Geoforce: The Musical Featuring Clay Johnson

Jan 22, 2025 | Mini-Series

Technology has truly changed over the years. Landlines and MapQuest are things of the past, and traditional data management methods may be headed in that direction for managing geohazard threats. New technologies under development have the potential to provide operators with alternatives for better management.

Tune in to the newest episode of Pipeline Things, where Chris, Rhett, and Clay discuss a new strategy for managing geohazard threats, the emerging need for this new strategy, where it came from, and its future.

Highlights:

  • What’s the origin story of this technology, and what need is it fulfilling?
  • How does Geoforce help in site-specific decisions?
  • What efforts are being made to improve data gathering?

Connect:   

Rhett Dotson   

Christopher De Leon   

D2 Integrity

Clay Johnson

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Pipeline Things is presented by D2 Integrity and produced by FORME Marketing.    

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Rhett
Welcome to this episode of Pipeline Things, where we talk about a hot topic, which is GeoHazards and how GeoForce. If you haven’t heard of GeoForce, not use the GeoForce. But GeoForce, the Esri development by TC Energy is being used to impact their GeoHazard program. This is a great episode. We appreciate Clay Johnson for joining us and hope you enjoy it.
 
Rhett
Alright, welcome to today’s edition of Pipeline Things. I am your host, Rhett Dotson, my co -host Christopher De Leon, while we continue this special kind of edition mini -series, holiday series, I don’t know what we want to call it yet, you know, speaking of the fact that it’s a holiday, it’s got to warn the audience that there is a decent chance that I might break into random song as your host.
Don’t judge.
But no, it’s super excited. We kind of did this one -off series where we’ve been bringing on various guests, so we’ve had Jed Ludlow to talk about circumferential SEC, and we’re gonna have our guests here today talking about another hot topic, topic, which is geohazards. And you know, in full light, Christopher, where this episode’s likely to go, and the audience, I’m always amazed at the progression of technology in terms of what we use. And even in our personal lives, right? So I had two episodes. For those of you out there, and this actually fits, right? If you haven’t signed up for the Clary on Geohazards course, you’ll notice did some interesting promotional videos. And so—
 
Chris
Interesting is a way to describe it.
 
Rhett
Interesting is the only way to describe it. But Fuse did those for us. And the one video, right, where we did the skit with Alex and I, and Alex answers the phone.
 
Chris
Oh yeah.
 
Rhett
Alex picks up the phone, he’s like, “Oh, put you on hold, please.” And he puts the hold button, and he goes, “Brrrrrr.” And I was like, “That’s not a hold button. That’s a line dead sound.” And then I realized that the team from Fuse Marketing is too young to recognize that that’s a line dead sound, not a hold sound for the phone. ‘Cause nobody uses, when’s the last time you picked up a phone and heard (buzzing) that it was dead?
 
Chris
Yeah, it’s been a really long time. Like if you do it at a hotel, like let’s say you’re calling front desk, they have like music now or something, like like elevator music.
 
Rhett
Dude, the other day I was with my parents, we traveled somewhere and my dad called me on the room phone and my room phone rings And I’m like, holy there’s the that’s a landline. I don’t know the last time I’ve talked on a phone on a landline And I picked it up and I’m like “Hello?” And he’s like “Rhett” and I’m like “Dad did you did you call me on the hotel phone? Like you actually dialed” He’s like “yeah”, he’s like “why wouldn’t I?”
 
Chris
Full transparency, so over Thanksgiving, we were down in South Padre for Amanda’s family reunion. And so we’re in a hotel, there’s tons of family there. And we needed a break, so Amanda went and did something. I have all the kids in the room. We had connecting rooms, so were the doors in the middle of the wall, and you can like—
 
Rhett
They still have those?
 
 
Chris
Oh yeah, so that was a whole another effort to get that. But we did, so all the kids are in one room, and Matt and I are in the baby room and another. And I hear them talking in a way that was a little bit suspicious. If you have kids you know what we’re talking about.
 
Rhett
 Oh yeah.
 
Chris
So I open the door and I go over there. They’re dialing people and they’re talking to people on the phone. They’re like, and they start saying their cousin’s name. They’re like, is this Lena? No, is this Ayla? Can we talk to Ayla? And there’s random people on the other end ’cause they figure you can just punch a couple of numbers and it starts ringing.
 
