In this episode, Russel Treat speaks with Mark Gunsalus of NYSEARCH about how a member-driven research consortium moves gas industry technology from raw idea to field deployment. The conversation covers how projects are born, funded, and shared across utilities, highlights several active projects in robotics, plastic pipe inspection, pipe location, and paving, and looks at where AI may realistically fit in utility operations.

NYSEARCH Pipeline R&D Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• NYSEARCH is a North American R&D consortium of natural gas utilities, part of the Northeast Gas Association, that develops and deploys technologies, procedures, and tools for gas operations.
• Northeast Gas Association (NGA) is a regional trade association representing natural gas utilities in New England and parts of the Mid-Atlantic, focused on training, pipeline safety, operator qualification, and energy reliability. NYSEARCH became part of NGA in 2003.
• Research, Development and Deployment (RD&D) is the updated framing of NYSEARCH’s mission, replacing “demonstration” to emphasize getting technology and procedures into field use.
• Voluntary Project Model is the NYSEARCH funding structure, introduced in 1996, where member utilities choose which projects to join rather than funding every project.
• Associate Member Program is a newer NYSEARCH membership track that brings vendors and commercialization partners into brainstorming and project development alongside utility members.
• New Business Items are early-stage project concepts developed from brainstorming sessions that are refined into scoped, costed proposals for member voting.
• PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) is the U.S. DOT agency that regulates pipeline safety and co-funds R&D projects through competitive grants.
• Explorer is a NYSEARCH-sponsored untethered robotic inspection platform for non-piggable gas mains, capable of checking roundness, internal corrosion, and seam cracks. It was commercialized through an LLC and license agreement, with royalties returned to participating members.
• Non-Piggable Pipelines are pipelines that cannot accommodate traditional in-line inspection tools (“pigs”) due to diameter changes, tight bends, valves, or other configuration limits.
• Energy Harvesting is the planned next-generation capability for Explorer, allowing the robot to recharge itself while moving through the pipeline.
• Non-Destructive Examination (NDE) of Plastic Pipe refers to inspecting polyethylene pipe fusion joints for defects without cutting or damaging the joint.
• Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing (PAUT) is an ultrasonic inspection method using multiple elements to steer and focus sound beams. NYSEARCH is applying it in a new way to plastic pipe fusions.
• Red Light, Green Light is the term for NYSEARCH’s envisioned field workflow for plastic fusion inspection, where an AI-assisted scan returns either a pass with documentation or a flag for further investigation.
• Short Stabs and Cold Fusions are known plastic pipe fusion defects. A short stab is incomplete pipe insertion into a fitting, and a cold fusion is a joint that did not reach proper fusion conditions.
• QA/QC (Quality Assurance / Quality Control) refers to the verification processes used to confirm field work, such as fusion joints, meets required standards.
• Skipper NDT is a Paris-based company specializing in drone-based leak detection and pipe location, working with NYSEARCH on a PHMSA co-funded project that uses the Earth’s magnetic field to locate pipe and identify stress or corrosion.
• Direct Assessment is an integrity assessment approach that evaluates pipe condition through indirect surveys and targeted excavations, rather than in-line inspection.
• Curb-to-Curb and Curb-to-Centerline Restoration are municipal paving requirements that obligate utilities to repave a full roadway width or half-width after excavation work.
• Same-Day Paving is the goal of NYSEARCH’s paving research, using advanced materials to permanently restore excavations within a single day.
• Backfill Compaction and Moisture Content refers to the properties of material placed back into an excavation. Excess moisture is a primary driver of pavement failure.
• Texas A&M Transportation Institute is the transportation research agency where Russel worked on pavement materials testing during his undergraduate program.
• 49 CFR Part 192 is the federal regulation governing natural gas pipeline safety, including maintenance intervals.
• Distribution System Valve Maintenance (49 CFR 192.747) requires key distribution valves to be checked and serviced at intervals not exceeding 15 months, but at least once each calendar year. NYSEARCH is exploring AI analysis of historical maintenance data to evaluate whether intervals are set correctly.
• Operator Qualification (OQ) is the regulatory program ensuring pipeline personnel are qualified to perform covered tasks.

