This week’s Pipeliners Podcast episode features first-time guests Tyler Tunic of Williams and Blake Villarrubia of Audubon Companies discussing the important work of the Young Pipeline Professionals (YPP) organization in the U.S., and the Young Pipeliners International (YPI) organization in Canada, Mexico, and several other countries internationally.
In this episode, you will learn about the YPP mission to accept the transfer of the duty of care for the pipeline industry to the next generation of pipeliners, how various YPI groups are making an impact across the globe, how to apply for the John Tiratsoo Award for Young Achievement, and what’s planned for YPP in 2021.
YPP: Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms
- Tyler Tunic is the Pipeline Controller Lead at Williams. Connect with Tyler on LinkedIn.
- Blake Villarrubia is a Project Manager at Audubon Companies. Connect with Blake on LinkedIn.
- Young Pipeliners International (YPI) is an association of current and aspiring young professionals working in the pipeline industry. The vision is to be the recognized pipeline forum dedicated to the career development of young professionals in order to ensure a sustainable future of the industry. YPI strives to achieve this vision by being the prime conduit for formal and informal training, mentorship, and networking.
- Young Pipeline Professionals USA (YPP USA) exists to educate young U.S. professionals about the pipeline industry, create leadership opportunities for the next generation of pipeline professionals within YPP and other industry organizations, foster relationships, and build a network for the advancement of the industry.
- International Pipeline Conference (IPC) is organized by volunteers representing international energy corporations, energy and pipeline associations, and regulatory agencies. The IPC has become internationally renowned as the world’s premier pipeline conference that supports educational initiatives and research in the pipeline industry.
- Pipeline Pigging and Integrity Management Conference (PPIM) is the industry’s only forum devoted exclusively to pigging for maintenance and inspection, as well as pipeline integrity evaluation and repair. The event draws engineering management and field operating personnel from both transmission and distribution companies concerned with improved operations and integrity management.
- PPIM 2021 is scheduled for February 17-21, 2021, at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas.
- The John Tiratsoo Award for Young Achievement recognizes the achievements of individuals under 35 years of age who have demonstrated a valuable and original contribution to the pipeline industry.
- INGAA Foundation advances natural gas pipeline infrastructure through analysis, dialogue, and collaboration.
- Susan Waller was elected as the new chair of the foundation. [Read the December 2020 Press Release]
- The Mega Rule is a set of new pipeline safety standards issued by PHMSA in October 2019 that brings 500,000 miles of pipeline under federal jurisdiction to ensure the safe transport of gas product.
- MAOPs (Maximum Allowable Operating Pressure) is a pressure limit set by PHMSA or another governing body that applies to compressed gas pressure vessels, pipelines, and storage tanks.
YPP: Full Episode Transcript
Russel Treat: Welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast, episode 161, 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 700 standards to enhance industry operations worldwide. Find out more about API at api.org.
[background 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 that appreciation, we are giving away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener each episode. This week, our winner is Eric Angell with Southwest Gas. To learn how you can win this signature prize pack, stick around to the end of the episode.
This week, Tyler Tunic with Williams and Blake Villarrubia with Audubon join us to talk about the Young Pipeline Professionals and the John Tiratsoo Award for Young Achievement. Tyler, Blake, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.
Tyler Tunic: Hey, thanks a lot for having us.
Russel: If I could, let me get you guys to introduce yourself. Maybe, Tyler, you could go first. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and what you do in pipelining
Tyler: For sure. My name is Tyler Tunic. I work for Williams and actually have worked for Williams my entire career in the pipeline industry. I graduated from Penn State in chemical engineering in 2014. I did intern with them and chose to come in with them full-time right after graduation.
I did a rotational program with them, did several engineering and project management assignments across the country. Where I landed was in Houston, Texas in their pipeline control group.
I’m currently the Gulf Coast Market Area lead, so I help develop the day-to-day game plan for our controllers and I am one of the key liaisons between our group and others, like commercial and system planning, to analyze the impacts that the work and day-to-day operations have on our system.
Russel: Why did you pick pipelining? What was appealing about pipelining? In particular, why did you pick the control room? I’m a control room guy. I’m curious. Why would a young guy want to do shift work in a pipeline control room?
Tyler: The interesting thing is I’m a lead controller without ever having worked shift duties.
Russel: What? Inquiring minds want to know. How did you get that gig?
Tyler: I started off in a position that we call the maintenance coordinator position. I came from the project side of our business where that group, in particular, was our maintenance projects group. We have the majority of work that goes on our system and has most of the impactful work.
