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Episode 1 - What Floats Your Boat · Upon Further Inspection

• 0:00
  Branden Stucky: Welcome to the very first episode of Upon Further Inspection on Mechanical Integrity Podcast.
• 0:05
  Branden Stucky: I'm Branden from CorrSolutions.
• 0:08
  Branden Stucky: With me is Greg Alvarado from Inspectioneering.
• 0:11
  Branden Stucky: Before we start diving into the industry, we figured it's only fair to introduce ourselves, who we are, how we got here, and why we started this podcast.
• 0:20
  Branden Stucky: So sit back, get comfortable, and let's kick things off we call
• 0:39
  Greg Alvarado: this our inaugural podcast?
• 0:41
  Branden Stucky: I think, I think inaugural is probably the better answer.
• 0:46
  Branden Stucky: Probably our, our inaugural one.
• 0:47
  Branden Stucky: But yeah, so this is it.
• 0:48
  Branden Stucky: This is, this is upon further inspection.
• 0:52
  Branden Stucky: So Greg, good having you.
• 0:56
  Branden Stucky: Nice seeing you.
• 0:57
  Branden Stucky: It's been been a while coming, trying to get this, to get this going.
• 1:02
  Branden Stucky: But luckily we've been able to.
• 1:04
  Branden Stucky: Work through a few things, some technical difficulties, a few, few other things happening, but we've, we are finally able to sit down and put together the, the first inaugural podcast episode of, of Upon Further Inspection.
• 1:19
  Branden Stucky: Thanks for, thanks for joining me today.
• 1:21
  Greg Alvarado: Well, thanks for inviting me.
• 1:23
  Greg Alvarado: I think it was a great idea you had, Branden.
• 1:25
  Greg Alvarado: I mean, we're not chasing scratch, but we're chasing something here.
• 1:29
  Greg Alvarado: And and I hope this winds up being a, a, a really educative and fun experience for everybody that joins us.
• 1:38
  Greg Alvarado: So Branden, tell me how, how did you get started in this world of mechanical integrity?
• 1:44
  Greg Alvarado: In in this industry.
• 1:47
  Branden Stucky: I just lucked into it honestly.
• 1:49
  Branden Stucky: I was, I was at a school career fair.
• 1:52
  Branden Stucky: I started here, right outta school actually, and I was at a career fair.
• 1:57
  Branden Stucky: I saw I had already gone through, I don't know how many different lines standing, talking to people, talking to recruiters, selling myself and ended up.
• 2:08
  Branden Stucky: As I was like walking out, there was this guy standing there, just this big giant person of a man, and he's standing next to this booth that's got a TV monitor and says, equity engineering.
• 2:23
  Branden Stucky: And I was like, I don't know what this is, but it's engineering.
• 2:25
  Branden Stucky: I'll go talk to the guy.
• 2:27
  Branden Stucky: And so I go up to him and, and it was the most, looking back, it was the most ridiculous thing ever.
• 2:32
  Branden Stucky: I, I, I said, so what, what do you guys even do?
• 2:35
  Branden Stucky: Which looking back now is kind of a funny que funny question because, you know, when you're out on the road and you're talking with pe people, especially with equity, you know, a lot of people don't understand all the different things that equity does do.
• 2:48
  Branden Stucky: And so for me as a, as a college kid, to go up to, to the guy and say, what, what do you guys even do?
• 2:53
  Branden Stucky: He was very nice.
• 2:55
  Branden Stucky: He was very polite.
• 2:56
  Branden Stucky: He didn't have to be this was this was Ryan Jones though at the time, and you and I both know Ryan and, uh Right.
• 3:03
  Branden Stucky: A, a a super great guy.
• 3:04
  Branden Stucky: Really nice.
• 3:05
  Branden Stucky: And, and so he was very, very patient with me and explained to me everything, and I said, well, I'm looking for, I'm looking for an internship.
• 3:12
  Branden Stucky: And he goes, well, I'm sorry.
• 3:13
  Branden Stucky: We're, we're looking for new hires.
• 3:15
  Branden Stucky: I go, okay.