NYSEARCH Pipeline R&D Full Episode Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast, episode 462, sponsored by Flowstate, providers of pipeline leak detection software built to remove barriers and empower operators. Flowstate helps teams detect anomalies, reduce false alarms, and improve response with practical tools designed for diverse pipeline operations. Learn more at FlowstateSolutions.ai.

The Pipeliners Podcast, where professionals, Bubba geeks, and industry insiders share their knowledge and experience about technology, projects, and pipeline operations. And now your host, Russel Treat.

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

This week, we speak with Mark Gunsalus about NYSEARCH and its pipeline R&D activity. Hey, Mark, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.

Mark Gunsalus: Thank you so much, Russel. It’s great to be here today.

Russel Treat: Well, great to have you here, and really excited to have this conversation. Just for the listeners, I heard Mark speak about his career in racing and how that has related to what he’s learned about safety. You talked just a few months ago at the Agassiz Association meeting. I thought it was really excellent. We ended up talking, and I found out about what you do, and I searched and I’m like, “Oh, I’ve got to get you on the podcast. We’ve got to talk about all this.” So welcome. Glad to have you.

Mark Gunsalus: Thank you, Russel. Yeah, I really enjoyed that presentation and how I kind of weave my racing passion into safety in the gas world. And I’m really happy to talk to you today about R&D. We’re both, I guess we’ll call ourselves gas nerds, and we really love to see the technology advancement. So I’m excited to chat with you today about that.

Russel Treat: Yeah. Before we dive in, would you tell us a little bit about your background, kind of your career, how you got into the gas business, your career in gas, and how you ended up with NYSEARCH?

Mark Gunsalus: Sure. That sounds great. It’s been an interesting journey. Just on July sixth, I hit my fourth decade in the industry. Hard to believe it’s flown by that fast. I started out at a small gas company called Commonwealth Gas Company in Massachusetts. I started out with a company of about 700 employees, which at the end of my time there, after 34 years, ended up as a 9,000-person company. So I went through several integrations and mergers.

In between there, I had a little stint in sales. I worked for a company called Mulcair Pipeline Solutions and did that for six years. I kind of thought that was going to be my last stop after a pretty long career, three decades at what ended up as Eversource.

After Mulcair, in 2020, I got a phone call from my former company to come back and lead the integration of the Columbia Gas Massachusetts division into Eversource after that acquisition, and then at the end of that, become the general manager after the integration. So I went back to Eversource for the second time. It was a challenge that I just did not want to walk away from. It was the hardest job I ever loved, going in there and integrating those two companies of fantastic people after an awful incident in the industry, and just kind of getting that team back together and getting that company going again. So it was a really great experience.

At the end of that, when I finished, this job came up, leading the research, development, and deployment team. I’ve known our CEO, Jose Costa, for many years, and this opportunity came up, and it was a perfect time to jump on that after finishing the integration and running that for five years. And now I get to tinker with all these great projects and help advance.

Russel Treat: So you spent six years in sales, and the rest of your career has pretty much been in industry. So how was the transition from industry to sales? I made that transition relatively early in my career, but it was challenging, I think, is the way to say that.

Mark Gunsalus: Yeah. For me, it was a little different experience. I think for me, the job was a highly technical sales job, so a lot of supporting customers. And through my racing, I tend to be a very hands-on, mechanical type of person. I love to fix things. I love to troubleshoot things. I always told my boss, Scott Vigil, who you may know from Mulcair, “I’m not really a sales guy. I just solve problems for my customers, and they buy from me.” So it was a really interesting job.

Russel Treat: Actually, that’s what a sales guy does. That’s what a good salesperson does. They spend time with the customer, they understand the problem, and then they match the customer and the customer problem to a solution and help them implement a solution. That’s what selling really is.

Mark Gunsalus: Yeah, exactly. And my customers, I always… I think being, like yourself, a hardened utility person, you kind of get used to that 24/7. I mean, my customers could call me at any time, and I’d be there for them to help them out.

Russel Treat: Yeah, yeah. Well, and there’s also that when you’ve worked that many years in operations, you kind of have a “let’s get straight to the facts” kind of conversation. But it’s interesting. A big part of selling is to build the rapport so that you can get the information you need to be able to provide the solution.

Mark Gunsalus: Absolutely.

Russel Treat: And not unlike what you’re doing in research now. Very similar paths.