I was the key point of contact between our group and pipeline control. Pipeline control manager said, “I want a young guy in there that’s going to help redefine this role and really get our maintenance tracking up to the level where it could be.”
I came out of the engineering side and into the maintenance coordinator role, which was a great position to really meet everyone on the pipeline network, because you’re connected into operations, asset integrity, all those groups.
I was in that position for about two years, absorbing all of the pipeline control lingo and how the group works. Then, I was asked to be a lead not too long ago, about six months now. It’s been a great opportunity, and it’s a challenging one when you’re directing controllers without having been a controller of yourself.
Russel: I can only imagine. We’ll take that offline. That probably requires some alcohol to have that conversation. Blake, same question for you. Tell me a little bit about your background, what you do, and how you got into pipelining.
Blake Villarrubia: Hey, Russel. Thanks. Ever since I was a kid playing with Legos, I knew I wanted to be an engineer. That may be a cheesy thing to say. I went to college. I wanted to be an engineer. My sister was an engineer before me, so it’s following her footsteps a little bit.
I graduated from LSU in 2014. I went in as a pipeline engineer, had the choice between the mechanical group in the service provider that I was going to be working for UPI right out of college. I had the choice between the mechanical group and the pipeline group.
Being a civil engineer, knowing Darcy’s formula and Weisbach formula and other things like that, I felt like the pipeline group made more sense for me. That’s how I got my start as a pipeline engineer. I worked about four years doing that, and I moved into a project engineer role and then recently transitioned here to my company, working for Audubon Companies.
My official role now is a pipeline project manager with Audubon Companies. We’re also a service provider. We provide engineering survey inspection services. I work on a lot of big mainstream transmission pipelines. That’s my history, pretty much working on big pipelines, not a whole lot on the facility side but enough to be dangerous.
Russel: No, you’re young yet. You’ll get an opportunity to do that.
Blake: [laughs] I’m hoping so. That’s one of the reasons for moving Audubon is to get some more experience in different facets of the amazing industry that we’re in.
Russel: For the listeners, Blake and Tyler are both members of the Young Pipeline Professionals. They reached out to me in order to get the word out about the Young Pipeliners, which I think is awesome, because the whole mission of the Pipeliners Podcast is to educate and inform through conversation.
We’re going to have some conversation about the Young Pipeliners. Maybe if you could, because you guys are kind of young engineers, how did you find out about the Young Pipeliners in the first place?
Tyler: I found out about it through Williams, a mutual colleague from a different group within our organization was a part of YPP USA. One of the biggest events that we put on is our symposium, which every two years, it’s your typical two-day conference where you bring in a lot of great speakers.
What really got me through the door is the low cost of being able to go to something like that. A lot of these big conferences, it’s an expensive ticket to get through the door unless you have the right connection. This was less than $150, with two days of content in the Woodlands.
Right then and there, I knew I wanted to get more involved with YPP USA. I was lucky to have one of their leadership members sitting at the table with me. Not too long after that, I got involved in a leadership role within that, and it’s just grown from there.
Blake: I would say almost the same thing happened to me that happened to Tyler. One of my mentors at UPI, when I worked there, reached out to me and a couple other ambitious young engineers that worked at the company and recommended that we go try out the YPP USA Symposium.
I went to the same one that Tyler did. That was my first event with YPP USA. That same day, I signed up to be part of the actual organization, putting on events, being involved in it more, because I absolutely love the symposium. I love the speakers there and the information that I got from it. I wanted to be part of that.
Russel: I should say it this way. I would guess that as a young professional where you don’t know a lot, it’s a little safer or easier to ask the questions when you’re with your peers, and there’s an expectation that you don’t already know all this information versus if you’re there with older, more senior people, you may not want to ask those questions. I would say maybe it’s a safer environment or an easier environment to navigate in.
Blake: I would say so. Yes. That was the impression that I got to be a YPP USA member. Really any YP organization member, you have to be 35 years or less. We also have a group of senior advisors for every YP organization.
You are with your peers. You feel more comfortable in those situations because they’re at the same level that you’re at. If you’re asking a question, you probably feel confident they may not have that knowledge too. You don’t feel bad about it.
Russel: It’s interesting. There’s always a situation where there’s people around that know more than you. That’s one of the beauties about pipelining, is there’s always a subject matter, and there’s always somebody that knows more than you do, just always.
I don’t care how long you’re in the business. You’re not going to know at all. It’s just not possible, but that’s one of the things that makes it fun. What is the mission of YPP?