Rhett
Like the stuff we did in high school, whatever we did.
 
Chris
Dude, it was brilliant, it was awesome.
 
Rhett
Oh my gosh, today’s episode is a lot like that because you know one of the things you would have come up in the same era as me.
 
Chris
Oh, of course I did.
 
 
Rhett
I remember when you used to want to know to go somewhere you would go to, was it MapQuest?
 
Chris
Oh, there’s several.
 
Rhett
I can’t remember, you used to go to a website, right? And you would punch in your starting address and then you would print out the instructions.
 
Chris
And you’d have a map view and then it had all the turns. It was brilliant.
 
Rhett
Have it printed out of the car beside you, right?
 
Chris
So I’ll be honest with you, I got to a couple of right -aways like that. Like I would legitimately print them when I was out on one of the systems, maybe near Lewisburg or something like that. And I was like, okay, how am I gonna get here?
 
Rhett
Yeah, but then some of the roads would be labeled wrong or you’d have issues. And it’s so funny to see how that transitioned into what we have on our phones now, which is like second nature to everyone, right? And it’s just that whole, like really what Google maps, let’s just say that Google Earth, all of that has kind of transformed our life in terms of the ability to navigate, but you look at that progression and you think, man, it’s just amazing, what will our kids be like?
 
Chris
And it’s not just navigation, right? I It’s, it’s all kinds of things. It’s making information available to you. What I’ll call in proximity, you know, it’s like, when was the last time that you and I went to a restaurant? Cause we wanted to go there without knowing it, right? I pull up Google maps and I’m like, the restaurant’s near me and it has everything for you.
 
Rhett
Yep.  So today, audience, that was that, that, that, that segue has intent because geo hazards have relied upon all of that technology that we talked about. maybe minus landlines.
 
Chris
And you guys are welcome to prank call our guest if you can get his number.
 
Rhett
You are totally, totally supposed to do that. So I’m gonna bring on our guest. Our guest is Mr. Clay Johnson from TC Energy. And so is he joined us? Is he live now? Oh, so audience can see him on the screen. Clay, welcome.
 
Clay
How’s it going guys? Thanks for having me on. I’m excited to be here and looking forward to some singing and Christmas carols maybe.
 
Rhett
Do you have a favorite one? Do you want to join me right now?
 
Do you want to do like ♪ Fa la la la la la la la la la ♪
Too much.
 
Clay
I’m not going to sing it.
 
Rhett
You’re not? Clay, I think you would have a great voice, man. You feel like you got that voice that’s like made from radio.
 
Clay
You would be wrong.
 
Rhett
 Mm, well.
 
Chris
I’m surprised you went classic and you didn’t go with like Mariah Carey or something like that. You know like the holiday tunes, you know.
 
Rhett
‘Cause you know all I want for Christmas is you.
 
Chris
Yeah, you know, it’s like in our house. It’s all about like—
 
 
 
Rhett
He went right past that he didn’t make eye contact with producer when I said that. Clay are you regretting your decision to join us yet? Or does that do you think that will come later in the episode?
 
Clay
Not yet.  Yeah, it’s still a little early.
 
Rhett
So Will you please—
 
Chris
It’s kind of like a unwrapping a Christmas gift. I mean, this is the holiday season, right? It’s I’m going to like this. I’m going to shake the box a little bit. You start peeling the wrapping.
 
Clay
Yeah, I did bring my Santa hat for the holidays. So there we go.
 
Chris
That is so awesome.
 
Rhett
Clay, and don’t take it off now. No, it’s safe for the rest of the– Oh, no. Oh, bring it.
 
Clay
This is a hand knitted hat. I just– my mom came in yesterday. And so she came out with a hand knitted Christmas hat. I got to wear it.
 
Rhett
Is mom in that house?
 
Clay
She is, yeah.
 
Rhett
Oh
 
Clay
She’s still sleeping, probably.
 
Rhett
Oh…. All right, so audience, you have to Christmas cheer, sponsored and bought to you by D2 Integrity and TC Energy today with Clay Johnson. Clay, introduce yourself to the audience, please, in full Christmas regalia.
 