Mark Gunsalus: Very similar. And it’s interesting, now my son, second generation, is over at Mulcair Pipeline. So it’s kind of interesting watching him be a field project manager and doing a lot of troubleshooting in the field.

Russel Treat: Yeah. Well, this business does tend to get under your skin, and it’s a bit sticky, for sure. So tell us about NYSEARCH. What is NYSEARCH? How long has it been around? What do they do? That sort of thing.

Mark Gunsalus: Sure. So I’ll start with NYSEARCH. We are part of the Northeast Gas Association, and I’ll give you a little history of how those two organizations aligned. NYSEARCH was begun back in the late seventies into the early eighties from a New York State group that saw some value in doing research and development and getting together to collaborate. Through that time, they did an amazing thing, very early, of getting their regulators on board with looking at ways that they can advance safety, reliability, and technology in the business. So a very, very smart business model they did.

Around 1989, with Daphne, my predecessor, who was there for 35 years, it became NYSEARCH. NYGAS became NYSEARCH. And the big thing that they did there is it went nationwide. So they started this advancement of taking that model from New York and bringing it right across North America.

1996 was a big stepping stone for NYSEARCH. As they were growing, they implemented, and we can talk about it in a few minutes, what we call the voluntary project model, which is a way to get this consortium of utilities, and they jump onto the projects that best fit their needs and their company. So you can be a member of NYSEARCH, but you don’t have to jump on every project. You pick and choose the ones you want, and projects are born organically, and that’s something we’ll probably get into a little bit. So that’s how it started.

Today, we are about 26 utility companies and growing. We’ve grown by six member companies in the past year, so we are growing across North America.

In 2003, NYSEARCH became part of the Northeast Gas Association, and it’s really been a very nice fit. The Northeast Gas Association is different than us. They only represent New England and some of the Mid-Atlantic region, so they’re basically representing gas companies in the Northeast. They’re doing a whole host of things, like representing their utilities, focused on things like training and technology advancement. That’s where we have a very close partnership. The NGA staff and the NYSEARCH staff really look at how we can collaborate. They’re focused on things like pipeline safety, operator qualification programs, and energy reliability. As we know in the Northeast, that’s certainly been a challenge for the industry. So it really kind of fits with some of the policy pieces. And NYSEARCH has a really incredible wealth of resources and employees and knowledge that we can bring to our research members. So it’s been a really great fit. They saw that in 2003 and made that happen.

Russel Treat: So tell us a little bit about the kinds of projects you guys do at NYSEARCH. I want to frame this out a little bit. Mark, we had this conversation before, but when I think about R&D, there’s really a life cycle of any technology. It starts off with a raw idea, right? Then it moves from a raw idea to kind of an R&D project, proof of concept. Once you’re done with that, you start to work on what it’s going to take to actually deploy this and get a value prop. Then you’re starting to work on policies and procedures and approvals by various authorities. And then lastly, you’re figuring out all the things necessary to resource and support the product or the solution in the company. So there’s a whole life cycle you go through. Are you addressing the entirety of that life cycle? Are you addressing kind of the front end? Where is NYSEARCH within that kind of ecosystem?

Mark Gunsalus: Yeah, so we can really run the gamut, Russel. And I’ll say one thing. We made a little subtle change to our name. We used to be called research, development, and demonstration. I intentionally changed that to research, development, and deployment. Our core value is we want to get procedures, technology, whatever, out in the field and used. So everything that we’re doing, we’re always thinking about how it impacts our gas utility members and customers, and how we can advance the industry. So that’s first and foremost.

The way projects are born, it can come in several different ways. Interestingly, we just added an associate member program. I felt like we had two legs of the three-legged stool. We had the NYSEARCH team kind of managing all of the facets for our utility members, but we were missing the associate members, our partners who are commercializers, people like you that can sit at the table. So at the last meeting in Vancouver, we brought them to the table. Now we have associate members that are helping us right at the grassroots, and we did our first brainstorming session.

So that’s one way we do it. We get in a room, we do a brainstorming session, and we talk about what problems your company is facing and what problems you see for the industry. Then we kind of take those raw items and move those into potential solutions. When we were in Vancouver at our quarterly meeting in June, we came up with 52 items. What we’re doing now is individual meetings with some of our associate members and utility members, and we’re starting to turn those into what we call new business items. When we do our quarterly meeting in New York City in September at Con Ed, we’ll develop those a little more. So we’ll almost have like a periscope. What does it look like? What’s the solution? Ultimately, that will turn into an actual proposal where we’ll come down with dollars, scope, cost, and schedule, and we’ll actually do voting to see which utilities are interested in that project.