Tyler: That’s great that you asked that because that was what I was going to state next. The mission is right along those same lines. Word for word, the mission is to prepare ourselves to accept the transfer of the duty of care for the pipeline industry.
It’s really acknowledging the fact that younger people don’t know everything, and we’ve got a lot of people in the industry that have a lot of knowledge. YPP USA is the conduit to help pass along that information to young pipeline professionals across the country.
Russel: Tyler, I haven’t heard that before. I would have thought I would have heard that before. That phrase, “duty of care,” there’s a lot bound up in that. There’s a lot bound up in that. I think actually as pipeliners, in particular, our requirement for a duty of care is higher and in some ways more challenging, because so often, our assets are hidden from public view.
We have a duty to have our assets remain hidden from public view and do that in a way that’s safe and of value to the community. That’s awesome. That’s a great mission. I’m struggling a little bit with how to ask this question, because when you talk about preparing the next generation to take on the duty of care, part of that is just knowing the technology.
There’s another part of that, too. That’s, I’ve got to know how to navigate in a world where I don’t know everything and yet still make informed, intelligent decisions. How does YPP try to support the membership and do that sort of thing?
Tyler: One of the biggest parts of that is YPP itself is free to join. That’s a move we made in 2019 to increase the availability of membership to more young people, because even though membership previously was only $50 a year, it’s still something that is a barrier between you and asking your supervisor to get involved in something outside of work. It’s free to join.
We have a number of different types of events to connect with our members. We do monthly webinars, which we keep very technical. We make sure that we vet the presenter and the presentations. We don’t want these to just be sales pitches for that company’s specific product or service.
We do other types of events. The biggest one being the symposium that Blake and I touched on already. We do other smaller events. One that we just had last week is what we call a BRIDGE Workshop where we get a group of 5 to 8 subject-matter experts in a more of a roundtable discussion with a group of 12 to 15 YPP USA members.
It’s less of a webinar or technical presentation, and more of an open discussion where nothing’s recorded. We get these industry experts in the room to share real-life stories about their experiences on the topic.
The topic that we just did this workshop on last week was on the Mega Rule and the MAOP re-verification steps and the different methods of doing so. We wanted to hear from the experts. What are some of those options — pros and cons?
Then, get young people feeling comfortable to ask any stupid question they wanted on that topic or to share facts that they know from their limited experience within their respective organizations.
Russel: Talk to me a little bit about the symposium. How often do y’all do that, and when’s the next one?
Blake: The symposium is about every 18 to 24 months. The last one was February 2019. We’re due for another one pretty quick.
Russel: You time that about perfectly, one right before and one right after the pandemic?
Blake: [laughs] That’s right. It’ll end up being more than 18 months. I’m not 100 percent sure what the group’s plans are for the next one, but I know that we’re looking at opportunities to do something virtual this year as opposed to an in-person symposium like all the other major industry events are happening. Tyler, do you have more info on it?
Tyler: No, that’s exactly right. The decision hasn’t necessarily been made, whether it’s going to be in-person or virtual. Obviously in-person, we’d probably be delaying the start closer to that 24-month gap, so still more to come on when that next symposium is going to be.
Russel: There’s a lot to talk about when you start talking about all these conferences going virtual because you can distribute the information that way, but it’s very difficult. I haven’t been involved with anything yet where you get the interaction with the people.
A big part of going to these conferences is meeting your peers, building relationships, and finding out who’s who, and who does what, and all that. It’s very hard to do that in the virtual world.
Tyler: YPP USA and YPI, Young Pipeliners International, we just had a great opportunity to be involved with the International Pipeline Conference, IPC, which is every two years out of Calgary. I think that conference was in September of this year. We got several different slots in that virtual presentation.
One, they had virtual booths, which was cool to be able to browse the booths in a virtual environment and have access to all that information for the companies right at your fingertips, but then we did several different presentations within that pipeline conference, one being a panel session with young professionals from various countries that have YP groups within them.
We had a great event, which was a YPI report to industry where we got to share, like what we’re doing today, what Young Pipeliners International is, and what we’re doing to connect young professionals around the world.
Russel: I know you guys have been really involved not just in YPP USA but also in YPI, Young Pipeliners International. Talk to me a little bit about what’s going on there, and what do you see in the future?
Blake: That’s right. YPI is essentially the umbrella organization that YPP USA is under, along with several other Young Pipeliner organizations around the world. There’s the Canada organization, Mexico, Europe, Brazil, Australia, and two new organizations that were just added were India and Nigeria. There’s a few others in the making.
