This week’s Pipeliners Podcast episode features Weldon Wright, the General Manager of Gas Certification Institute (GCI), discussing the importance of the three pillars of measurement to satisfy tariffs, contracts, company policies, and regulations.

In this episode, you will learn about the purpose of measurement and the importance of standard operating procedures (SOPs), training, and software to support measurement. Weldon also discusses how to establish a solid foundation of measurement in pipeline operations that incorporates the critical human element of measurement.

Oil Gas Measurement:  Pillars of Correct Measurement

• Weldon Wright is the General Manager of Gas Certification Institute (GCI). Connect with Weldon on LinkedIn.
  • Gas Certification Institute (GCI) provides crude, NGL, and gas measurement training, measurement standard operating procedures (SOPs), and field operations software tools.
• SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is a system of software and technology that allows pipeliners to control processes locally or at remote locations. 
• 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.
  • AGA 8 (Compressibility Factors of Natural Gas and Other Related Hydrocarbon Gases) is a report that presents detailed information for precise computation of compressibility factors and densities of natural gas and other hydrocarbon gases.
  • In 2010, AGA published a white paper, “Natural Gas Measurement Technician Training and Development Guidelines.” [Access the White Paper]
  • Learn more about the recently-released minimum requirements for a liquids training technician by downloading this GCI white paper.
• API (American Petroleum Institute) represents all segments of America’s natural gas and oil industry, which supports more than 11 million U.S. jobs and is backed by a growing grassroots movement of millions of Americans.
• GPA (GPA Midstream) is the primary advocate for a sustainable Midstream Industry focused on enhancing the viability of natural gas, natural gas liquids and crude oil.
  • GPA 2172 (Calculation of Gross Heating Value, Relative Density, Compressibility and Theoretical Hydrocarbon Liquid Content for Natural Gas Mixtures for Custody Transfer) is a standard that presents procedures for calculating, at base conditions from composition, the following properties of natural gas mixtures: gross heating value, relative density (real and ideal), compressibility factor, and theoretical hydrocarbon liquid content.
• Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 established the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (Board) to oversee the audit of public companies that are subject to the securities laws, establish audit report standards and rules, and inspect, investigate, and enforce compliance on the part of registered public accounting firms, their associated persons, and certified public accountants.
• Meter proving is a method of physically testing the accuracy of a meter through the proving process of measuring temperature, pressure, flow rate, and density against a known prover.
  • Ultrasonic Flow Meters measure the velocity of a fluid using ultrasound technology to calculate volume flow.
  • Orifice Plate is a device used for measuring flow rate, for reducing pressure, or for restricting flow of product flowing through a system.
  • Coriolis Meters measure mass flow of natural gas and liquid, as opposed to just volumetric flow. Either gas or liquid flows through a tube which is vibrated by a small actuator to create the measurement.
• PPA (Prior Period Adjustment) is an accounting adjustment to oil & gas payments that have already been made, which are triggered by a change in commercial terms, correction of a pricing discrepancy, or to correct a measurement error.

Oil Gas Measurement: Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat:  Welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast, episode 203, sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, providers of POEMS, the Pipeline Operations Excellence Management System, compliance and operations software for the pipeline control center to address control room management SCADA and audit readiness. Find out more about POEMS at EnerSysCorp.com.

[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, and to show the appreciation, we give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener each episode. This week, our winner is Raymundo Rosales with Southern Company Gas. Congratulations, Raymundo, your YETI is on its way.

Also, a special shout-out to Aaron Connor of Eastman Chemical, the listener who acted on our special episode 200 giveaway and is the only person to win a YETI tumbler emblazoned with the Pipeliner Podcast logo that didn’t go through the submitting a form at pipelinerspodcast.com/win. Congratulations, Aaron, for winning, and yours is on the way as well. To learn how you can win this signature prize, stick around to the end of the episode.

This week, Weldon Wright with Gas Certification Institute joins us to talk about the three pillars of correct measurement. Weldon, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.

Weldon Wright:  Thanks, Russel, it’s great to be here.

Russel:  Before we dive in, if you would, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and how you came to be doing what you’re currently doing.

Weldon:  I wish somebody could explain to me how I got here. Seems like a long time ago in a place far away I was working for a public utility doing SCADA, and measurement, and a few things like that.