Clay
Will do, yeah. Merry Christmas to everyone. Happy Holidays. I’m Clay Johnson. I’m a licensed geologist, been with TC Energy for about four and a half years now. I started out in my career in geotechnical consulting on the West Coast, so in Seattle, working for consulting firm formerly known as Golder, which has now been acquired by WSP. So a lot of the work that I did in Seattle was actually out east. So either looking at geohazards, mostly landslides, vault rupture, sinkholes, specific to pipelines. So that was a lot of work, either remote out in the eastern U .S. in Appalachia or coming out to do field work. And so I worked for Golder for seven years and then opportunity came up to work in TC and kind of jumped on that and made the the move out to, I’m actually in Pittsburgh now. So it’s been good. And most of the work with TC energy has been on the database development for our Geo hazard threat database.
Rhett
Oh, and we are absolutely going to get into that. So audience, if you’re not familiar with the reason we have Clay on is, if you’ve been at an Esri conference, or you’ve been to IPC, you should have heard, if you didn’t, that was a shortcoming on your part, but you should have heard Clay speak about the GeoForce tool that they’ve developed at TC, so that’s what we’re gonna bring him on, but we always like to ask our guests, Clay, when you were a young child, was your dream that you would find yourself as a geologist for pipelines? Is that how your entrance was into the pipeline industry
 
Chris
Yeah your friends were with firetrucks and police and —
 
Rhett
And you played with the pipeline
 
Chris
And you were playing with rocks. You’re like, ah, I want to put these pipelines through here
 
Clay
No, actually, I kind of hated rocks as a kid Maybe that I don’t know I guess I Had no idea even coming into consulting. This is a very specific world. But you don’t really hear about it, and it’s been infinitely fascinating getting involved in pipeline geohazards. And I’d say I almost had a natural curiosity of science and the earth, and yeah, kind of, it’s evolved and more and more curiosities have showed up, so it’s still surprising.
 
Rhett
How pipelines? How pipelines?
 
Clay
So, I started out in University of Washington studying earth science, and it’s part of my, both undergrad and grad, it’s part of my grad program. I needed to do an internship to satisfy the requirements and present a project on that, which I got paired up with Golder.
 
Rhett
Gotcha.
 
Clay
Completed my internship project, looking at subsidence related, the service morphology, mostly from remote sensing that you would get from sinkholes, underground mining, subsidence, and a variety of things that manifest there.
 
Rhett
When you had no idea how significant.
 
Chris
Internships will do it. That’s how I got in here. H .I. recruiter jumping in front of you saying you need an internship in pipelines.
 
Rhett
Life -changing moments
 
Clay
 It’s it’s worked out quite well with I think, you know, John De La Chapelle mentor of mine and So he was really the way he came in and gave a presentation at the University and I followed up and just as interested in what he was doing and He gave a call a few weeks later like hey, let’s see what that guy wants to do
 
Rhett
So let’s jump into it. Geo force. I would like you to tell me, because when you came on, before you came on, GeoForce was not a thing at TC Energy, right?
 
Chris
What is GeoForce? – Is that a load acting on the pipeline? What is GeoForce?
 
Rhett
Set the stage. What we need is the origin story here.
 
Clay
It’s a clothing brand now, so we got Geo.
 
Chris
You have to explain.
 
Clay
Yeah, shout out to Emma for the excellent swag she really showed up for us this year. So the whole team received these, I guess they’re holiday flannels anyway. So yeah, kind of where we were at, what we started in TC was we, when I showed up, we had a Geohazard program that was largely managed in a Excel spreadsheet and corresponding KMZs in Google Earth. So there was a little bit of a disconnect is like the spatial data with the tabular information as well as the records. So photos, site assessment forms, that sort of thing.
 
Rhett
All of that was in spreadsheet.
 