Originally, YPI was created to get all these groups together, make sure they’re sharing information, make sure they’re sharing what’s working, what’s not working within groups, basically just a knowledge-sharing platform. Since Tyler and Bernardo and myself have gotten involved in leadership roles, we’re trying to expand it out more, expand YPI’s reach.
We have a new set of fresh goals that we’ve got to help provide more to the pipeline community through YPI. That’ll include revamping YPI’s website to be more of a platform for sharing knowledge platform, to reach out to the other YP groups, having more frequent meetings through all the YP groups.
Just this past week, we had a meeting. I had to plan it, too. We had a meeting with all those groups that I just mentioned. Imagine dealing with all those different time zones. Working with a service provider that focuses mainly in America, I don’t have to deal with that big of a time gap when trying to set up meetings.
We ended up setting the meeting up for two o’clock Houston time. In India, I think it was 1:30 in the morning. In Australia, it was 7:30 in the morning. You’re having to find a good time for that. Some of the challenges you deal with in international organizations, but we feel like bringing some of those changes in.
We’re hosting a YPI podcast, too. This is coming up. Susan Waller is going to be presenting on that. I’ll let Tyler share some more info because that’s his thought on there.
Russel: Cool. It’s another Pipeliners Podcast.
Blake: That’s right.
Russel: Awesome. Tell me about that.
Tyler: This podcast, I guess I would technically label it a webinar. The podcast itself is a quarterly event that we created. The goal for it is a part of the new YPI leadership team to have quarterly meetings where the different YPP groups all meet and then also have a quarterly webinar that is offered to all groups.
Technically in YPI, we don’t tell them what to do, how to run their organization. We help them get formed and set up, and we answer any questions they have and provide support when needed. They have their own leadership teams, which are directing their day-to-day operation.
Part of this goal is to have a webinar that’s offered to all groups, because lots of times, the groups have webinars and events that are only offered to their region’s worth of young pipeline professionals.
Russel: I think that’s really tough. That’s shrewd because one of the challenges in pipelining is it’s such a broad and such a technical thing that the collaboration across that greater set of people is going to make it easier to get better content for everybody to use. Right?
Tyler: Yes, definitely. A part of that webinar structure is that not only have a very noteworthy speaker to go through a typical presentation, but we’re asking each young professional group to nominate a YPP-aged member to then sit on a panel after the presentation with the presenter to expand on the topic and see how that topic is played out within these various groups around the world.
Russel: That’ll be very interesting because the way pipelining works in different countries is quite different. The science is the same, but the regulatory environment, the environmental environment, all those other kinds of things and oftentimes in other countries, there’s one pipeline company for the entire country, and they do all the pipelining. It’s very different than what we do here in the U.S. and Canada.
Tyler: In our pre-meeting that we had last week, we heard things that were happening in other countries, like already injecting a certain percentage of hydrogen right into the current natural gas stream that’s in the pipeline.
Russel: Is that the U.K.?
Tyler: Yes.
Russel: I heard about that. That’s like, “Okay, so there’s the future. Pipelines are going to be here to move hydrogen. Who would have thought it?”
Tyler: In Brazil, they stated that you could open the hood of any car, and it can — except for different types of fuel — vary from…
Russel: Probably compressed natural gas, propane, butane, gasoline, diesel, some combination of those things?
Tyler: Yeah. Basically, their cars are already equipped to handle a variety of different types of fuel, which is something that we didn’t know about and just got a taste of the great conversation that we’re going to have coming up tomorrow.
Russel: I’m looking forward to when I can drive my car with old beer cans and banana peels. Young guys, get the movie reference?
Tyler: No, actually. What movie that from?
Russel: No? Oh, my gosh. [laughs] “Back to the Future.” It’s not the first one. I think it’s the second one, anyways.
Tyler: It’s probably before our time.
Russel: It was. It was. Got to feel my age, I think. I appreciate that. A gift that keeps on giving.
I want to transition, guys. Let’s talk a little bit about PPIM, which is Pipeline Pigging and Integrity Management. It’s a very specialized conference for integrity management, guys. I know that YPI offers an award every year, and that’s coming up.
Talk to me a little bit about the award. What is it? What’s its purpose? How do you submit all that kind of stuff?
Blake: The award that YPI is sponsoring this year for PPIM is called the John Tiratsoo Award for Young Achievement. Like we were discussing before the podcast, it was renamed last year for the late John Tiratsoo, who was a really big advocate for the industry. He started Pipelines International Digest. He started PPIM.