• 3:16
  Branden Stucky: But he gave me his card and I kept it, I put it in my, I had a, I had a Ford Escape.
• 3:22
  Branden Stucky: That thing was great.
• 3:23
  Branden Stucky: I could work on it all day.
• 3:24
  Branden Stucky: Never mess anything up.
• 3:26
  Branden Stucky: I had it, I put it in the, in the, the one of the little compartments there.
• 3:30
  Branden Stucky: And a year later when I was looking for jobs.
• 3:34
  Branden Stucky: I didn't wanna be a process engineer, so I'm a chemical engineer.
• 3:36
  Branden Stucky: I didn't wanna be a process engineer.
• 3:38
  Branden Stucky: So I, I interviewed with Turner Construction.
• 3:42
  Branden Stucky: I interviewed with Bloomberg to go be an analyst in New York.
• 3:46
  Branden Stucky: I, I even interviewed with Teach for America, thought I wanted to go be a teacher.
• 3:50
  Branden Stucky: I still wouldn't mind being a teacher, honestly.
• 3:52
  Branden Stucky: But ended up.
• 3:54
  Branden Stucky: Ended up coming across his card and and there was a, there was a posting there.
• 3:59
  Branden Stucky: I ended up finding a job posting reached out and yeah, I mean the rest was kind of history.
• 4:04
  Branden Stucky: Came in and worked as an RBI engineer for a little bit.
• 4:08
  Branden Stucky: And then, then January of 2020, thought I was gonna go travel the world and I moved into sales.
• 4:17
  Branden Stucky: It was gonna be the best job ever.
• 4:18
  Branden Stucky: I'm gonna go, go meet everybody.
• 4:21
  Branden Stucky: 'cause I like, I like talking with people.
• 4:22
  Branden Stucky: I like meeting people.
• 4:23
  Branden Stucky: I like seeing different areas of the world.
• 4:26
  Branden Stucky: And you know, obviously lockdown happened and quarantine, so ended up on Zoom calls and teams calls and.
• 4:35
  Branden Stucky: But I, you know what, in doing that, you know, I tried to figure out what can I, what can I take from this?
• 4:39
  Branden Stucky: And so I tried to learn as much as I could as I was talking with people about the programs that they were developing and the different pieces that they were trying to put together.
• 4:48
  Branden Stucky: And then yeah, eventually ended up leading, leading our, our core solutions team now.
• 4:53
  Branden Stucky: So just over the years trying to talk with people, learn more and, and be able to.
• 5:00
  Branden Stucky: Provide the best, best level of service that I could.
• 5:04
  Branden Stucky: So yeah, honestly, I got into this world just by happenstance.
• 5:07
  Branden Stucky: Literally walking, walking past somebody and starting a conversation.
• 5:12
  Branden Stucky: So
• 5:13
  Greg Alvarado: that's not, what are the things that like now, I mean, that's a great background and today, what are the things that float your boat?
• 5:20
  Greg Alvarado: What are the things that you're passionate about in your job?
• 5:24
  Branden Stucky: Yeah, you know, I think, I think I.
• 5:27
  Branden Stucky: Pushing, pushing for us to start this conversation right here is kind of, I think the crux of all of it.
• 5:33
  Branden Stucky: Uh mm-hmm.
• 5:34
  Branden Stucky: For, for me.
• 5:36
  Branden Stucky: For me it's, it's really trying to share knowledge.
• 5:39
  Branden Stucky: So my background, right?
• 5:40
  Branden Stucky: I, I talked about all the, the way I got here, but I also spent nine years coaching baseball at the college level.
• 5:46
  Branden Stucky: And, and so the, the coaching piece, the sharing knowledge, the learning and sharing knowledge, that whole piece is really important to me.
• 5:53
  Branden Stucky: I think that developing developing the younger groups, the, the newer age groups.
• 5:59
  Branden Stucky: It, it's something that can't be forgotten.
• 6:02
  Branden Stucky: And so for me, yes, our company, our group, we do, we do asset and tech, mechanical integrity, and we help people develop their programs.