I ended up working for Bristol Babcock and then on to working for Tenneco, Tennessee Gas Pipeline. Went on to work from them to a privately-owned midstream company owned by the Bass family. Later, I became the measurement and SCADA director for Southern Union Gas. Moved into a director’s position at Energy Transfer, and then went over to Flow-Cal as their product specialist for the Flow-Cal measurement system.

Then one day this guy called Russel Treat called me up on the phone and said, “Hey, I got a deal for you.”

Russel:  That’s an interesting sidebar, but how long have you and I been knowing one another, Weldon?

Weldon:  When I answer that, we’re both going to feel old, dude. Sometime around the mid-’90s would be my guess. Maybe a little earlier than that.

Russel:  Yeah, probably ’92, ’93 time frame, thereabouts.

Weldon:  Definitely. Definitely.

Russel:  Just for the benefit of the listeners, Weldon and I have known one another for a long time, and we share in common that we both have well-formed and well-held opinions that we do battle over intellectually. Right?

Weldon:  [laughs] And do battle over currently.

Russel:  Exactly. I asked you to come on and talk about measurement, and really what teed this up for me is I saw the paper that you did, of course, at the AGA. Maybe you tell us a little bit about what you were presenting and talking about at AGA.

Weldon:  GCI has a white paper out about the value of training SOPs and good software in increasing the value of measurement to the organization.

Russel:  What does that mean, the value of measurement?

Weldon:  That’s the greatest question of the week probably. The value of measurement is not what a lot of people think. First of all, measurement is an expense for any company I’ve ever worked for that didn’t manufacture measurement equipment or do consulting.

It’s an expense that companies want to minimize. The real trick in measurement is how do we get something that creates an acceptable level of risk, an acceptable level of exposure, for the minimum cost to the organization. That’s really where the value of measurement comes in. The value of measurement comes in from getting it right at the right price.

Russel:  What do you think most people think measurement is when they think about it? You understand the question? The people who are not in the measurement department, what do they think measurement actually is or does?

Weldon:  Glad you qualified that. People in the measurement world think getting it right is getting exactly the right number, which is a whole other discussion. In accounting departments, they think getting measurement right is getting answers to the accounting department on-time and not having prior period adjustments. To management, it means minimizing risk and minimizing conflict with the other party.

Russel:  What’s interesting to me about this conversation, Weldon, is when you put measurement in that context, it’s like everybody has it wrong, or everybody has it partially right, but they don’t have the whole story. The challenge here is how do you balance those competing desires.

I could spend a whole lot of money and get really, really, really accurate measurement, really precise measurement, but that might not be justified from a management perspective that’s trying to control cost. It might cause problems if I’m constantly applying my science and making the number better.

Weldon:  Exactly. The last thing we need is the best measurement possible. The only people that can afford that are NASA or somebody like that, and they can’t even get kilometers and miles right.

Russel:  [laughs] There are laboratories, but that’s really a different conversation. Right?

Weldon:  Right. The truth is that what we’re looking at getting measurement right is first of all in the U.S. very little of the measurement is regulated. It’s a contractual agreement between two private parties. In measurement, getting measurement right is reaching a number that’s agreeable by both parties.

Now we hope that number is as close to the “actual” as you can be, but the real thing is it’s the number’s result in meeting the contract conditions or the tariff conditions.

Russel:  The way I like to frame that is do both parties do the same math and come to the same number?

Weldon:  Exactly.

Russel:  Really measurement is an interconnect activity. I’m transferring ownership of the commodity from party A to party B, and they’re both doing their own measurement and accounting, and you have problems when those two numbers don’t match.

Weldon:  Exactly. When you have one set of numbers, it’s measurement. When you have two sets of numbers, it’s an argument.

Russel:  [laughs] If those two sets of numbers are far enough apart, then it’s a lawsuit.

Weldon:  Absolutely. Been there. Done that. Do not want a new t-shirt.

Russel:  No doubt. No doubt. So what does correct measurement look like? What do I have to do to get the correct measurement?

I’m going to define correct measurement as striking the right balance of getting it out on time and without change to accounting, getting a number that is matching the way you got your contracts written, and is doing that in a way that management feels they’re spending the appropriate amount of money to get it done. How do you get to that kind of correct measurement?