I think he was one of the founders of the conference itself. When he passed in 2019, PPIM reached out to YPI about changing the name of the award in his honor. It’s for pipeliners that are less than 35 years of age that have made a big impact to the industry essentially.
There’s links on our LinkedIn page or website. You can go to either YPI or YPP USA page. Really any of the YP organizations around the world will have the link on it to register potential nominees for the award.
Russel: Again, just to re-state for the listener, so 35 years old or younger and a notable achievement?
Blake: Correct.
Russel: You can go online and submit an application. If you know a hotshot, young pipeliner…
Blake: [laughs] That’s right.
Russel: …or a good young pipeliner, which was either or both, then go to the site and submit it. I will link that up in our show notes as well. If somebody wants to just find it through the Pipeliners Podcast, I can do it that way, as well.
Blake: To add to that, you do have to have a sponsor from your company that will essentially write up your nomination for it.
Russel: What I’d like to ask is, what kinds of things might be appropriate or good material for submitting to win this award?
Tyler: Some of the great things we’ve seen young professionals be awarded for. We had that International Pipeline Conference that I mentioned previously. We had a host of YPI awards there as well. Some of the winners are getting involved on the governmental front. They’re getting in front of their region’s leaders.
Whether it’s voicing their concern about certain acts that are going to be against the pipeline industry. Making it harder for the pipeline industry to operate or just providing good information about the industry and bringing a young person’s perspective to that table and be able to voice their vision of the pipeline industry future and how it fits into the clean energy idea that a lot of leaders aren’t grasping.
That’s an example of something that we’ve seen young professionals be awarded for. Getting involved in other industry organizations and sponsoring projects.
Russel: It’s not necessarily just about technology. It’s about contributing to the industry, making a meaningful contribution to the industry?
Tyler: Yep, that definitely sums it up.
Russel: Anything to add to that, Blake?
Blake: One thing we didn’t talk about, which is the most exciting thing, is what the winner gets.
Russel: Oh, you get something? There’s prizes?
Blake: [laughs] The winner of the award will get a $2,000 travel voucher. I guess you could technically use it for travel, tuition, education, or professional development. They’ll also get an engraved plaque. Everyone loves to display those in our office. Finally, a recognition interview in a piece in “World Pipelines” magazine as well.
Russel: That’s very awesome.
Blake: Also, to add what Tyler had, one of the last winners that we had in last year’s IPC conference, he wrote over 30 white papers. At less than 35 year old, over 30 white papers, plenty of conference talks, conference seminars, things like that.
Russel: That’s crazy.
Blake: He went above and beyond what anyone in our industry with a normal ambition, I guess, would have.
Russel: Most people wouldn’t write that in there. I’m pretty prolific. I don’t know that I’ve done 30.
Blake: [laughs]
Russel: I’m 60-something. That’s impressive. That’s a lot of writing.
Tyler: I think one of the other impressive things about this award in particular is the judges panel. Through our connections with our various YPP groups, the judges panel this year, we have Andy Drake, Vice President of Enbridge; Mark Hereth, who’s an industry leader, Managing Director of Process Performance Improvement Consultants; Yvanna Ireland, Director of Pipeline Integrity at Trans Mountain Corporation; Cristie Neller, Vice President Dominion Energy; Tony Rizk, Vice President, Boardwalk Pipelines; Christina Sames, Vice President of American Gas Association; and Sarah Vandaiyar, who’s a pipeline engineer from Canada. Really, an all-star cast of judges that are going to be voting on that winner for this award at PPIM.
Russel: I know a number of those folks. They are all very impressive. Every single person in that list is both very technically competent and very knowledgeable about the business just holistically about the entirety of the business.
I would say to young professionals, submit to get your name in front of those people. Just getting your name in front of those people is a good thing. I wanted to talk to you as well guys about, what YPI is going on with INGAA? Maybe, talk a little bit about INGAA, what they do, and what YPI is doing with INGAA.
Tyler: A couple clarifications there that something that we have to correct our team on all the time is there’s a big difference between INGAA and the INGAA Foundation. INGAA is the smaller collection of pipeline owners and operators, and then INGAA Foundation is the group that has membership available to basically any pipeline industry company.
That’s where we get the collaboration with the service providers and contracting realm of the industry. Within the INGAA Foundation, YPP USA, we’ve done some things for them in the past. We are lucky enough to be a member company and grateful that we don’t have to pay to be a member company.