• 6:11
  Branden Stucky: But like, that's just a piece of it for me.
• 6:14
  Branden Stucky: For me, the other side of it is trying to help spread knowledge, keep people safe and do what we can to help.
• 6:23
  Branden Stucky: Develop the younger people so that they can be solid, contributing individuals at whatever it is they end up doing.
• 6:32
  Branden Stucky: So for me, the goal of the goal of us having these conversations and, and starting this is, is to be able to, to do exactly that.
• 6:41
  Branden Stucky: Be able to, to talk with you, talk with other people, and pull information out out of people's brains so that it can be disseminated to, to everybody.
• 6:53
  Branden Stucky: That's, I mean, that's really my goal with, with anything is trying to be able to, to share knowledge.
• 7:00
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah.
• 7:00
  Greg Alvarado: One of the things I really enjoy about working with you, Branden, is you're also, you also have a thirst for new technology.
• 7:07
  Greg Alvarado: And I see you, you know, implementing new technology in, in different areas, in different ways and in the group core solutions that you have responsibility for.
• 7:19
  Greg Alvarado: Naturally he's doing a lot of work in statistics and, you know, one of the buzzwords of today or phrases is CML optimization and all that kind of stuff, but what are the things about what you're doing right now that really make you excited from a technology standpoint?
• 7:34
  Greg Alvarado: What, where do you think we're going with technology?
• 7:36
  Greg Alvarado: What, what can we do today and what are we on the vert to being able to do tomorrow?
• 7:41
  Branden Stucky: You know, when.
• 7:43
  Branden Stucky: Yesterday in, in the last couple weeks as I've been thinking about kind of how we were gonna get this started this, this was actually something I was kind of thinking about.
• 7:51
  Branden Stucky: My, my hot take on, on the future for technology is actually that I think virtual reality doesn't have a place that's my hot take in, in our industry.
• 8:03
  Branden Stucky: Mm-hmm.
• 8:03
  Branden Stucky: Mm-hmm.
• 8:03
  Branden Stucky: I, I think that, I think that for design and project work.
• 8:08
  Branden Stucky: Maybe there's a place for it, but where I really think there's a, a, a, a place moving forward is augmented reality.
• 8:15
  Branden Stucky: And so, so the augmented reality is, is where, let's say you have a right, like you and I wear glasses, right?
• 8:23
  Branden Stucky: And, and the ability to look at something and something to show up on that gla on the, on the lens that tells you about what you're looking at.
• 8:34
  Branden Stucky: So I think Google Glass has this, or meta people, people have these, right?
• 8:38
  Branden Stucky: I think that that augmented reality.
• 8:40
  Branden Stucky: The other example would be like for, I don't know if this resonates with you, but Pokemon Go.
• 8:46
  Branden Stucky: So it's an app on your phone and you can walk around and you turn your camera on and you can, you can point your phone at like a tree.
• 8:55
  Branden Stucky: And next to that tree, there'll be a little Pokemon on your phone.
• 8:57
  Branden Stucky: Obviously not in real life, right?
• 8:58
  Branden Stucky: But on your phone there's a little Pokemon that's augmented reality where it takes the ability to take a video or, or, or something that you're seeing and add to it.
• 9:10
  Branden Stucky: I think there's a huge place for that in our industry as, as you start looking at offshore.
• 9:17
  Branden Stucky: As you look at midstream with a lot of their remote facilities, the ability to send one person out in the field and have multiple people call in and see what they're seeing at the same time and be able to provide insights back, I think, I think that that's gonna be something that's gonna be useful.
• 9:37
  Branden Stucky: Or even if it's somebody that you can send out in the field.
• 9:40
  Branden Stucky: And if they're looking at the plant and having their systems or their circuits overlaid on the piping now that's like, we're, we're definitely not close to that happening.
• 9:52
  Branden Stucky: But think about it, when you're walking through and you're looking at the pipe rack and you're trying to figure out where does that line come from?
• 9:59
  Branden Stucky: Where does it go?
• 10:00
  Branden Stucky: And, and, and all the little bends and turns that happen that, oh, you get confused and now you're following the wrong piece.