Weldon:  There are really three pieces to it, Russel. At GCI, we call those the three pillars of measurement. First of all, you’ve got to conduct your measurement in accordance with your contracts, your tariffs, regulations, and company policy. Those things all come together under a set of measurement SOPs, standard operating procedures.

They’re bringing them all together and defining how you specify the devices in the field, how your people install them, how they conduct their maintenance activities, how they conduct their back-office activities and accounting activities.

The second thing you have to have is a group of people in the field and in the back office that understand measurement, understand the fundamentals of measurement, and know how to properly apply the SOPs that the company operates under.

Finally, you need a set of software tools that help those people through that process. When I say help, the right software tools literally are a member of your measurement team. They’re not something you use. They’re something you work with on a day-to-day basis.

Russel:  You just said a mouthful there. We could do a number of conversations just on that topic right there.

One of the things that are important to understand about measurement is it’s driven by the way the contract language is written with the interconnect party. There’s generally an attachment, or addendum, or a clause that says this is the way we’re going to do the measurement. It states these are the standards we’re going to follow.

I think, however, the thing that’s interesting about that is that it’s distinct from what the company policy might be about measurement.

Weldon:  Correct.

Russel:  Can you talk to that a little bit? How might that be distinct and why is that important to understand?

Weldon:  Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, in the U.S., most of the measurement between private parties is governed by these tariffs or these contracts. Those contracts don’t spell out the minutia, at least normally, they don’t spell out the minutiae of how you do everyday activities.

What they reference are voluntary industry standards, plans for updating those industry standards. They reference company policies. They reference specifics that may be to that particular contract or tariff.

What you’ve got to be sure that happens here is that contractual reference, unlike most of the other contracts in the business world, the terms buried in that contractual reference can change over time just because the referenced standards, the referenced policies, change.

As AGA, API, and GPA update their standards — or even create new standards out there — the reference from those contracts says beat API or AGA 2170 or AGA 8 or GPA 2172. Those are actually moving targets. Those procedures, those SOPs, and the training behind them has to be updated periodically to keep track with those changes.

Russel:  Yeah, I think there’s a whole conversation there that we could do on that subject all by itself. Here’s the thing I was driving at in the question I was asking. If you look at what a gas utility does for measurement at a city gate, they typically rely on the pipeline operator to provide the measurement and they don’t worry too much about city gate measurement. They worry more about measurement at the house.

Weldon:  Correct. So much in measurement is built around trust with the other parties and successful relationships between parties are exactly that. If either of the parties has reason to suspect what’s going on the other side, it just doesn’t work.

In our world, you’re looking at that utility purchased in gas at city gate needs to have that understanding and trust that’s usually developed by witnessing calibrations, by doing some audits, but, at some point in time, if the company has a great record, you just developed a level of trust and that frequency of audit, that frequency of testing and witnessing, may drop down.

Russel:  What I was driving at, Weldon, is more the company policies might be more stringent than what the industry standards and regulations say. I’ll tee this up for you. I know enough about gas sampling, for example, to know that the specifics of the sampler you choose, how you operate that sampler, what you do in the way of heat tracing, how you transport your bottles — the standards give you a whole bunch of guidance in that direction, but there’s a lot of detail in those procedures that companies may set around how those things are done that go beyond, or define more specifically, versus what’s in the industry standards.

That part of this whole program is all about the company managing its greater risk because, for a pipeline operator, it’s really critical that I’m measuring in and I’m measuring out and I reconcile to zero.

Weldon:  Correct. I see what direction you’re headed in now. You’re exactly right. Not only in some cases, in many cases, the company’s policy on measurement standards can be much more strict and cover areas that aren’t even mentioned in our standards. For instance, you will find very, very little reference in our industry standards on how frequently you sample or how frequently you calibrate a meter.

You may find a reference that says, “According to the manufacturer’s recommendations,” or something to that effect, but the majority of the testing frequency and the sampling frequencies are defined by those contracts or tariffs, not by the standards that they operate under.

The same thing happens with the tolerances by which we allow when we go out and test the meter. We find a calibration discrepancy. How big does that discrepancy have to be before we go back and do a prior period adjustment? That is something defined by contract not by our standards or our regulations.

Russel:  Yeah, and a lot of times, what a company will do is they’ll have one thing defined in the contract and something more stringent than that in their internal policy and procedure so that they make sure they never get outside of what the contract says.

