designed, you’re now stopping, asking your questions. You’re trusting your gut, knowing that you’re not going to get flak for pausing the job, but you’re going to stop and say, “I don’t think we’re supposed to build it this way.”

Maybe all the holes in the Swiss cheese lined up, and I’m that one layer. It’s giving you the confidence to be the layer and stop it. To me, inspection, yes, of course, absolutely, it’s another layer of the Swiss cheese in a way. Human performance, it’s creating a culture where you reduce the amount of holes in those layers. You are adding layers to…

Russel: You’re adding layers by what the people doing the work know, by their knowledge and experience. Cool.

Todd: We’re giving them tools to lean on out there, through training and starting with the job plan. What’s our task for the day? Who has what roles and responsibilities? Then you step through your STAR, “Stop, Think, Act, Review,” your peer checks, and on and on, so they have these tools to pull together and leverage to get through their work day.

Russel: I think about people that don’t know about construction. They drive by a job site. They see all these people standing around and one guy in the ditch actually working a shovel. What they don’t realize is just how much thought has to go into that work. There’s a ton of thought that has to go into that work.

Slow is fast. If you’re slow and methodical in the project, then you end up with a good outcome at the end of the project, which is what you’re getting at, is how do you teach people to be slow and methodical.

Mary: Going back to the benefit of having a committee like this working in those conditions is to help our members plan and think through that and bring awareness to incidents and other tools that they could use to help with that end product.

Russel: One of the things that’s really unique about our business — this is thematic throughout all the things we do in pipelining — is 99 percent of what we do is pretty dadgum routine, but that 1 percent is extremely high-consequence if we don’t get it right.

In that way, it’s like aviation. One thing, just one thing, can cause a catastrophic outcome. Really, what we’re talking about here is construction is one of those places where there’s lots and lots and lots of things and we got to make sure that no one thing gets through and causes that catastrophic outcome.

I want to pivot a little bit. You mentioned one of the other topics before we got on the microphone. That was this idea of people and where are we getting them and how we’re training them. What kind of things are y’all talking about in that domain?

Todd: As an industry, we’re all seeing the challenges of hiring people. We talked a little bit before on, it’s a digital world. How do you even get in front of people to show them there’s careers in construction and there’s good-paying careers and long-lasting skill sets?

We’re having conversations around recruiting and the way utilities, contractors are approaching the recruiting using SMS and others to get it out there. Podcasts is another way where people are using to get in front of an audience in a school or a trade school to get people interested in it and see what they can do in the industry.

There’s a lot of discussion around that, as well as how do you bring them up once they’re in the door and get them trained, so what type of training program are out there. We’re losing a lot of of the longer-tenured employees.

A crash course and a data dump from them isn’t always the best way to do it, so trying to pull that knowledge into a training program that we can step through with new hires or people that may be transitioning from another industry into construction.

Mary: We’ve also had a lot of conversations around the technology and the methods used for adult learning and how how people learn now is different than how people learned 20 years ago and accepting the fact that you need to evolve if you want to bring people along and transfer this knowledge to them.

Russel: That’s a super, super, good point. I know, for me, with the younger people in my company, I have to suspend and set aside, if you will, my “This is how I learned” and realize that’s not going to work for the younger people in my company, that there’s got to be a different way to train them.

People have access to so many tools. They’re so powerful. Nobody has to go to the library and look anything up with the Dewey Decimal System. You just go on Google and query. If Google’s not good enough, you hop on ChatGPT.

Mary: Because of that, our attention spans are so much shorter. You can no longer give a 50-page work procedure to somebody and say, “You better know how to do this after you read this.” It just doesn’t work that way. How can we use these tools and give bits of information in a shorter amount of span that it’s received and ingested?

Russel: I could do a whole podcast just on that subject right there. That’s a deep concept because that’s how I learned. You had to be able to pretty much memorize that whole dadgum 50-page procedures. Nowadays, you just do it in pieces and don’t…

That means getting people the experience to understand the totality of the system and how it works is a different kind of challenge than it was with those older guys. Interesting. Wow. I’m a little spun on that answer. I’m sitting here. I’m going to pause for a second, just think about what all the implications of that are.

Mary: There’s a reason your podcasts are 30 minutes and not 60 minutes. You’re doing bits at a time. You’re doing bite-sized…

Russel: I have another job. This doesn’t pay my income.

