This episode of the Pipeliners Podcast features a conversation with CaLae Miller from CEM Solutions about her journey into the pipeline and corrosion industry and the inception of the Piney Woods Corrosion Short Course. 

CaLae shares insights into creating impactful industry events tailored for corrosion technicians and operators, emphasizing collaboration, regional focus, and educational impact. The discussion highlights how these initiatives address industry needs and foster community in pipeline operations.

Improving Corrosion Management Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• CaLae Miller is the owner and founder of CEM Solutions Co. Connect with CaLae on LinkedIn.
  • CEM Solutions began as an event management firm and expanded its services in response to client needs, incorporating strategic marketing solutions into its offerings. Today, CEM provides a comprehensive approach that integrates event management with marketing strategies to meet the evolving demands of its clients.
• AMPP (Association for Materials Protection and Performance) The global organization formed from the merger of NACE International and SSPC, focusing on advancing corrosion control and protective coatings.
  • NACE International Previously the National Association of Corrosion Engineers, a professional association focused on the study and prevention of corrosion. It merged with SSPC to form AMPP in 2021.
• AWS (American Welding Society) A professional organization dedicated to welding and allied processes, providing standards, certifications, and educational resources for industry professionals.
• Louisiana Pipeliners Association A regional industry group focused on networking, education, and collaboration among pipeline professionals in Louisiana.
• Haynesville Refers to the Haynesville Shale region, a major natural gas production area spanning parts of Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, and a key focus area for pipeline and corrosion professionals.
• Corrosion The natural process by which materials, especially metals, deteriorate due to reactions with their environment, such as oxidation or chemical exposure. In the pipeline and industrial sectors, corrosion is a critical concern as it can compromise the integrity and safety of infrastructure, necessitating strategies for prevention, monitoring, and management.
• Piney Woods A colloquial term referring to the forested region of East Texas, North Louisiana, and Southern Arkansas, characterized by its dense pine tree populations. In the context of the Piney Woods Corrosion Short Course, it denotes the geographic focus area for the event, aiming to address corrosion management and educational needs specific to this region’s pipeline and industrial operations.
• Owner-Operator Companies or entities responsible for owning and operating pipelines, often providing input on technical requirements and compliance needs for projects.

Improving Corrosion Management Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat: Welcome to the “Pipeliners Podcast,” episode 364, sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, providers of POEMS, the Pipeline Operations Excellence Management System, operations and compliance software for the pipeline operator to address safety management, control room management, and field operations. Find out more about POEMS at enersyscorp.com.

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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 give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener each episode. This week, our winner is Alex Hunter with Marquette Energy Analytics. Congratulations, Alex. 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 CaLae Miller from CEM Solutions about the Piney Woods Corrosion Short Course and improving corrosion management in the Haynesville.

Hello, CaLae. Welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.

CaLae Miller: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Russel: As I often do, I’m just going to jump right in. I’m going to ask you to, if you would, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got involved in pipelining.

CaLae: Absolutely. CaLae Miller. I own CEM Solutions, which is an event management and digital marketing company based in Houston. We tailor to the industrial market more than any other right now. I spent 11 years at NACE International, which is the society for corrosion engineers. It’s now AMPP, as most people know.

Then I moved over to American Welding Society and became their first Director of Conferences. That is how I got to know this pipeline and corrosion family so well, is because I spent so much time in it.

Russel: A couple of comments. The name change for NACE, horrible decision.

CaLae: Everybody says that.

Russel: [laughs]

CaLae: Everybody says that.

Russel: I don’t know why they did that, but I’m not in charge of those things, so anyways. It’s really interesting. You’re a marketing and event planning person, but you’re working in highly technical environments with highly technical people. How does that work? How does that turn out?

CaLae: It all goes back to my time at NACE. A lot of people think that when you are an event manager, that you are given a set of programs and the location. You are told to basically go order the coffee, make sure the ballroom is set up correctly, and go about your way and make sure that there’s a profit at the end.

It’s not necessarily like that for every association that you work for. My time at NACE, I was told, “Here’s the overall departmental budget. Let’s figure out how to get there.” Of course we had some legacy programs, like our annual conference and things like that, where we knew we were going to make a set amount of revenue.