Clay
It was in a spreadsheet or file folders that were, you’d have to kind of jump around a little bit. And the intent and purpose at GeoForce, that’s kind of the analogy as a steal from another person that at ESRI conference gave is a phone book. So a phone book is where we were. It was very useful to have a list excel spreadsheets. We still leverage them to very helpful for sorting. You know, you can run some functions on there to find information you’re looking for, but there’s a disconnect for that spatial end. And what we want is that example you gave early on with Google Maps, you can pull your phone out, you can search for something that shows up, you can see the photos, the reviews for it, there’s a lot of information, phone numbers, addresses, all that’s included. So you can see where you’re at in the world, you can search for things. We want the same sort of level of understanding for our GeoHazards. We wanna see, is there things nearby that that may also be impacting or contributing to this? So GeoForce is in a nutshell, it’s a suite of Esri products that we have customized specific to our GeoHazard threat management. So we have web applications, our data is hosted on a variety of servers that we are using to visualize in this spatial data explorer. We have that same information can be, let’s say, open in Esri desktop applications. We can see it on our phones in the field when we collect data or conduct field reconnaissance. And it’s across the board. So anybody on the team can see that information.
 
Rhett
So give me an example, ’cause obviously we don’t have a visual here. You have to talk to, I mean, you have to talk to the listeners. Describe to me what GeoForce does or looks like, right? So how are you using this on a day -to -day basis?
 
Clay
So we have a lot of information that we’re including in the database. So individual threats, landslides, delineated boundaries for those. We have exposed pipe locations, potential subsidence areas. So all that information is, say, housed in a manner that we can see it visually as we scroll around, just like you would in Google Earth. But we’re also including a lot of accessory information. So our pipelines with the attributes that are up to date and current. And that all that information is actually tied to our threats so we can query that and look at, you know, which lines are most critical lines. What are the geohazards associated with those we can use that to look at, you know, field reconnaissance, where do we want to focus our efforts to minimize our risk overall. We have LiDAR data is another big one. Yeah, I think we’re around 10 terabytes of LiDAR data, which is not a small amount when you try to host that in a live manner that you can pull up readily.  We have our pipeline corridors. Mostly in the Eastern U.S. where it’s slope models. So you’re seeing steeper slopes and darker shades. Effectively, it’s a bare earth model that we can use to see suspect morphology, mostly for landslides, but it’s quite helpful for sinkholes and subsidence features as well.
 
Rhett
So as GeoForce, you’re bringing what I’m hearing from you, is you’re taking data from all of these sources and bringing it together geospatially, right? Aligned with your system of record.
 
Clay
Yeah, that’s correct, that’s the idea. So same with ILI data, we can see that where features pop up for venting strain. We can then reference that for coincident geohazards, review that, and that’s another big portion of this is being able to see what, you know, former assessments were, and—
 
Rhett
So aside from being, aside from being really cool, Fa la la la, I just wanted to break into random song again. Aside from being really cool and visually speaking, Clay, how does it impact you day to day, right? So like, is it that you get something from the field and they call and then you consult GeoForce first? Are you getting a bending strain feature and then you consult GeoForce? Do you start top down from all of the information from GeoForce and try and integrate it to impact maybe your risk or prioritization scheme, all of the above, I kind of want to get—
 
Rhett
All the above.
 
Chris
So I mean, maybe I’d like to ask you from a different vantage point, right? So I always like to think of things, you know, a lot of times you’re prescribed to do something here in the US when it relates integrity of pipe, independent of the threat. So often we want to go to code and say, code says this, we need to do it, you know, there’s multiple places like if you look at Look at 1163, management of ILI system says, you will maintain a database of features for reference and integration, right? And so it’s like, okay, well, how are operators creating a database of ILI features to manage them? This rings a bell, this is a great way to say, hey, all my BennyStream features are in a database, and here’s my database, and here I’m integrating stuff. When you look at different integrity requirements, if we focus on gas, subpart O, It says, Hey, you have to do for threat identification. You have to do data integration. You’re you sounds like all of that. That’s my commentary. So I’ll get it to a question.
 
Clay
Sure.
 
Chris
Back to the inception of it. You know, I bet it wasn’t you guys looked at code and said, Hey guys, we need a database to comply with our data integration and ili requirements. Right. I think it was more around, um, is it risk? Are y ‘all performing risk assessments in this> Or are y’all using it in hey we have already identified the threat and we are using it as some kind of assessment ie assess/fail. Is it we had a business objective to monitor these things? Maybe you can take us down that process, how did you get here?
 
