Alberta refinery pipe hydrostatic test failure

Foreshadowed for tomorrow's lecture. $500M Alberta refinery construction project; during recession, pipe sourced from non-standard supplier; hydrostatic test produced a crack; client demanded $2M-$6M back. Tom's framing: "the fight arose because people don't know how to read a standard in plain English." Used to motivate the codes-and-standards material to follow.

The reason I'm giving this background of what we're going to go over tomorrow is because I was involved years ago in a case — a new refinery up in Alberta. There was a big recession at the time, the economy was in session, and they were doing all kinds of things to get steel pipe. The company building this new refinery — I don't know, $500 million — said: we'll find some pipe, we can't find it, we'll go out, they specialize in stuff. They got ten, twelve inch, twenty inch pipe, and were fabricating it and making a refinery. When they did the hydrostatic test — putting water in, pressurizing it — a crack appeared. They brought us in. They condemned the pipe based on this crack. They said: we want our six million dollars back, or two million dollars back, because we're going to yank it all out, and that part of our refinery is built, and we're going to charge you for putting the new stuff in. There's a big fight, which I'll get into tomorrow. The fight arose because people don't know how to read a standard in plain English.