[laughter]

Russel: I’m not Joe Rogan. I don’t even aspire to be Joe Rogan. You’re right. There is a reason There’s a lot of information we’re trying to impart. Interesting. What kind of things are you doing, or what kind of things is the committee talking about and looking at in order to do a better job of training and recruiting and all that?

Todd: One of the things we’ve seen, some utilities have built training towns. We’ve been bringing them in to present on how their training programs are working, utilizing that town to train different people on underground construction, maybe measurement and regulation technicians that are working in a reg station that’s on the property and getting that experience in a controlled environment.

We’ve got several vendors that have done that. Sharing lessons learned as well, from training events and others that we can continue to utilize, to bring back to our own companies and help improve the things that we’re doing with our employees.

Mary: We put on workshops too for different topics. This one that Todd and I just put on earlier this year was around project management. One of the discussions there that one of our member partners came and presented on was really eye-opening. I had not seen something like this, how they train their people. They’ve gamified it. It’s just really neat.

Russel: Our company is digging into that really hard. We have an R&D project going on with PHMSA right now about gamifying and using AI to support emergency response in team training. I think we’re going to see a lot more of that in the future, a lot more.

Mary: That’s been really cool because the rest of our members got to see that. There’s a lot of questions and follow-up that we could potentially do from hearing that topic at that workshop.

Russel: Those tools are getting easier. I looked at that kind of stuff the 20 years ago. The quality of the tools and the dev environment, the things you can do and the time frame for doing them has radically decreased from what it used to be, just because the tools for building stuff are so much better. Interesting.

I wanted to ask another question. Before I do that, I want to dig into inspection a little bit. You mentioned earlier you have a white paper on inspection. Can you talk about that a little bit, what it is and what you’re currently doing with that white paper?

Todd: There was a white paper completed — I forget the year, 2017, 2018 — really focused on identifying the various levels of inspection resources but laid out for a linear, large pipeline project.

The team got together over the last couple of years and have been working on updating the white paper for current needs in inspection, a little bit more focused on distribution, more focus on the things that inspectors are doing today, from the regulatory piece, asset data collection, more administrative things coming down.

So a little bit of a deeper dive but rolling in some items from the quality management paper, some other white papers that were out there around HDD and other functions so combine these. A little bit more robust in the reality of the work that’s getting done by members of the committee.

Russel: One of the things I try to do, as we have this conversation, Todd, is I always try to decode the jargon that we use. You threw out a TLA. You know what a TLA is? That’s a three-letter acronym, HDD. That’s horizontal directional drilling.

Again, for the listeners, if you’re ever listening to this and you hear us use some jargon you don’t understand, you can always go to the website. We have a comprehensive dictionary that we’ve built over years now that tries to capture all the jargon we use. We are a jargon-intense industry, for sure.

I find it really interesting. One of the things I would say…We’re here at the AGA Operations Conference. Most of the people that participate here are utilities and some gas pipe, but you really don’t see the liquids guys here.

That white paper on inspection, I’m sure 80 percent and 90 percent of that probably applies to what best practice would be for any pipeline operator, not just gas utility.

Todd: I would agree. It’s very similar work, putting pipe in the ground, collecting the same type of data. The same risk is there inherent with any type of work.

Russel: Now, with the Mega Rule and all of that, there’s a lot of requirements that are falling on gatherers that historically haven’t had those those requirements. There’ll be a lot to learn from those guys because there’s a lot of similarities. There’s some important differences but a lot of similarities.

The work that AGA does is broader than just the community that participates in AGA. Certainly, I’ve used it that way. [laughs] I would think others could too.

I wanted to ask you a little bit about contractor and contractor management. There’s a lot of work going on, at API in particular, around PSMS for contractors. What are you guys doing in that domain to try and equip your contractors to be able to work within this highly regulated environment that we find ourselves in?

Todd: We’ve had several conversations/presentations in the committee around PSMS with our contractors and getting their feedback. One of the asks is consistency so they don’t have to build 12 different PSMS for the operators that they’re working for. Really, some really good industry people, contractors, very vocal in our committee and sharing things.

Taking away some lessons learned, some of them have been further out ahead of even the operators on developing their PSMS and have been willing to share that information so that we can pull that together and help set the table for all of us to be collectively successful as we continue on a PSMS journey.

Mary: With the two-day PSMS workshops that the AGA puts on at least once a year now, that’s helped us come together to get ideas of what we can bring back to the committee and topics there. Especially for organizations that are just starting out, it can seem pretty daunting because some of it doesn’t feel like it all is applicable, necessarily, to the contractor.