Clay
So the start of this, I say Geoforce of inventory and be able to manage our GeoHazards. We need to have a program in place for that, from a regulatory standpoint. How you do that is sort of up in the air. We were looking for a more efficient way to do that, but this project initially started as an IS initiative to get at predictive analytics for GeoHazards. So can we understand where we are going to have issues in the future. And we don’t have crystal balls. It’s a very difficult thing to get at.
 
 
Rhett
That is a massive goal, man. I mean, that’s like—
 
Clay
It’s a big one. But I think there are things that we can do. And I think we’re in a much better position now to support that end of work. There’s some advances, I think, depending upon what you’re trying to predict, particularly for landslide science. We can be a bit more proactive hopefully here in the future, looking at weather patterns. There’s a lot of research initiatives going on currently specific to pipelines and geo hazards. So that’s kind of where it started and looking for the predictive side. And we said, well, if you’re gonna do that, you need to have your data in one spot That’s easily leveraged and an Excel table is probably not the best way to do that.
 
Rhett
But you can make it into a pivot table.
 
Clay
You could. Oh, I’m a big fan.
 
Chris
I’ll kind of jump to a little bit. I mean, I think it’s pretty interesting that you guys leveraged different Esri products as your, as your stack for this, right? Because you’ve got a lot of tech companies, you know, is a lot more than pipelines, right? I mean, they’re, they’re massive. And so I could totally see how you can architect this to where you could leverage different plugins or different tools where it’s using things like AI or different rendering algorithms, either spatially or numerically. And it just, whether you’re there or not, you’re definitely in the platform or the tech stack to where you’re going to be able to move in that direction.
 
 
 
Clay
Yeah, definitely. I think it’s very attractive with Esri. I mean, they sort of rule the roost in geospatial data management, not just for pipelines, but across the board. A lot of like, look back at COVID in the early days where there was, actually this is in Washington state, they’re spinning up dashboards, showing the spatial distribution of everything.
 
Chris
We were messing with those, if you remember.
 
Rhett
Ah, I do remember that. Try to forget it.
 
Clay
Too soon to bring it back up.
 
Rhett
No, it’s not. It feels like an age ago, but really wasn’t.
 
Chris
It feels like the snap a little bit.
 
Clay
Do you want to sing a carol now? Is that the right tone?
 
Rhett
Clay Johnson, Clay Johnson. That’s the Silver Bells. I don’t know if you could tell. All right, Clay, we’re going to take a short break. Audiences, we’re going to take a short break. When we get back, I want to touch base with Clay on what are some of the benefits they’re actually seeing tangible benefits. Because I think for a lot of the audience out there, maybe you’re sitting at a spreadsheet management and trying to figure out what it takes to jump to that next level. We want to talk both about some of the hurdles there, as well as what are the benefits you can expect. And on that note, we’ll be right back.
 
Chris
It’s a holly jolly Christmas.
 
All
It’s the best time of the year
 
Rhett
I don’t know the words after that.
All right, welcome back to this Continuing mini series which has turned into a random holiday episode which you will all probably hear well after the holidays You never know what you’re gonna get on pipeline things. Hopefully it brings warm smiles to your face in this January cold season, which is probably when this will air. So as we come back, Clay, we’re with our guest, Clay Johnson. And before we get too deep into the episode, Clay, you’ve listened to all of our prior episodes, right?
 
Clay
Uhhh. Yeah.
 
Rhett
So that means you know exactly what’s coming. –
 
 
 
Chris
Hey, we have a new website. Like all of these podcasts are searchable now. Like you can key words like hard, hard spots or like all the episodes come up. Guests—
 
Clay
I was very impressed with Jinx podcast. I learned a lot of Jinx, Jinx was fan.
 
Chris
Dude, the analogies were so real skincare and like, it was, it was—
 
Rhett
I think this was, this was after lightning round Clay. Uh, you can’t, Five seconds max. Okay. All All right, you got to answer these questions about Geohazard integrity management. All right, putting you on the spot. Chance TC could edit it, but probably not. All right, are you ready?
 
Clay
Let’s do it.
 
Rhett
Apple or Google?
 
Clay
Sorry, I didn’t catch that.
 
Rhett
Oh, he’s delaying. Apple or Android?
 
