The Critical Role of Consistent Facilities-Wide Corrosion Control Design Criteria and O&M Practices to Facilities Asset and Risk Management

Adoption of facilities-wide corrosion control design criteria facilitates reliable risk assessment and selection of appropriate, consistent corrosion control methods resulting in increased public and operator safety; control of capital expenditures; and reduction of short- and long-term repair expenditures. Adoption of facilities-wide corrosion Operations & Maintenance (O&M) protocols ensures the long-term performance of the selected corrosion mitigation measures.  A number of factors determine the corrosivity of an environment with respect to buried, immersed or splash zone exposures.  Understanding the long-term effects of each of these factors on facilities infrastructure integrity provides for the development of a consistent, system-wide evaluation and classification standard of an environment’s corrosivity.  Corrosivity classification is a tool that can be used as a risk assessment factor for selecting the appropriate corrosion control methodology for facilities infrastructure.  Developing and adopting a facilities-wide O&M plan with regard to corrosion control systems further ensures that asset management projections and strategies are accurate.

The first module of the presentation will emphasize that corrosivity evaluation is a critical, although often overlooked, component of any comprehensive risk and asset management planning approach.  The second module will detail the criticality of adhering to a facilities-wide corrosion control O&M schedule to ensuring accurate risk and asset assessment.  A methodology for developing a consistent evaluation protocol and examples of evaluation tools developed for a number of exposure scenarios will be presented. Opportunities will be identified to leverage available information to develop or improve planning and O&M management of corrosion control on a facilities-wide basis.  Tools for identifying and weighting available corrosion mitigation measures for a variety of facilities infrastructure components will be presented along with tools for planning for critical O&M activities and milestones.