We were afforded a free membership to the INGAA Foundation, which is great. Just this past year, we submitted a project on behalf of YPP USA. How the INGAA foundation works is they have various committees. They work in a yearly project cycle where people from various member companies in the committees themselves submit study ideas, which could be webinars, workshops, or papers that are put together on a certain topic, anything that’s going to benefit the member companies that aligns with the INGAA Foundation’s goals.
YPP USA, this year, we submitted a project proposal that was all about, how do we help get the word out about the pipeline industry in a positive way to young people that are still deciding what career path they want to go? That could be high schoolers, people in college, whether that’s a technical college or a four-year degree.
What these younger people are seeing on social media and elsewhere in the news, it’s only not necessarily accurate, but it creates a pretty negative view of the pipeline industry. It makes one think that there’s maybe not even a long future in the pipeline industry, so why would a young person want to enter an industry that they’re not going to be able to potentially have a lifelong career?
The INGAA Foundation’s Public Policy and Communications Committee, which I was lucky enough to be offered a position on, we’ve done work in the past with message-testing and specifically doing these very cool projects where we get focus groups together.
We test current industry messaging that companies have either put together via commercials or just statements that they put out online, and we really see what connects well with various demographics and groups of people. We have summarized all of that in previous projects. This study proposal on behalf of YPP USA was focusing on developing that messaging for younger people.
That project itself was funded for $100,000 for the 2021 project cycle, which is significant, because all the projects in total only add up to $500,000. Our project is one-fifth of the whole budget for the INGAA Foundation in the 2021 project cycle.
Russel: I think that’s awesome. I haven’t done a whole lot on the Pipeliners Podcast around advocacy and that sort of thing. I’ve done a little bit. There’s so much misunderstanding about our business and what we do. It’s real safety performance that getting out the proper messaging is really important.
I think the point that you guys are making is that the messaging that works for the younger generation is probably different than the messaging that works for the older generation. That’s cool. It’s very substantial. It’s awesome.
Guys, we’re coming to the end of our time. How would you like to leave this? How would you summarize? What would be your message to the young pipeliners out there about YPP and how they might get involved?
Blake: I’ll just say the first step is to get involved, make sure that you’re stepping out of your comfort zone, going to a conference or attending a webinar, because that’s the first way to understand that there’s other people in the industry that cares much about the industry and care much about the knowledge as you do.
I’m sure we’ll link it up with the episode to how to get involved with YPP USA, what our calendar looks like and the different events that you can get involved with because the more that you get involved — like we were talking about earlier — the easier it is for you to ask questions, learn more, and you’re going to look great with your company, too.
Russel: The other thing I would say, too, looking back at my career, is those relationships you’ve formed today, doing things like what you guys are doing in YPP that are cross-company, those relationships are going to pay big dividends, 10, 20, 30 years down the road because those are people who you have a relationship.
In our business, it’s a relationship business. We like to do business with people whom we know and trust and for good reason. Forming those relationships is really a valuable and important part of building a career. That’d be my counsel. Get involved.
Blake: It’s a long relationship, too, because everything that we do for YPP USA and YPI is all sweat equity. They’re both non-profit organizations. We volunteer our time to do it all, but you’re doing it with a group of people that you get along with and that you enjoy doing things with. The best thing you can do as a young pipeliner, as a young professional, is to get as involved as you can.
Russel: That’s well said. Blake, well said. Tyler, Blake, thank you so much for making the arrangements to get together. We’re actually in-person, in an office, in Houston, Texas.
Blake: In 2020. [laughs]
Russel: In 2020. 2020 is almost gone. I’ll leave it at that. [laughs] By the time you listen to this, it’s 2021. I would just say this kind of conversation makes me enthusiastic about the future. It’s great to see guys like you that are leaning in and looking to do more than have a job. You’re looking to support the industry and support your fellow young professionals and build a future together.
Kudos to you. I would encourage others to come and play. I’m only jealous that I can’t qualify for membership.
Blake: We have plenty of senior advisor roles.
Russel: Very good. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast and our conversation with Tyler and Blake. Just a reminder before you go, you should register to win our customized Pipeliners Podcast YETI tumbler. Simply visit pipelinepodcastnetwork.com/win to enter yourself in the drawing. If you would like to support the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple podcast or on whatever app you use on your smart device. You could find instructions at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com.
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Russel: If you have ideas, questions, or topics you’d be interested in, please let me know either by filling out the form on the Contact Us page at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com, or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.
Transcription by CastingWords