Clay
Oh, Apple.
 
Rhett
Weak sauce. Disc golf or ball golf?
 
Clay
Glow
 
Rhett
Glow. Oh, he’s talking to disc golf then. That’s what he’s saying, right? All right Batman
or Superman?
 
Clay
Superman. DC
 
Rhett
You were on a roll. 100 % this is a this is targeted at some individuals. Alaska or California?
 
Clay
Alaska
 
Rhett
The Mariners or The Pirates.
 
Clay
Ooh, tough one. Mariners. Cool.
 
Rhett
I was wondering which way you would go. And I don’t know if you’re going to know this one, so this is just bonus round. Goku or Vegeta.
 
Chris
Oh, that’s a hard one.
 
Clay
Say that again.
 
Rhett
Goku or Vegeta. Do you know the reference?
 
Clay
Pass.
 
Rhett
He doesn’t know the reference. It’s okay. It’s okay.
 
Chris
That’s a wild card.
 
Rhett
He knew five of the references. That’s pretty good. I mean, I’ll forgive you that you’re an Apple person. We’ll just, we’ll just—
 
Clay
We’re talking major league pitchers? Is that what we’re doing?
 
Chris
No. Apple’s the way to go to listen to this guy.
 
Rhett
So, all right. So catching the audience up, we are here talking with Clay Johnson about the development of GeoForce and the use of it at TC Energy. So we set the stage in the first half talking about the need and the driver right that you’re integrating from just having the phone book, if you will, an Excel database, and I know a lot of our clients still sit at an Excel database for the management of geo -hazards, right? Moving from that into a geospatial ability to integrate all of your data, whether it’s LIDAR, whether it’s inclinometer data, whether or not it’s the pipe centerline, whether it’s your reports, whether it’s your bending strain, whether it’s your previous ILI features to be able to bring all of that into one space where visually you can see the arrangement of those things. And that’s on top of all of the other Esri packages that are built in.
 
Chris
That’s the idea, right? And strategically trying to leverage that GIS -Esri relationship, right? Often your GIS teams are already using those tools, there’s a whole network there. You’re not trying to build it bespoke in -house. You know, you’re really leveraging something that – So, should work.
 
Rhett
What I wanna talk about now, Clay, is kind of three topics, right? I wanna talk about the resources involved in do this. Like, what does an operator need to be prepared to bite off if they’re gonna tackle this? And if they’re gonna do that, then I wanna talk about what the tangible benefits are, right? So like, I really wanna hear, like, how does this actually make the business case for me? I mean, obviously, your organization’s invested a lot of resources, right? And then third, we’ll talk about where it’s going next. So audience, that’s the cliff’s notes. Let’s start with the beginning, Clay. I mean, obviously you’ve been at UTC, you said five years, so what kind of resources? I mean, if an operator just heard this episode and said tomorrow that, you know what, I wanna build the next geoforce, what are they looking at?
 
Clay
Yeah, I guess it kind of depends on What you’re hoping to get in the end so for us we went a very good say complicated route for good reason we actually outsourced GIS support with a third party to You know didn’t have the manpower if you will in TC to dedicate to this, but Others we’ve seen in industry do a similar, like say a scaled down version of GeoForce. So web application, Esri web applications, very simple to spin up. Maybe you could get one in a day that has points and features. So you can have a simplified version pretty quickly. When you start to do analytics and try to get data tied do other systems within our organizations just throughout we went. It gets a bit more complicated. You’re doing, you got scripts in the back, you know, behind the curtain running to accommodate things like, for example, for us, we want to make sure our pipeline attributes are in sync with our geo hazards and our threats similarly. So we’re tying that we’re running a script to make sure, you know, percent smite’s diameter personnel, so that our area managers, everything is current in the system. And that refreshes using a kind of on -demand planned process. So we, you know, you can do this in a very simplified way pretty easily, but I think for scaling it up and getting more on the analytical side like another example we have seismic threats that our team and our point of procedures is required to follow up on and so we can we have an event server when a seismic event occurs over a given magnitude and within a given proximity to our line we’ll get an alert and we will follow up accordingly following our procedures So we’ll get an email, text message, event alerts. So that’s been pretty, and it’s meaningful so we know what the level of response should be for that site.
 