The rest of it was up to, basically, us and the subject matter experts, as to what’s going on in the industry at that time. Could you take that subject and make a profit out of it with a conference or trade show or something like that?

During my time at NACE, I got to basically test the waters with so many different ways of providing program content, whether that comes in a reverse trade show or demo day or just a standard conference.

I learned very early on that if you have a subject that you keep hearing about, you can find a subject matter expert that can break it down into elementary terms for me, because that’s what I needed.

I could start out with a one-day program. If that was successful, turn it into a two-day seminar, is what we call that. Take that, expand on that, and turn it into a full-fledged conference with a separate exhibit program to it and things like that.

I also learned that partnering with other associations or societies is key. If you want to expand the content and appeal to a larger membership, that’s what you have to do. That’s where you see things like us partnering with Louisiana Pipeliners Association. That’s where I get that from.

A lot of associations will look at other associations that are playing in the same market as competitors, and it’s quite the opposite. Like welding for instance. You can’t have welding without educating on corrosion. It makes sense to partner with them. When I was at AWS, we partnered with NACE and did a show together.

It’s just about looking at if there’s different ways that you can position yourself in the market to expand on not only what’s going on on your program with the technical content and exhibitors and sponsors, but also from an overall association point of view, your membership.

How do you get a larger membership? You do that by reaching out to people that have nothing to do with your association right now.

Russel: You got to figure out how to throw a broader net, basically. I really appreciate you sharing that. It’s so interesting. Marketing, like a lot of other things, there’s a lot of disciplines in it.

You have to get domain expertise. Then there’s value once you have that domain expertise because you start understanding what are the conversations you’re trying to navigate and what is the market looking for. Then you’re trying to figure out how to deliver all that.

I didn’t bring you on to talk about marketing. I brought you on to talk about the Piney Woods Corrosion Short Course. Tell us a little bit about, what is the short course? How long have you been around? What are you trying to do with that?

CaLae: As most great things do, the short course came from an idea at a bar with a couple of contractors and pipeliners. We had just finished an event called “Distilled Discussions,” which was an event that our company did where we would put corrosion technicians on a panel, if you will. We would host those in various distilleries in Fort Worth, in Houston.

We would give the contractors a chance to ask questions about how to get on your bid list, what’s your pet peeves when you’re working on a bid, things like that. It gave you an opportunity for the walls to come down and for the technicians to really explain what matters to them, how to get in front of them, what matters to their company, what’s going on with their company.

It gives the contractors a chance to say, “Look, I haven’t been able to get in front of you in three years. Tell me what’s the best way to do that,” or “Hey, I was up for this project. I never got any feedback as to why we didn’t receive the bid.”

We had a lot of success with that event. After one of the ones that we did in Houston, we went to the after-party, as everybody does. It was Robert Adams. Robert Adams is with BK Corrosion. Josh Gurney is with Synergy.

They said, “You should look into doing something in North Louisiana. There is no one doing anything there. The corrosion technicians from Arkansas, Mississippi, and East Texas need something to go to. Do some research and see what you can do.”

Truth be told, I don’t think they thought I would do anything with it, but I took it and ran with it. They’re on my committee. They’re founding members of the conference with me. We did our first one earlier this year, in 2024. It was widely successful.

We are expanding on that in 2025. We moved from a hotel to the Shreveport Convention Center. Our committee is comprised of basically the founding members that I just told you, but we also are making sure that we’ve got a good mix of owner-operators. You’ll find Preston Meek from Boardwalk Pipeline, Josh Rogers from Williams, along with contractors.

We also wanted to take it a step further and make sure that we included regional knowledge also. You’re going to see two representatives from East Texas, two from Houston, two from Arkansas, and two from Louisiana.

That’s our ultimate goal with it, so that we’re making sure that our technical content is something that we know from an owner-operator because they’re telling us what they need to hear about; from a contractor’s standpoint, what they want to learn about; and then also, from a regional standpoint, what’s going on in these different areas.

Russel: I’m just processing what you’re saying. It’s interesting to me. The whole idea of getting technicians to be on a panel in front of a room of contractors, it’s different. It’s pretty radically different, because normally those things are set up the other way around.