Weldon:  Right, because what you have in today’s corporate environment for publicly held companies, you have Sarbanes Oxley, SOX, which SOX really ought to have a four-letter acronym so we can call it the four-letter word, but under SOX, you have internal audit procedures, internal controls that almost all publicly held companies have defined around measurement and those controls around exactly that.

You will find no mention of measurement in the Sarbanes Oxley regulations. What they say is at that top level, at that board of directors level, you’re going to sign off that you understand and you have control over the organization. It’s the auditors of the organization that put together those controls and those controls will definitely be more stringent than the contract and the regulations they operate under.

Russel:  That’s a really good point and I think that’s an interesting point because Sarbanes Oxley does govern measurement SOPs but it’s indirectly, right? What Sarbanes Oxley says is that you have to have policy, procedure, and controls to ensure that what’s happening in the field financially is reported correctly. The only way you do that is to get really clear with how you operate all the measurement equipment in a pipeline company.

Weldon:  Right, but there’s a wide range of the way that companies and audit firms have interpreted that.

Russel: We’ve talked about SOPs. Let’s talk about training. What do you need in the way of training in order to have correct measurement?

Weldon:  We need companies to do it.

[laughter]

Weldon:  The problem we have in this world…You can’t say we have an aging workforce anymore. Most of that aging workforce has bailed and been cut through attritions and mergers, right? We have a much, much younger workforce out there than when I came into this industry, let’s just say, way too long ago.

What happens is there was a day when companies hired new technicians and they went through a very formalized training program that might last two weeks to a month of classroom training. Then, a year or more of OJT [on-the-job] under a qualified mentor out in the field.

Russel:  I know of one pipeline company, it’s no longer around — it’s merged. At one time, they had a formal program where one week every six months they went through formal, hands-on training and they did that for six years. At the end of that six years, they got qualified as a senior measurement tech.

It took six years to get them fully up to…They did everything. They learned all the theories. They took everything apart. They put it back together. They learned troubleshooting. All of that stuff.

I think what’s interesting about what you’re saying is we tend to think that we can get a couple of weeks of pipeline training and 6 to 12 months of OJT and we’re getting the job done. I would assert that that’s not adequate.

Weldon:  I would like to think that every company out there gave each new measurement technician a year of OJT. What we see too often is a week or two of formal training and they ride with Joe for a month in the truck. Then, they’re sent out to calibrate meters and be a measurement technician.

The problem is Joe did that eight years earlier with Carl. Carl did it 15, 16 years ago from Leroy. Leroy, his formal training was on mercury meters. We find people out in the field today, and I definitely won’t point any fingers at any particular companies, but I’ll say it’s more prevalent in the midstream industry than it is in the pipeline side. We find people out there that are now three generations and, literally, mercury meter training away from formal training in measurement.

Russel:  I think the whole training conversation’s a challenge. To me, there are several parts to good training. One is, I need people to have a good set of training in just the fundamentals of measurement. They need to understand fundamentally how measurement works related to the fluid they’re measuring.

Weldon:  That’s what we want to do for them at GCI, by the way. We have a great fundamentals training program for both liquids and gas technicians. Going to get a little shameless plug in right there.

You’re exactly right. You need to start with the fundamentals because you can train a technician all day in how you want him to sample. “I want you to purge X number of times, based upon the pressure of the pipeline.”

When you put that technician out in the field and a guy with every intention of doing the best for his company, of trying to save money for his company, may decide, “Hey, this purging thing takes me 20 minutes. I can blow the heck out of this thing for five minutes while I’m testing the meter. Then I can catch my sample and I’m good.”

If that technician doesn’t understand the whys behind them doing that slow filling purge, if they don’t understand how condensation inside that cylinder can artificially enrich that sample and mess up the analysis and the payments for months going on, then that tech thinks he’s doing something good. Well, he may be costing the company big dollars.

Russel:  That’s right. The fundamental stuff is really important because then you understand the “why I have to do it the way I’m doing it.”

Then, OJT is certainly an aspect. I need to work under the supervision of somebody who knows what they’re doing and can help me with the reality of doing it in the field.

I think, also, that the vendors offer a lot of really excellent training. They have a lot of really good hands-on and the details of how you set up a meter, and troubleshoot a meter, and configure it, and all that type of thing.