Rhett
So it sounds like, again, once you define the objective of what you want to go after, then it guides a little more of what type of resource. And if you want to go the analytics, whether predictive or not, right, even just trying to develop relationships, potentially cause an effect. You’re looking at sizeable investment. If you just want to geospatially view things, it sounds like that’s a little bit easier to integrate into Ezri’s products.
 
Clay
I would say so. The other challenge for us is scalability. We have thousands of miles, tens of thousands of miles of pipelines in North America. Right now, GeoForce is set up specific to to the US, we are looking at integrating into Canadian side now our WAP team sort of morphed a little bit. We’re now integrated with our Canadian colleagues. So that’s kind of a future enhancement here, but it’s just by quantity, it becomes unruly to manage all that in an Excel spreadsheet, especially out East where we have high density of things to pay attention to.
 
Rhett
Yeah. Fantastic. So, day -to -day though, what are the benefits that you’re seeing, tangible benefits that you see from something like this? I mean, how is it actually changing or altering or improving the way that you’re working?
 
Clay
Yeah, I’d say on a day -to -day basis, better visualization and understanding of what’s in front of us. And so it expedites our ability to assess threats. We can look at that, LiDar data, understand history at a site, if it’s been visited before, but this is something new. It’s going to maybe set our level of effort slightly different. We do, there’s a lot of different things that we can leverage in GeoForce, so we can actually pull agency -specific data. Anything that’s in Esri’s web service and can be added in. So RGS online, that data can be visualized overlapping with our threats. So we do that with hurricanes, precipitation. We have, I think, day to day wise, adding new threat locations prior to being confirmed or if they are confirmed, we We have a form setup, so the data integrity and consistency among that is set. We set domain values, so you only have these options to pick from. We can adjust that and add new ones, but everybody’s entered the data the same way. When I go to search for something, it’s not in a different capitalization. It’s consistent. So that’s important when you want to start to manage a large network of features and issues.
 
 
Chris
Talked just a little about timing you know so you said like for example let’s say there’s hurricane maps or precipitation time frame are we talking hours days weeks for you to be able to ingest data and then start analyzing it.
 
Clay
Click of a button so for if you want to see the precipitation it’s a forecast data we can add that in and it’s it’s right there it’s over over late so overlaid. So whatever’s available in the public sphere through Esri’s web service, we can pull that in.
 
Chris
That’s fantastic. It makes me think of, remember how they say, you know, when you have extreme weather events, you must respond within 72 hours. I mean, it’s such a fantastic way to be proactive about, I mean, you said it, right? You said predictive, right? And obviously us always leaning into integrity and obviously that fine that fine line between prescribed and performance -based. I mean, it sounds like you guys are positioning yourselves in a way to really be able to get a little bit more predictive, right? Like, we know this is coming. We know we have active sites here. And once we have the data available, you can pretty quickly render something and then coordinate with, you know, like you said earlier, your field personnel. You already have names of people you can reach out to, send them an email and say, “Hey, just be aware of this, you know, when you guys put boots on the ground, this is what we’re looking for.
 
Clay
Yeah, I mean, one thing to add there, you know, on the predictive side, I think we’re in a much better spot, leveraging, so we have our event server, and we track precipitation. So both forecasts, so the weatherman can be wrong quite a bit of the time, great position to be in.
 
Rhett
According to Justin Healy, always 10 days out, big weather is trying to influence what you think. It’s a whole, if you ever want to get into conversation with him.
 
Clay
It’s pretty helpful to look at that and say, okay, I’m going to Southern West Virginia to a site visit and we’re gonna get three inches of rain in the next two days. I better bring my rain gear versus the cumulative precipitation data, which is getting better and better resolution. We’re inventorying that and keeping track of that’s when we have events and so we can go back and look at that information and say we got a pretty wet year in this area maybe we want to consider collecting additional LiDAR maybe we want to bump up monitoring schedules we have that to be able to make decisions dynamically so I think moving forward because we are inventorying that information we can say when the science catches up to a more predictive end of understanding, we can readily get at that information.
 