CaLae: They are. When CEM first opened was February of 2020. Honestly speaking, I had just left American Welding Society. All of my welding community wanted to get together. I just formed a little happy hour, as event planners do. I had someone call me and say, “Hey. I want to sponsor this happy hour you’re doing.” I was thinking, “OK. If that’s what you want to do, go for it.”

It just took off from there. We started doing these happy hours in the middle of COVID, started doing these happy hours all over Texas and a little bit in Louisiana. In my opinion, that along with all of the just help and then throwing various projects my way that my corrosion family did, that is what has made this company as successful as it is today. I owe them a huge thank-you for that.

These happy hours became a place where I could see and hear what was going on between owner-operators and contractors. I could see the difference, when we started getting a pretty regular group of owner-operators that would start to attend, that it started becoming really large events. Our largest event was close to 500 people, here in Seabrook.

Of course, post-COVID, everyone, especially in Houston, is doing some type of happy hour or networking. It just got really diluted really fast. I thought to myself, “How can I guarantee that owner-operators are going to be there?” That’s what makes a contractor want to sponsor, want to show up.

I just reached out to some of my friends and said, “Hey, I have this idea. Would you want to do it?” They said yes. It grew from there.

Russel: There’s a couple of things that I don’t know that everybody that listens to this would get. For people that have a business idea or are trying to grow a business, there’s a couple of real fundamental things you’re saying, I think. One is…I love this. We ought to do a podcast with this title, “I had an idea at a bar.”

CaLae: [laughs]

Russel: There’s a whole podcast that ought to come out of that.

CaLae: Completely agree.

Russel: Basically, that’s just people of like mind that are sitting and relaxing and enjoying a conversation together. Things come out of that. Even with all the automation and digital transformation and buzzword this and buzzword that, we are still a organization of people. People like communities and relationships. That’s one thing.

The other thing is what you said was, “I was listening to the conversation. What I heard was or what I saw was…” There’s a lot bound up in that as well. Then — it’s interesting — you said, “I had this thing I did well.

Then COVID went away, and I had to reinvent it.” All of us that run businesses or do work in this business, we, from time to time, have to reinvent what we’re doing, just because things require that.

CaLae: Agreed. So many people have asked me what it was like to open the business in February of 2020. Then March of 2020, COVID hits. I said, “Honestly, I don’t think I would have it any other way because I learned to pivot on a dime.”

We do it constantly here at CEM. We’re constantly pivoting depending on what’s going on in the industry or what feedback we’re getting or what direction our committees tell us we should go. I’m so thankful that we didn’t get so rigid in our own ideas and stuff that we didn’t learn that this isn’t really about us.

Russel: Tell me a little bit more about how that became the Piney Woods Short Course.

CaLae: Really, that conversation happened in the bar. I took a couple of weeks to do some research on just basically options, if there’s anyone else doing short courses in the area. I have learned, with doing other short courses, like the Stockyard Short Course and the Underground Corrosion Short Course, that technicians will drive up to two hours to attend a short course.

I also learned that with AMPP changing the way they’re doing their regional conferences, their Central, Eastern, and Western conferences, that a lot of the technicians are choosing not to go to those and choosing to go to something that’s a little closer to them.

What’s the greatest thing about these short courses right now — It’s not just Piney Woods. It’s all of them — is that they’re being created by corrosion technicians, for corrosion technicians. While this is a CEM event, it’s not really our event. It is our corrosion technicians and our pipeliners. It’s their event. We create it for them.

Russel: You’re facilitating.

CaLae: That’s exactly right. The idea that Robert and Josh gave me, when I followed up with a couple of owner-operators like Josh Rogers, who works for Williams there in Louisiana, he said, “Couldn’t agree more with what they said. Keep on going with it.”

It came from that conversation to forming a committee, if you will. It comes from my association days. You form a committee. Then we started looking at hotel options, dates, figuring out that really no one was doing anything in the industry in that location.

I just took it from there and started getting some time on their calendars. We started meeting regularly, started putting together a technical program. We’re a marketing company, so we started marketing it. All of their companies, they started marketing it and pushing it on their behalf. It just took on a life of its own.

Then the actual show itself became hugely successful. All of the exhibitors and sponsors were just proud, basically, of the amount of people in the room and things like that. It turned out to fill a need in the industry, which is what we’re here for.