I think the last aspect of the training is fundamentals. I need OJT. I need some hands-on. I actually need some things that pull it all together, that help me get to the big picture.

Weldon:  You not only need that stuff that pulls it to the big picture, Russel, but you really need, especially in today’s legal environment, you need the competency testing and the documented competency testing that you can stick in a file somewhere.

That does a lot for the guy getting the training, the managers involved in the program, and the people doing the testing. If they realize that, “Hey, I’m going to have to show that my students met some basic requirements.”

Back to what you said earlier about the vendors, we have vendors out there doing fabulous stuff in our industry. It’s a whole other four episodes about how they got into that position instead of companies doing it themselves. Without the vendors out there in the industry, we’d be in trouble.

The vendors cannot teach the basics. They cannot teach the fundamentals. We need that to happen before that tech ever rolls into those training programs.

Russel:  I’m a big believer that you get the fundamentals. You go out in the world. You do the work. You start learning all the things you don’t know. Then, you start getting the hands-on and the other training.

The other thing that’s true about this, and again, I’m putting this out here because I really want to hear your opinion. I also think that there are certain things that we do in measurement that don’t have a very high training requirement. There are other things we do in measurement that have a very high training requirement.

Part of the challenge is to understand that over the career of a measurement tech, this is where they start, and then this is how they grow their capability and competence.

Weldon:  Exactly. Those lines can be really hard to understand at times, too, Russel. AGA published some recommendations. I guess it’s been 10 years for recommendations for a gas measurement technician. GCI published some recommendations earlier this year for minimum requirements for a liquids training technician and the first thing that most directors, VPs, and presidents of companies see is that number, that total number of hours, and they go, “Oh my. I can’t spend that many hours. No way!”

Both of those recommendations are based upon what it really takes to get a guy out there that not only can do the basics, not only can calibrate the one meter that he sees 95 percent of the time but what does he do when he gets out there and has an unexpected problem and needs to diagnose an issue with that meter that they only have one or two of in the system.

We both know that they’re not going to let that tech pay someone from the manufacturer to come in there to look at those one or two meters he has a problem with, right? They expect him to deal with the issue.

Russel:  That’s exactly right. The other thing is that you have to look at that training and that’s not something we’ve got to do in the first six months that they come to work. That might be something that we do over 6 to 10 years.

There really is a progression here. I will tell you this and I know you’ll appreciate this. I started out in gas and I thought liquids was easy until I got to liquids, and then I figured out liquids wasn’t easy at all.

I have this whole theory that the part of measurement that’s easy is the part you don’t know anything about.

Weldon:  I’m going to go with that 95 percent of that is true. The other five percent is too easy and you don’t understand why it’s too easy, which is a training issue, also.

I could tell you now, after putting in my first meter in about ’83 or ’84, I can tell you today that I don’t have a conversation with a vendor, I don’t have a conversation with a guy in the field or a measurement director of a company, that lasts more than about five minutes before I either realize there’s something I don’t know or flag something I need to know more about.

There’s too much in this industry to know.

Russel:  I know. All of us have certain numbers in our Rolodex who are the guys we call when we get stuck, right?

Weldon:  Exactly.

Russel:  Look, let’s transition here and talk a little bit about your third pillar, which you mentioned was software and tools. What are the important aspects of software and tools?

I want to clarify a little bit because a lot of times when you’re talking measurement, you tend to talk about the back office. The tools that all the data are going into and the analysts are looking at it and they’re making sure all the data is complete, correct, accurate, and clean and all that.

I want to talk more about the tools for actually doing the workflow and the work practice. What’s your take on what’s necessary or needed in that third pillar of the software tools?

Weldon:  I’m glad you’re going to constrain so that makes it only four or five hours instead of a…

[laughter]

Russel:  Instead of four or five weeks?

Weldon:  Actually, when we start talking about software in the field, the first thing that I find is that most companies are too focused on what “software” means for their measurement technicians. There’s much more to what the technician needs in the field for support than just the software he types numbers in as he does his calibration or as he witnesses another company doing it.

Talking very specifically about the functionality around what that tech does in the field, as I said earlier, most companies, most techs deal with similar equipment the majority of the time. I’ve seen companies that said they were all orifice measurement and out of several thousand meters, maybe there’s a dozen ultrasonics sitting out there and maybe there are two insertion pitot tubes, although, I would argue that’s not measurement.

