Following his first job at Defence Standards Laboratories – now known as the Defence Science and Technology Organisation – Leigh Fletcher became a technical assistant working in non-destructive and mechanical testing for Humes. It was during this time that Leigh had the chance to head up to Corryong to work on his first job in the pipeline industry: constructing the Murray 1 Power Station penstocks for the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

As the project involved the first use of a high-strength alloy steel in Australia since the failure of the King Street bridge in Melbourne, it was conducted under the spotlight of the Royal Commission enquiry into the causes of that failure. The project required the development of new steels by BHP, and Leigh says that the key problems encountered – issues such as the weldability of steel, weld metal and heat-affected zone hydrogen-assisted cold cracking, and the avoidance of brittle fracture – “were to absorb me for the rest of my career”.

Inspired by his experience on the Murray 1 project, Leigh decided to take part-time metallurgy studies at RMIT in Melbourne while also working for the CIG EMF Division (later renamed Cigweld). This opened up a variety of opportunities, and five years after working with them on the Murray 1 project, Leigh rejoined Humes in 1986 to take charge of quality control at the company’s Footscray factory making line pipe for the Longford to Dandenong Gas Pipeline.

In various roles at Humes, Steel Mains and Tubemakers, Leigh was also involved in the supply of pipe for numerous major pipeline projects including the Moomba to Adelaide, Moomba to Sydney, Eastern Gas and Dampier to Bunbury natural gas pipelines, the Jackson to Moomba Oil Pipeline, the Moomba to Sydney Ethane Pipeline and many others.

Leigh found the Moomba to Sydney Pipeline project especially exciting. “The industry was new. The technology was brought from overseas. A lot of things were done very badly, but we all learnt a great deal in the process.”

He says that the lessons learned were implemented in AS2885, which was first issued in 1987 and is now a widely admired example of an excellent pipeline standard.

He also finds the current large diameter pipelines being built for LNG export exciting. “They come after many years in which almost all of our pipelines were less than 500 mm in diameter. Now suddenly, we are designing and building thousands of kilometres of large diameter pipelines.

The technology involved in the steels, pipe making and construction are all quite different. It’s a new ball game for us.”

Pioneering research

In 1996, Leigh left Tubemakers and led the formation of the Co-operative Research Centre (CRC) for Welded Structures. Leigh says that this is where he learnt his most important lesson: “the need to win support for ideas and to build consensus”.

“Our very first research project was in the 1980s, when we were established to undertake research on cold field bending after costly problems on a gas pipeline in Queensland where the bends could not be made to the expected radius. This was because the right-of-way and the trench design were not compatible with the bending radius that could be achieved. That project was important and formative.”

Work on the project was completed with collaboration between all interested parties – the engineers, pipe suppliers, owners and construction contractors – and Leigh says that the result was a solution “owned by the industry”.

“The outcome was implemented in an appendix to AS2885, which requires bending to be done according to a qualified procedure,” he says. “Since that time there has never again been a major cold field bending problem in Australia, so the project was a complete success and a model for future collaborative research.”

The research was formative because it led to the first collaborative project with the Pipelines Research Council International (PRCI), and also because it established a group of people keen to move forward with other problem-solving opportunities.

The next collaborative project involved studying stress corrosion cracking. “This project was also dealt with in an ad hoc way with a committee being established for the purpose, and with cash and in-kind contributions,” Leigh says. “And again it was the forerunner of further projects on that subject in the future.”

During the 1980s and 1990s, the Australian Welding Research Association – later the Welding Technology Institute of Australia (WTIA) – research panel undertook a substantial amount of research into pipeline welding. For much of that time, Leigh was the convenor of one of WTIA’s expert groups, Technical Panel7, which focuses on pipelines, and when he transferred from Tubemakers to the CRC and established a pipelines research program there, a sub-group of Panel 7 was formed to manage it.

While the structure of conducting research through the WTIA Panel 7 was excellent for welding research, in 1999 the APIA Research and Standards Commitee (RSC) was formed to manage a broader portfolio of pipeline-related research. This continued after the CRC of Welded Structures dissolved in 2007 and became the springboard for the formation of the Energy Pipelines Co-operative Research Centre (EPCRC) in 2009 and 2010.