Russel Treat: Interesting. Well, that’s fascinating, because a lot of R&D is notional, right? I have this idea about something that could add value. I have this problem, and I have this idea about what could fix it. And you’re certainly doing that, it sounds like, in your quarterly meetings, but then you’re taking those ideas and vetting them and turning them into projects. That’s got to be an interesting process. Just given what I know about new technology and what’s required to do that, getting budgets and scopes and estimates around those kinds of projects can be exceedingly difficult because you’re doing something that’s never been done before. How do you arbitrate that?

Mark Gunsalus: Right. It’s really challenging. This NYSEARCH team, I call it small and mighty, and I am blessed to have this team behind us. We’re seven people. It’s amazing. We’re going into New York City with nine voting items in September for nine projects, which is, to your point, getting all of the dollars, the costs, the scope. Last month in Vancouver, we had six voting items, and five of them got off the ground as projects that are starting now. So we’re managing right now a little over 40 projects, 42, and we’ll probably be on the high end of the forties.

Russel Treat: That’s a big portfolio for this kind of thing.

Mark Gunsalus: It sure is. That’s why I say we’ve got such an incredible team that can juggle that. And not only that, the NYSEARCH team is known in the industry by our utility members for getting it done, too. We move projects in sometimes six months, sometimes twelve, and sometimes eighteen. If it’s a very complex project like our Explorer pipeline robotics, that’ll get broken into phases, and some of those multiple phases could last four or five or six years.

Russel Treat: Right. Well, that’s what it often takes to prove something up, right? Because if you’re actually doing it on live pipe, you’ve got to work that into all their business processes, and you’ve got to do all the risk management around all that, which for new tech is also non-trivial.

Mark Gunsalus: Yeah. And some of the other ways, Russel, that projects will come in, and this happens quite often, is we’ll find our utility members will have a project they’re going to do anyway. For example, one of our members wanted to do something on examination using AI for welding processes, and they were going to do the project. So they asked me, “Mark, will you and your team manage this project for me?” Absolutely. And by the way, we got six other members on board for them. That’s the real secret sauce of the NYSEARCH group. When you have a project like that, now you’re getting six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve different members to socialize the costs across it, and we’re able to get projects done that a single entity might really struggle to get done financially or even labor-wise.

Russel Treat: Yeah. Well, and I have direct experience with this, right? It’s very difficult as a vendor, as a supplier with a new idea, to get that initial foothold. But what NYSEARCH does is create that bridge between the new product idea or the problem and the industry. And then you take the risk and cost and share that in a way that the industry has an appetite to take it on.

Mark Gunsalus: Definitely.

Russel Treat: And it might not otherwise have that appetite.

Mark Gunsalus: Absolutely, Russel. I think the flagship of that for NYSEARCH is the Explorer non-piggable pipeline robotics that was commercialized by Intero, who we partner with. That robot would have been very difficult for a single company to build and get a good ROI. But by socializing it across different companies, setting up an LLC and a license agreement, and sharing the costs, it’s been an amazing partnership. And I totally attribute making that happen to the process of what NYSEARCH does.

Russel Treat: Well, and when you do something like that with these operating companies, they actually look at key people and their strategic plan and those key people’s annual and quarterly objectives, and they weave that all together. So the project gets the attention and the resources it needs to be successful.

Mark Gunsalus: Yeah. And another really important stakeholder in that whole process of getting difficult projects done has been PHMSA. They’ve been an amazing partner. Explorer’s one of them. They do grants every couple of years, so they’ve been really good at supporting some of our important projects that advance the industry and safety. That’s another thing that NYSEARCH does. We will apply for all of those grants on behalf of our members, and it really helps utility members, commercializers, and everybody get funding to do it.

Russel Treat: Yeah. That again makes a whole lot of sense given what I know. Tell us a little bit about some of the projects you have. You said 50-plus projects ongoing at present?

Mark Gunsalus: Yeah, right now we’re at 42. I think if everything goes through in September, we’ll probably be approaching that 50 number. It’s manageable for us. The team is really used to advancing things, and as I said, we’ve got a very talented team that can move the needle on getting projects done. Very good project managers.