It’s really connecting to the dots and showing what are the elements that are directly applicable to us but then how do we interact with the other elements and making sure you know what your place is and who everybody’s place is. It’s definitely going to take all of us to understand all of this.

The other thing is, is the elements themselves differ between even the operators. To your point, being consistent and finding ways we can connect and overlap will probably be most helpful so that we’re speaking the same language.

Russel: I did a podcast some time back — in fact, Todd mentioned it earlier — with a guy that had a background in airline safety management and had done it for 30 years and was a pilot and had been in a leadership position pulling together the stuff that pilots do around PSMS.

There’s a lot of similarities and a lot to learn, but we have some big distinctions. One of them is I can build a program around a particular airframe. Even though multiple companies are flying that airplane, I can build a program around that airplane.

More difficult for us because we don’t have the things that we can build programs around that way to the same degree, but they probably do exist. Plastic pipe is plastic pipe is plastic pipe. There will be distinctions based on weather and other things, but there’s probably opportunities for us around that. Anyways, I’m with you. I think we got a ways to go, a lot of work to do there.

Mary: At least we’re starting now though.

Russel: The contractors have a particular challenge because all the operators do something different. I’m going to make this as a statement and ask you guys to comment on it. I think there’s a need for us to get clear about what’s the 80 percent that’s all the same.

We tend to get focused on the 20 percent that’s different. How do we get clear about the 80 percent that’s the same? Does that makes sense to you guys?

Mary: Yeah. It’s helpful to look at that way because we all want to do our best to cover all of our bases.

To your point, why waste the energy on that 20 percent when we can really make progress on the 80 percent and then taking back to our companies or our operator companies, making sure that we are still doing that but able to help our contract partners out so that there’s consistency with them? I agree with you. That’s a good way to look at it.

Russel: I think and I would advocate for, as we mature in this PSMS journey as an industry, focusing on the 80 percent. What are the things we can agree to, that we all ought to do this, we all ought to measure it this way so that we can start benchmarking and learning, not just within our organizations, but across the industry. What did I miss that I should have talked about?

Mary: Similar to what we were just talking about with PSMS with the 80/20 situation and condition is that all of our members, whether operator, contracts, they’re all in varying levels of maturity in their different processes.

One of the values that the Construction Committee brings is around that, pulling out what is that 80, asking everybody for their input on what is the 80 percent that we all share in common that we can really focus on so that it’s relevant to everybody, so that everybody wants to continue to come back because they’re finding value from the discussions.

That’s really where I see the benefit from having an organization like this that really brings that out.

Russel: That makes perfect sense to me. I think, Mary, that that comes out organically in the conversations that we have inside these committees. It’s really interesting to me. One of the things I’ve learned is there’s lots to be learned from the presentations that are inside the committee.

There’s also lots to be learned from the presentations that are in the conference itself, but the most valuable thing is the conversation when you take a break and go get coffee because that’s when everybody starts asking the really specific questions about what are you doing. A lot of the meeting is just setting the context for getting to the question you need to ask.

A lot of times, I don’t know the question I need to ask until I sit in the committee. After I sit in the committee, I’m like, “Oh.” The questions formulate out of the conversation.

Todd: You touched on it earlier, Russel. That’s what’s unique our business, is people’s willingness to roll their sleeves up and share information and lessons learned. We’re all after the same thing. We want a quality, safe product and everybody going home at the end of the day.

The willingness to work together and air what’s happening in their worlds with us to help make us better is really helpful. It’s very unique to our industry and the governance around it.

Russel: Well said. We all are committed to improving safety performance, everyone. We all have that in common. We look for opportunities to collaborate to do that. This is one of the more important ones, in my opinion.

Thank you, guys, so much for taking the time to do this on a Sunday afternoon in Denver in the spring when it’s gorgeous outside. Thanks. Glad to have you.

Mary: Thank you to all.

Todd: Thank you. Thank you, Russel. Appreciate it.

Russel: I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast and our conversation with Todd and Mary. Just a reminder before you go, you should register to win our customized Pipeliners Podcast YETI tumbler. Simply visit pipelinepodcastnetwork.com/win and enter yourself in the drawing.

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Russel: If you have ideas, questions, or topics you’d be interested in, please let me know on the Contact Us page at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com, or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.

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