What we work to, and what we will not work without.
Trenchless engineering sits across a pipeline code, a set of industry guidelines and a provincial regulator. None of the three covers the whole job. This is the stack we use and where each part of it actually bites.
CSA Z662 — Oil and gas pipeline systems
The governing Canadian code for the pipeline itself, including the clauses that deal specifically with directionally drilled installations, and the sour-service annex where the product demands it. It sets the design and testing obligations the crossing has to satisfy: wall thickness, weld procedure and acceptance, hydrostatic strength and leak testing, and depth of cover.
Where a bore is concerned, the code tells you what the pipe must survive. It does not tell you whether the bore can be drilled. That is the gap the guidelines and the engineering fill.
The guidelinesIndustry guidance
Planning Horizontal Directional Drilling for Pipeline Construction
The Canadian planning reference: site investigation, alignment, entry and exit design, drilling fluid management and contingency planning for an inadvertent return.
Pipeline Associated Watercourse Crossings
Fourth edition. The crossing-method selection framework, the environmental and fisheries obligations, and the isolation and trenchless options at a watercourse.
Segmented pullback analysis
The pullback load model used to check that the pipe can survive its own installation — tension, bending and external pressure combined, segment by segment along the profile.
F1962
The standard guide for using HDD to install polyethylene pipe and conduit across obstacles, and the reference case for the pull-load method on non-steel product.
Provincial permitting
In British Columbia, the BC Energy Regulator under the Energy Resource Activities Act, together with the pipeline and pipeline crossing regulations, and the consultation conditions attached to the permit. In Alberta, the Alberta Energy Regulator on equivalent terms. Highways crossings bring the provincial transport ministry and its setback requirements; watercourses bring federal fisheries screening; and ground disturbance near existing facilities brings the one-call system and the facility owner's own crossing agreement.
A crossing that is engineered correctly and permitted incorrectly does not get built. We read the permit conditions as part of the design, not after it.
Our ownThe internal standards we brought with us
- A safety management manual and a quality manual, both carried forward from the operating company.
- A safe-work-procedure series covering the drilling operations, tooling handling, casing, buoyancy control and bore-to-casing work.
- An environmental execution and fluid-release plan, including the graduated response to a rising annular pressure and to an inadvertent return at surface.
- A certification matrix mapping every role on a drilling spread — project manager down to lease hand — against the tickets it requires.
These are available to clients as the basis of a project-specific document set. See execution plans.