Some of the projects I can just kind of mention: Explorer is one of my favorites, and that’s the pipeline robotics. I think you’re familiar with that, for non-piggable pipelines. That is an untethered robot that can do a whole bunch of different things. It can check for roundness, check for internal corrosion, check for seam line cracks, and really give you an indication of what’s going on in your pipeline in a very efficient manner. That’s been going on since 2008, when they started to put it on the drawing board, and 2013 is when it really got real. At the time, it was with Invodane. Now it’s with Intero, and we talk with Intero weekly. We’re partners, and we’re about ready to redo the platform. It’s hard to believe it’s almost 20 years old now, and the value that it’s brought to the industry is just amazing.

Russel Treat: That is a big, big deal, particularly for utilities with significant and very old infrastructure in high population areas. And you’ve got a lot of that in the Northeast, for sure. You’ve got it in some other places in the country too, but there’s a lot of it in the Northeast. So it’s a big deal.

Mark Gunsalus: And we’re about ready on that one now. The Gen 1 is almost at, I’ll call it, its end of useful life. Now what we want to do is integrate energy harvesting into it, where we can just put it in a pipeline and it can recharge itself and keep going, through having self-generation as it moves through the pipeline. That’s a really cool piece. The sensor technology has gotten so much better, so we’re really excited about the future of that. We continue to do projects through NYSEARCH and the funders, and every year, for our utility members that are part of the LLC, we’re bringing royalties back to them. So Intero’s doing well and making money, and we’re doing well and bringing a little payback to our members that invested in that tool to solve a big industry problem. So that’s kind of our model of a project.

Russel Treat: So tell us about some of the other things you’re doing.

Mark Gunsalus: Sure. My next favorite, I think, is going to be a game changer for the industry. We’re field testing it now with what I’ll call a field-ready prototype, and it’s pretty close to moving into the commercialization phase. That’s our non-destructive examination of plastic pipe. I think you and I know that’s been such a big issue in the industry.

Russel Treat: That’s a biggie.

Mark Gunsalus: There’s the visual inspection, and inspectors really watch fusion very closely. So we have a technology that’s very developed. Now we’re testing it, and it works very well. It’s phased array ultrasonic technology. It’s not a new technology by any means, but this is a new method for that technology. We’ve coined the term, and I’ve got a little trademark going on it, Red Light, Green Light.

Our vision for that is when you’re putting fusions together in the field, you can immediately, in the field with a technician, actually do a test on it. It could be either a utility technician or a group that comes behind to do QA/QC. It’s basically wrapped around the pipe. It mechanically clamps to the pipe and rotates, and it takes 720 images around the circumference. It’s looking internally, and it’s using AI with a database of known defects. We have known defects, short stabs or cold fusions. It could be contaminated material from a particular region, and we actually get into the detail of what type of contaminants could get in there. The database is looking for all these things, and it’s very good at pointing out defects.

So they can do a quick scan in a matter of a few minutes, and it can give you a green light, we’re good, with all the documentation that the inspectors love. Or it can give you a red light that it needs further investigation, and maybe you want to bring somebody in to double-check it and make sure there are no defects. So I think it’s really a game changer for us.

Russel Treat: For anybody that’s working with plastic pipe, that’s a big, big deal, because there are a lot of people and a lot of money and effort being spent to monitor fusions.

Mark Gunsalus: For sure, for sure.

Russel Treat: What else? That’s two good ones. I’m sure there are some other tasty ones here too.

Mark Gunsalus: Yeah, we do. One of my favorites, we’re working with a company called Skipper, and they are out in Paris, France. Their specialty is leak detection and pipe location via drones. That’s kind of one of their specialties. But what we’re doing with them right now, and this is a PHMSA co-funded project, is a device that will actually use the Earth’s magnetic field as a way to locate pipes. Not only that, we can do it with a drone or with a crawler, and find major defects. It could be stress from ground movement, or it could be corrosion. Then, when you find spots through that initial assessment, we can set up this device that goes in the field, and it will actually induce current in the pipe so that we can actually find corrosion.

Russel Treat: So you could do that without running a tool and without excavating the pipe?