Russel: It’s interesting, as you tell your story. I’ve been involved with the American School of Gas Measurement and Technology for, gosh, 30 years now, I think, a long time. It started the very same way in the late ’60s.

It started out as the Gulf Coast Gas Measurement Society. They would have a monthly luncheon. They would bring vendors in to talk about new technology. They’d bring measurement technicians in to learn about it. Then they started doing a school. That school is fully run by industry…

CaLae: That’s amazing.

Russel: …by vendors and operators that are trying to pass on knowledge to the next generation, which is very much what you’re doing, just in the corrosion domain.

CaLae: You have to say something too about the men that are a part of this committee. You’ve got, obviously, Preston and Josh and Andrew and Robert. You’ve got all these people that have families, have full-time jobs. Some of them, if they’re on the contractor side, are owners or high-level CEOs, in the C-suite, if you will.

They’re still giving of their time for this. They don’t make any profit off of it. They’re doing this because they want to leave the industry better than the way that they found it. That, for me, is everything. That’s why I love doing what I’m doing. That’s why it was very early on at my tenure at NACE that I fell in love with this industry. It’s because of that right there.

Russel: You’ve kind of already said this. Why the Haynesville in particular?

CaLae: You mean Shreveport?

Russel: Yeah.

CaLae: We just discovered that if we could be in that North Louisiana part, again, because you want to be in close proximity, we could draw in East Texas technicians and pipeliners, Arkansas, Mississippi, and then, obviously, Louisiana.

With Louisiana Pipeliners, how it benefits them is they’re very used to doing events and very entrenched, membership-wise, on the southern half of Louisiana. Them partnering with us allows them to expand their membership in North Louisiana as well. It’s a win-win for both on that side.

Russel: What kind of things are you covering? What’s the nature of the technical program that you’re doing in the corrosion short course?

CaLae: We definitely want to make sure that we’re including a couple of regulators, with all of the changes that have been happening this year. We are doing a good mix of making sure that there is a contract-to-owner-operator ratio on that technical program, so things like corrosion protection criteria.

We’ve got people like Austin Morgan, from Williams in San Antonio, that’s speaking. We don’t have the full lineup of every single title that’s coming out. It’ll come out in January. We’re making sure that everything that is going on that technical program is going to appeal to not only that location, but technicians and pipeliners around.

Russel: Interesting. CaLae, could you dig in a little bit more deeper and talk about what is the nature of the educational content. What are you actually covering in the short course?

CaLae: Right now, because it’s such a young short course, we’re trying to get some metrics on the tenure for each of the technicians coming in. We’re doing a cross-breed of fundamentals along with some higher-level skills training for technicians.

Our goal after this year is multiple. Number one, we want to find out, from each area, how many technicians are coming. The second thing we want to find out is how long they’ve been in their career. This year, for 2025, we only have one track.

Our goal for 2026 and beyond is to take those tracks…If I’m a technician and I’ve been in the industry one to five years, I go to this track. If I’ve been 5 to 10, I go to this track and so on.

My ultimate goal with it too is, when you have these people that are attending the 10-year and beyond tracks, then they start becoming mentors for the people that are in the 1 to 5-year track. That’s my ultimate goal with it.

The program is going to be a little bit all over the place this year, if you will, when it comes to making sure that we’re…

Russel: Some combination of fundamentals and intermediate and advanced and…

CaLae: And senior level. Yes. We’re trying to cover all of the above so that we can gain some data and start drilling that down a little more.

Russel: Currently, you have a single track. It’s not like I’m picking.

CaLae: We do.

Russel: Is it one day? Is it multiple days?

CaLae: This year, we’re doing a clay shoot the day before. On that Thursday, that’s when the actual short course is. It is just one track, with the exhibitors in the back of the room.

If you’re an exhibitor that is taking a chance on this show for the first time, you’re going to get to experience seeing those technicians come back and forth all day long. It gives you just a better chance of being able to strike up a conversation if you don’t know who they are.

Russel: Who’s actually leading the training?

CaLae: That’s my committee. That’s coming from people like Josh Rogers at Williams, Preston Meek at Boardwalk, Robert Adams at BK, Josh Gurney and Andrew Preston at Synergy. That’s who’s helping with the program content.

Russel: It’s an opportunity for them to train their own technicians, but also get benefit of other people training there. I’m framing a little bit. I need to put this together as a question.