“A unique feature of the RSC compared to its North American counterpart PRCI and the European Pipelines Research Group (EPRG), is that our membership is across the whole spectrum of the industry, from steel makers through to engineers, owners and construction contractors,” says Leigh.

“PRCI is primarily owners and the EPRG has a blend of mostly owners and pipe suppliers. The broad participation of the RSC and our close cross-membership with the Australian Standards ME38 Committee gives us the means of being a one-stop shop for identifying research needs, managing the research and implementing the outcomes directly into the members’ daily work and into AS2885.”

Leigh says that the RSC, PRCI and EPRG work closely together in a formal tripartite arrangement. In addition to attending biannual Joint Technical Meetings with the two international research groups, the RSC also has a separate full reciprocal membership with PRCI which enables RSC members to access its research.

“So effectively, we ‘trade’ research with these groups,” Leigh says. “And in so doing, for the cost of membership of the RSC, the members get access to an annual research budget of the order of $20 million.”

The EPCRC: a major achievement

Leigh says that the establishment of the EPCRC has been a major achievement for Australia’s pipeline sector. “It is not just the establishment,” he says. “It’s the whole team of people involved and the goodwill and enthusiasm of the participants. Best of all has been our success in recruiting a champion Chair in Jim McDonald and Chief Executive Officer in Valerie Linton.”

The EPCRC’s Annual Report to the Commonwealth 2009–10 outlines various issues which may arise as the Australian pipeline sector moves forward. The report predicts an increased demand for natural gas, and thus, pipelines – leading to a need to monitor, repair and replace existing pipeline infrastructure as it ages. Another concern is that pipelines located in areas of urban expansion may become exposed to new challenges as they are now no longer being operated in the rural settings for which they were designed.

These issues are the basis for two of the EPCRC’s four main goals: to avoid the need for replacement by extending the life of existing pipeline infrastructure, and to facilitate the construction of new pipeline networks to support increased demand for natural gas. The other two goals are to specially design and build pipelines for the transmission of emerging energy cycle fluids such as hydrogen and CO2, and to prevent pipeline failures which could be costly and result in negative consequences to public health and safety, as well as to other infrastructure.

Pushing the envelope

Leigh says that during his time in the Australian pipeline industry, privatisation has brought many changes, and that it has been compounded by commercial regulation, putting pressure on costs.

“This has led on to a lack of systematic career path training for engineers,” Leigh explains. “It has been particularly severe in the areas of my technical interest, and has been one of my main motivations for encouraging training through the APIA RSC and the EPCRC.”

Leigh says that the sheer size of the industry worldwide and the size of individual projects have together made the industry one that encourages the adoption of new technology in the form of higher strength steels and new and better ways of welding.

“Welding in particular is especially important in pipeline construction because it is very often the rate determining factor in the building of the pipeline. Small reductions in welding cycle time can have a big effect on construction duration and hence, the overall project cost,” he says.

“This provides incentives for research and development of a kind that doesn’t often exist in other industries. It also leads to ̒pushing the envelopeʼ with existing technology and sometimes associated quality challenges.”

Leigh believes that the attractiveness of natural gas as a fuel and as a transition between coal and renewables will rapidly increase demand for gas pipelines, continually challenging the industry to develop newer and better steels and construction methods. This demand will also push pipelines into more remote locations and deeper water, posing new challenges.

“We also have major challenges in extending the life of existing pipelines that have exceeded or are approaching the end of their design life, as well as in keeping these pipelines and the communities they serve safe in circumstances where the pipelines, designed and built for rural areas, are now cheek by jowl with high population density areas in our suburbs.”

Leigh believes that in the future, there will be more use of gas, more demand for pipelines and an increased need for people and skills in the industry.

Steel and magnolias

When he is not deeply involved in researching steel, Leigh indulges his passion for magnolias. At their home in Bright, Victoria, Leigh and his wife Heny have spent over 30 years cultivating a large garden of both native and exotic trees.

“I have a special interest in Asian Magnolias – the ones that flower on bare branches in spring – and I have about 65 different kinds,” Leigh says.

Through his work with APIA’s RSC and the EPCRC, he hopes to inspire as much growth in Australia’s pipeline sector as he has in his magnolia garden.