Mark Gunsalus: Correct. Correct. So what it’s going to do… it’s about that time we were doing that. That’s all I can say. We’re excited about that. And that was a really challenging project a year and a half ago, Russel. Susie Chaloux, our program management director, and I were really struggling with them, and I went out to have a visit with them to, I guess, cheerlead them a little bit. And I’ve got to tell you, they solved the issues. We had a lot of noise and were getting poor images. We’re still in the middle of that project, but we’re on a path to success here. So I think it’s not going to be too long before we have that.

Russel Treat: That sounds like it has so much applicability for things that are otherwise not inspectable. Everything that you have that’s four inches or less in diameter that’s in the ground, and the ability to inspect that without excavation or without a tool in the pipe. That’s huge.

Mark Gunsalus: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. Eventually, this tool is really meant for probably larger, higher-pressure distribution. But once you get it dialed in, it could apply to other metallic pipes. So pretty exciting stuff.

Russel Treat: Yeah. Interesting.

Mark Gunsalus: I think it’s great, if you really think about it, too. One of the other things, as well as being more efficient, is I think about construction fatigue in towns and cities. How great is it that you can really get dialed in on where you need to dig, as opposed to doing direct assessment in a really large area? To me, I think it has some really great impact on how we do work and how we impact our communities and customers.

Russel Treat: Well, and for the utilities in particular, or anybody that’s operating inside city infrastructure, dealing with paving is a huge, huge deal.

Mark Gunsalus: Absolutely. That’s a good segue. Believe it or not, early in my career I used to be a paving supervisor for four or five years. And we’ve recently taken on another project. Our friends at National Grid were very interested in doing something here. Paving costs have just gone out of sight for every utility. Doing curb to centerline, or sometimes curb to curb, has become a big request from the towns and cities because they’re afraid things are going to fail. There’s just this relationship of “You’re tearing up my town and city, so I’m going to charge you quite a bit to get this street back to what I think is appropriate.”

So we’re actually doing a study right now. The University of Massachusetts has an absolutely amazing paving lab, and they do a lot of work, which I didn’t know until recently. We’ve just started working with them. Down in Fall River, Mass., they have a materials laboratory that’s just extensive. We’re actually doing a project where we’re looking at cutting-edge materials that we can use to get us more toward same-day paving and be successful, that will hold up. I asked the PhD, the doctor over there that’s running the lab, “Are we in a place right now where there are cutting-edge materials out there coming at us?” And his answer was absolutely yes. So they’re really dialing in on new technologies with materials that can be used in different parts of the country for different mixes. So that’s one thing we’re looking at.

We’re also looking at some testing on compaction. What we’re finding is the biggest thing, and there’s technology out there right now, is putting back the right backfill material with the right level of moisture content.

Russel Treat: Too much moisture is a problem, and moisture is the primary mechanism for pavement failure, right? I actually worked in the labs at Texas Transportation Institute when I was in my undergraduate degree program. So I spent a lot of time making different kinds of pavement samples and breaking them, and then a whole bunch of time driving around Texas taking samples and taking photographs and so forth. It’s really very interesting, the level of material science that goes into all that. It’s way more involved than most people would realize.

Mark Gunsalus: Pretty amazing. So we’re actually very excited about that project. That project started early this year, and it’s going to go through the beginning of 2027. I’m very optimistic that we’ll have a second phase of that, and again, we hope to bring some revolutionary processes, procedures, and even tools to the field that can really help us. And one of the things that the National Grid leads wanted to do… we’ve actually got a lot of interest in this. I’m doing a tour of the compaction lab, and we’ve got four National Grid directors coming out to see it. They’re very interested in coming up with some dialogue they can have with towns and cities about what we’re doing to advance this, and getting the other stakeholders involved in the conversation about what we could be doing to help them.

Russel Treat: Yeah. Great. Okay, we can’t finish this conversation without asking about AI.

Mark Gunsalus: Sure.

Russel Treat: Everybody’s doing something with AI. I don’t know if anybody’s doing anything useful with AI. That’s kind of a whole separate conversation. I know I’m being a little flippant, right? I know that people are. But what do you all have going on on the AI front?