What it sounds like one of the things the committee benefit is, is “I’m doing a one-day training. I’m going to cover an hour or two of it, but my people are going to get to go to a full day. We’re sharing the load of actually providing the training.”

CaLae: No. My committee is helping source speakers and content, but they are not speaking. Josh Rogers might speak. We’ll see. Preston is going to help us confirm a higher-level person from Boardwalk Pipeline to come speak. That is more of their role, versus them speaking themselves.

Russel: They’re finding the SMEs to come deliver the content. They would know.

CaLae: They’re helping. Yes, exactly.

Russel: Interesting. How many people do you expect will be at the short course this year?

CaLae: We are anticipating around 150. I have to share this with you too. This, again, goes into the heart of why we do this. Most of the short courses that you find that are sponsored by AMPP, the whole point of those short courses is “Yes, we’re here to educate corrosion technicians, but we’re also here to raise money for scholarships to give to the next generation.”

Because this short course is not tied back to AMPP, we were trying to come up with a way of what we can do to make sure that a percentage of this profit goes back to the industry or city we serve.

For 2025, we partnered with an organization in Shreveport. It’s a women’s shelter. We’re going to give not only a percentage of the profit, but we’re asking exhibitors to bring in things like blankets and things like that that the women need. We’re going to take that over there on the Friday morning.

We’re trying to leave the city better than what we found it, with the ultimate goal of having this thing become such a success that it turns into a 501(c)(3), where we are allowed to give those gift scholarships.

Russel: Tell me, where is this located? When is it going to be? Where is it located, specifically?

CaLae: It’s at the Shreveport Convention Center, March 19th and 20th of 2025.

Russel: The Shreveport Convention Center. I don’t think I’ve ever been there. [laughs]

CaLae: That makes two of us, my friend.

Russel: [laughs] That’s good. How do people find…Where would they go on the Internet to find out about the Piney Woods Short Course?

CaLae: You just go to pineywoodsshortcourse.com. You can get all of the information and register as an attendee or a sponsor/exhibitor.

Russel: If somebody wanted your help to put together a corrosion short course in some other corner of the oil and gas world, how do they find you?

CaLae: We are at cemsolutionsco.com.

Russel: Anything else you’d like to add to what we’ve talked about here?

CaLae: Yeah. I just have to give just a shoutout to all of the committees that are spending their after-hours and weekend time to create these short courses.

Obviously, I love Piney Woods, but I also have been working on the Stockyard Short Course for several years and am very passionate working with Andrew Bell and Richard Rhea on that short course as well. That came out of an idea that Andrew Bell, who works for Explorer…He just came up with that idea to help raise money for his North Texas section.

Again, that just speaks to the kind of people that are in this industry. They’re willing to give of their time and, a lot of them, their money too and their company’s money to help fund these things to make the industry better.

Russel: I will tell you, CaLae, for me, when I first…I was out of the Air Force about 10 years before I landed in oil and gas measurement, which is where my career really took off. I spent about four and a half years in the military. Then I worked around technology and processes and stuff and bounced around.

When I landed in the measurement world, I started going to the measurement short course. It’s a very similar kind of thing. They’ve just been around longer, I would say. I remember I was in the market about six months. I would go. I would talk to people. They were so helpful and so friendly and so collaborative.

Measurement, corrosion, integrity, we’re all trying to do the same thing. We all want to do it correctly. We all want to do it safely.

CaLae: That’s right.

Russel: We collaborate. I’m like, “I like this world. I’m making a home here.” That’s what I’ve done. It sounds like you’ve found your little niche and are doing the same thing. Kudos to you.

CaLae: Thank you for that. I just couldn’t be more thankful to my corrosion family for all that they have done and continue to do for not only me, but my business as well. I’m very, very grateful.

Russel: It’s a great place to be. You clearly have a passion for it.

CaLae: Thank you.

Russel: Thanks for coming on the podcast.

CaLae: Thank you.

Russel: Hopefully, we’re able to help you get the word out a little bit.

CaLae: I appreciate that.

Russel: You’ll let me know if your phone rings, OK?

CaLae: I will. Yes, sir. Thank you so much.

Russel: All right. Thank you.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast and our conversations with CaLae. 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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