Strengthening electrical reliability for a leading energy pipeline operator
Targeted root cause analysis and reliability engineering gave leadership a practical plan to cut electrical outages, protect throughput, and standardize reliability practices across priority terminals.
Starting point
A major North American liquids pipeline operator was facing recurring electrical failures across several priority terminals. Wildlife-induced faults, aging infrastructure, and weak inventory governance were driving unplanned outages, throughput loss, and elevated safety and environmental risk.
Reported data showed a cumulative throughput impact of roughly 9.7 million barrels over a three-year period, and a revenue exposure approaching 30 million dollars. Local teams were working hard to restore service after each event, but most fixes remained tactical. The operator needed a structured view of root causes and a targeted plan to reduce outage frequency and duration, not just another restore from the next failure.
Approach
The operator launched a two-phase electrical reliability program with a clear mandate: think long term, identify root causes with evidence, conduct structured RCA to validate hypotheses with SMEs, design high return interventions, and translate them into a capital and O&M plan leadership could fund and track. The work was led by Bhuvan Maingi, electrical engineer by trade and now at Strathen Group.
The program began with field assessments across priority terminals in the Western Canada, followed by terminals in the Eastern region in the second phase. The team worked with site managers, electricians, and operations engineers to catalogue failure modes, outage scenarios, and local workarounds. For each site, critical electrical assets, isolation points, and spares practices were mapped and linked to recorded incidents and event durations.
To move beyond anecdotes, the team developed failure trees using Apollo Root Cause Analysis and tested hypotheses using incident records and the operator’s risk matrix. Root causes were grouped into themes such as wildlife-induced faults at substations, obsolete medium-voltage disconnects, overloaded or poorly protected pad-mounted switchgear, underground cables in high water tables, insufficient critical spares, and data gaps in the asset management system. Multi-day cross-functional workshops brought engineering, operations, maintenance, and standards teams together to validate evidence, challenge assumptions, and agree on corrective actions.
The final step was to convert findings into a sequenced action plan. Interventions were organized into immediate fixes, near term design and standards changes, and longer-term capital projects. They included installing wildlife and clearance protections, replacing obsolete disconnects and aged transformers, redesigning pad-mounted switchgear enclosures, shifting vulnerable underground cables to above-ground with testing and rejuvenation, and building a regional program for critical spares. In parallel, the team defined asset master clean-up, failure code discipline, and preventive maintenance updates in the CMMS so that reliability gains would be measurable and sustainable.
Instead of treating each outage as an isolated incident, the operator built a single, evidence-based view of electrical risk and funded a targeted program to reduce it.
Outcome
The work gave the operator a clear picture of why electrical failures were recurring and which interventions would most effectively reduce downtime and risk. Leadership could see, asset by asset, where wildlife exposure, obsolete gear, underground cables, and spare inventory gaps were creating outsized financial and safety exposure.
Operations and engineering teams gained a prioritized roadmap that separated what needed to be fixed immediately from what required design changes, standards updates, or capital projects. This helped align local crews, central engineering, and the major projects organization around a single, risk-based plan, rather than competing wish lists.
Over time, the combination of design improvements, isolation enhancements, and critical spares readiness led to fewer events escalating into full terminal outages and shorter recovery times when failures did occur. At the same time, codifying changes into standards and CMMS data discipline meant that new projects and future maintenance would inherit the improved designs and practices.
The electrical reliability program became part of a broader effort to strengthen asset strategy, safety, and throughput performance across the terminal network, with capital budgets and governance structures aligned to the risks that mattered most.
For reliability and operations leaders, the critical shift was moving from reactive repairs to a funded, standards-backed program that treats electrical reliability as a managed asset, not a recurring surprise.
This experience continues to inform how Strathen Group thinks about reliability transformations, using evidence-based root cause analysis, risk-weighted capital plans, and standards-backed design changes to turn scattered electrical incidents into a managed asset strategy.