Mark Gunsalus: Yeah. So we’re really trying to tackle that one, and we’re doing that jointly with my boss from NGA, our CEO, Jose Costa. He’s very interested in that, and we’ve started some very interesting work, Russel, on how AI can best be leveraged right now in the industry. I agree with you. I think utilities are a little cautious about it, for good reasons, because we want to make sure the information is accurate. We’re making critical decisions that can impact safety of operations, so we have to make sure it’s accurate and that it’s used in the right manner. The other piece is, as you know, utilities are always concerned from the IT standpoint about making sure we’re secure, and that customer information, critical information, and critical assets are staying secure.

So we’ve got a project going right now where we’re actually doing, for lack of a better term, a white paper on the best use cases right now. This white paper will identify several projects that we can start with to really leverage and use AI. One idea that we think would be an incredible project: in CFR 49 Part 192, there are ways you can have dialogue with our regulators about the right frequency of maintenance cycles. One of the items we were looking at is using AI to assess your valve maintenance program. For critical valve maintenance, is one year, not to exceed 15 months, the right interval, or should it be longer? Our thought is to really get AI to leverage historical data of maintenance activity. Could we someday use that to shift to getting the maintenance intervals right? You and I both know there are probably places we’re doing it too often, and there are probably places we’re not doing it often enough.

Russel Treat: That’s likely true. Now, that’s really interesting. I don’t like the term AI. AI is really just a buzzword for curated algorithms of various types, and there are many, many different families, and flavors within those families, of those algorithms. And we’re trying to take a natural language approach to things that need to be mathematical answers. I think we’ve got a lot to learn before we’re really going to get the value out of it.

Mark Gunsalus: For sure. So hopefully that white paper will yield a nice collection of where the utilities see the best fit. Because, Russel, it’s intimidating, man, when you think about what could be done. I think you’ve got to take it on in small, simple chunks to gain confidence, and that’s going to be our approach.

Russel Treat: It’s not unlike what we went through around 2000 with the internet, where everybody was wondering what it was and what it could do, and now we all just take it for granted. We all just use it every day. We’re going to get to the same place with AI, but we’re a long ways off.

Mark Gunsalus: We are.

Russel Treat: And for me, given the work I’ve done, there’s a pretty big dissonance between the promise and the reality.

Mark Gunsalus: Agreed. There are a couple of other really great places I think AI could be really helpful. In my previous career, I had responsibility for all the project engineers that were working on large construction. And I think about that poor engineer now, right? We’ve got a workforce that used to have a whole bunch of engineers with 20-plus years of experience. When I was at Eversource, I had a bunch of engineers that had less than five, and some of them less than one. So when you’re giving them a complex engineering project, AI could be tremendous for them, to have the city codes, the state codes, the federal codes, and help them locate 80% of the documentation that’s relevant. AI is excellent at that kind of thing. “What should I be looking at?” So they don’t miss anything. It’s a very daunting task for them to make sure they’ve got everything.

Russel Treat: Yeah. I think you’ll agree with me, you have to be careful about “so you don’t miss anything,” because the AI is liable to miss something or misstate something. So it can help, but it can’t decide.

Mark Gunsalus: Exactly. Exactly. It’s an assistant.

Russel Treat: It’s a junior assistant that’s very capable, but it’s not a senior engineer.

Mark Gunsalus: Absolutely.

Russel Treat: Well, look, this has been awesome. How do people find out more about NYSEARCH if they want to get involved in all the things you have going on?

Mark Gunsalus: Sure. They can contact me directly at mgunsalus@northeastgas.org. That’s M-G-U-N-S-A-L-U-S. Or they can visit our website at NYSEARCH.org and go to the contact form to reach us.

Russel Treat: Yeah, let’s do it that way. We’ll link all this up in the show notes so you can find it there. Go to PipelinePodcastNetwork.com, find this episode, and you’ll have a transcript, and we’ll add some show notes and other things so that, if you’re interested, you can go there, do a little legwork, and find out more about NYSEARCH. Hey, Mark, thanks so much for your time, and thanks for everything you do for the industry.

Mark Gunsalus: Thank you so much, Russel. I enjoyed talking today.

Russel Treat: I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of the Pipeliners Podcast and our conversation with Mark. Just a reminder before you go, you should register to win our customized Pipeliners Podcast YETI tumbler. Simply visit PipelinePodcast.com and enter yourself in the drawing. If you have ideas, questions, or topics you’d be interested in, or if you’d like to be a guest, please let me know on the Contact Us page at PipelinePodcastNetwork.com or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.