Chris
So I thought of an analogy, you know, you got the Christmas hat on, you know, Santa came down the chimney and left you and your siblings and loved one’s gifts and, you know, you open yours first and it’s GeoForce and it does all these cool things and your brothers and sisters and mom and dad are like, “Oh, I wonder what’s in my box,” you know? So it makes me wonder, like, are our other threat leads, like, Our other threat leads like, “Hey, I want a GeoForce for my threat.” What kind of precedence is this setting just generally that you can speak to within y’all’s enterprise?
 
Clay
Yeah. I think internally there’s a lot of interest among other groups too. We’ve been approached like spinning up different web applications to support their day -to -day and I think there’s been some headway for some folks on that. Also leveraging our data and using that to support, so like our system -wide risk folks, that’s an enhancement we’re moving toward is keeping that connection live between our threat information and what they’re using for, let’s say, more probabilistic risk assessments.
 
Chris
 Yeah, I just, I keep getting into that, right? I mean, I’m really in favor of like y ‘all’s tech stack there, right? Because I mean, it gives you, if you guys are doing, like you said earlier, I think more qualitative at the moment, more data integration, more visual, you know, the numerical side is, you know, just a couple steps away. So that’s awesome.
 
Clay
Yeah. And we are doing that as an organization. And there’s a lot of really smart individuals that are involved with that. But it’s sort of, we’re providing that data um, on demand versus getting that a live connection in a schema and format that makes sense. So there’s, there’s more to come with that, but, um, and I think some definite improvements to, to how we view risk overall as an organization, leveraging that information from GeoForce.
 
Rhett
All I could think about was up on the rooftop reindeer paws. Out jumps, good old Santa Claus with this bag of Geoforce goodies for all to share. I don’t think that’s actually how the words go, but.
 
Clay
I was thinking about, you know, who’s the crampus in that, in this project.
 
Rhett
Oh my goodness. Clay, I’ve got one last question for you, buddy. This has been good fun. I think the entire WALF team is gonna be jealous that you were here with us today. But where do you see this going? What’s next for GeoForce? Obviously, this is somewhat mature within TC, right? You’ve got an established process. I have personally seen you guys use that, working closely with you, but what’s next? Where do you see it going in the next one, two, five years? What do you hope to get out of it?
 
Clay
Yeah, I think we have Pretty much one more year with with our vendor There will likely be some level of support say Making sure that the the car still runs We’re transitioning to in -house support so the passing the the reins over to our internal team It’s gonna happen this this next year. I mean already has and they have been involved throughout the project and we rely on them heavily.
 
Rhett
So now you’re gonna wholly own it.
 
Clay
That’s right. And it’s in a format that we can do that. So enhancement wise, so we very recently as of last week have moved into a new format for Geo4. So it’s in 11 .1, Esri’s Pro version 11 .1, we were previously in 10 -way. So this is like Windows has a new version come out. We upgrade. So we’re in a, I’d say, better position. There’s a lot of enhancements that come with moving to 11 .1 that we’re going to try to employ this next year. So excited. It’s nice to be in this arena with Esri so we can kind of evolve with them as new things come up. And it just keeps getting better and better.
 
Rhett
Cool. Well, I hope this show was everything you thought it would be. And this experience lived up to your expectations. If it didn’t, you can file all your complaints to Ms. Producer. But no, Clay, I want to thank you for joining us and for giving us a little bit of your time. I look forward to seeing the continued improvements that you make and working with you guys. I want to thank you for sharing a little bit with our audience and other listeners out there. And we hope to have you back on. Um, to our audience, we hope you enjoyed this kind of mini series. Uh, look forward to bringing you our next series. And again, we’ll be back with you soon. Thanks for joining us on pipeline things. I am your host, Rhett Dotson, your co -host Christopher DeLeon, and our esteemed guest, Clay Johnson, signing off.
 
Clay
Appreciate it. Happy holidays, guys.
 
 
 
Rhett
This year, I asked my wife what she wanted for Christmas and she said nothing– would make her happier than being with me.
 
Chris
That’s it.
 
Rhett
So I got her nothing for Christmas.
This episode was bought to you by D2 Integrity, Clay Johnson from TC Energy. We wish to thank for being our guest, Ms. Sarah Etier, executive producer from FORME Marketing, and this episode was filmed at the Work Lodge.
 

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