A good software tool does a number of things. First of all, if you have a large organization with 10, 20, or as with Energy Transfer, something close to 100 techs out there in the field, getting standardized responses becomes very important also. If everybody out there reports whether an orifice place is clean or dirty or nicked in a different manner, it gets hard to deal with.

That software should guide the technician through their responses. It should help provide standardized responses when standardized responses make sense, and it should guide them to making sure they’re providing the necessary information.

In other words, required fields without the required fields being so numerous they keep the guy from doing his job. If you’re testing an ultrasonic meter, a required field cannot be orifice plate size, and I’ve seen that with some systems that are out in the field.

The other thing is that software needs to guide him through the process, right? If you test orifice meters every day of the workweek and you have two Coriolis, you have two insertion pitot tubes, or heaven forbid, a DATTUS meter out there, what do you do with it when you come across it?

The software used in those calibrations and testing should help guide the technician. It’s not a substitution for training. It’s not a substitution for know-how, but it should help remind them of the steps in the fields they need to do and the order they need to do it. That’s one of the things good software does for you.

The other thing that software should do for you is that software should impose the contractual limits and the contractual testing requirements. As we mentioned earlier, we’re dealing with contracts and tariffs. Tariffs in the transportation pipeline world are fairly standard. A company that operates under two or three different tariffs would be an exception.

When you start talking about the midstream world, sometimes every individual customer that they’re connected to operates under a different contract with different terms, potentially different testing requirements, or testing frequencies based upon volume tiering. The software should be sure that it’s helping the technician understand testing frequencies through the scheduling functionality. It also needs to make sure when that guy gets out there to test that meter he doesn’t know as often, it’s guiding him through that process, but it’s also guiding him through the limits.

If he’s out there testing a meter and 75 percent of their contracts say plus or minus one percent is an acceptable tolerance that we don’t PPA on, but he’s operating a contract of low volume meters that have a much higher, maybe they have a five percent from a legacy 1950s contract. He needs to know that because that’s money in the company’s pocket. He shouldn’t be calibrating a meter unless it fails the requirements for that particular contract.

Russel:  You just said a whole bunch there. I don’t know if you said this, but when I think of good measurement, one of the really important things is consistency. Every orifice meter is treated the same way throughout the enterprise, regardless of where it is, who’s working on it, and whether that person working on it is an employee or contractor. That’s really, really critical for good measurement is that consistency. A good tool is going to support good consistency in the process.

Weldon:  Good consistency in procedures. Good consistency in practices. But that tool needs to recognize the contractual differences, meter to meter, wellhead to wellhead, interconnect to interconnect.

Russel:  Exactly. Look, man, this has been great. I love talking to you about measurement. I don’t think we said anything we disagree about. Next time, I got to figure out something to talk about where we disagree because that’d probably be a lot more entertaining to the listeners.

Weldon:  Now, I didn’t even get to talk about the part that’s my biggest spiel, Russel.

Russel:  Which is what?

Weldon:  If you’re operating in a world that we consider that “perfect world,” when you’re SOPs properly reflect your contracts and tariffs, when you’re training gets your people up to the standards they need to be, when your training is refreshed appropriately as your contracts and tariffs change, when you have good software out there that’s guiding people through their day-to-day work, when all those things come together in a world, something magical happens.

I’ve had people look at me and call me an idiot, crazy, and things I can’t repeat on the podcast but I’ll tell you right now, if you’re running your operation well, with good SOPs, good training, and good software, you can be in an area where monthly close is not a crisis. It’s a day on the calendar.

Where an audit is not a problem because you know the results of the audit before they do it. That’s an area that we hope to help people with over at GCI. By helping people get into that sweet spot, that sweet spot where training, SOPs, and software overlap, you can get into the area of natural compliance, where your work, by its own very nature, gives you the correct results and the results you’re required to have by your contracts and tariffs. Another shameless plug.

Russel:  Yeah. [laughs] That’s a perfect wrap-up because really that really puts a little icing on the cake about how this all comes together. Listen, Weldon, I appreciate you coming on board, and we look forward to having you back.

Weldon:  Hope to do more of these, Russel.

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

If you’d like to support the podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast, Google Play, or on your smart device podcast app. You could find instructions at pipelinerspodcast.com.

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

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