• 10:06
  Branden Stucky: I, I, I think augmented reality has, has a future for us.
• 10:11
  Branden Stucky: What about, what about you?
• 10:12
  Branden Stucky: What do you think of the future of technology?
• 10:14
  Greg Alvarado: Well, I, I think we have some challenges and one of those is that sometimes we get moving so far forward that we forget about what was behind us and.
• 10:26
  Greg Alvarado: What did we learn from that?
• 10:28
  Greg Alvarado: And you know, I've been in this business since that fixed equipment, reliability, industrial process industries since the mid seventies.
• 10:37
  Greg Alvarado: And I've seen a lot, you know, I've seen OSHA come along in the early nineties.
• 10:43
  Greg Alvarado: I had the pleasure of working for some awesome corrosion materials, engineering people and chemist in the early days.
• 10:50
  Greg Alvarado: And one of the things that.
• 10:53
  Greg Alvarado: I'd like to see, and maybe this is an augmented reality thing, maybe it's something else, but I really, I really think that in this industry is missing mentoring.
• 11:04
  Greg Alvarado: People have become so busy, you don't see people mentoring anymore.
• 11:08
  Greg Alvarado: And I don't know, I, I don't believe you can just replace that with ai and, and write in line with mentoring.
• 11:18
  Greg Alvarado: Is contextualization is context.
• 11:22
  Greg Alvarado: And you know, I, I recently posted something on LinkedIn that's got some really good time or a lot of coverage on, on the internet, but is about how important context, the context of what we do is, you know, I I framed it with talking with my son Tyler, a discussion we had years ago and I asked him, well, what he thought was more important, the spirit of the law or the letter of the law.
• 11:46
  Greg Alvarado: And I've been on the API committee since 87 and been involved in, you know, 5 10, 5 70 RBI stuff, you know, damage mechanisms, other things, and what the people that aren't in the room when we're debating these different standards and recommended practices.
• 12:05
  Greg Alvarado: What they don't get is the context of, of why around the arguments and the debates and.
• 12:12
  Greg Alvarado: And how these things were brought up.
• 12:14
  Greg Alvarado: And so I think, I think we're gonna be challenged, you know, where, where I think AI is a great tool.
• 12:21
  Greg Alvarado: There are some things yet that it can't do, and I don't, I don't know how it's gonna pass along context.
• 12:27
  Greg Alvarado: So that's where I think something like you were just talking about, this visualization in context is what you're talking about?
• 12:36
  Greg Alvarado: Could be, could be some cool to help with that.
• 12:39
  Greg Alvarado: I just hope we don't lose it.
• 12:40
  Greg Alvarado: You know, like one of the books that I love going back to is called Wealth of Nations.
• 12:45
  Greg Alvarado: It was written by Adam Smith.
• 12:47
  Greg Alvarado: A lot of people consider him the godfather of capitalism.
• 12:50
  Greg Alvarado: Our free enterprise, and what he says is that a business has no conscience.
• 12:55
  Greg Alvarado: The basic purpose of a business is to return maximum profit to the shareholders, and that it's the organization and or the laws, whether they're city, county, state, federal, whatever.
• 13:11
  Greg Alvarado: Those are the things that have to impose limits on the free enterprise.
• 13:15
  Greg Alvarado: Otherwise, you wind up with sweatshops like we had, you know, way back when in the us but we still have sweatshops around the world where, you know, greed can take hold and I.
• 13:27
  Greg Alvarado: What I like about working in the, in the realm of reliability and mechanical integrity is, is putting the safety of the people working in the plants and the communities that surround these facilities.
• 13:39
  Greg Alvarado: Number one and environmental responsibility number two, and fiduciary responsibility number three, and realizing, see in the old days, and I saw this in the whole transition, especially when OSHA came along with the PSM, the process safety management Rule 1910.
• 13:55
  Greg Alvarado: Point one nine back in the early nineties is a lot of management got afraid.
• 14:00
  Greg Alvarado: Oh, they're gonna tie our hands and now we're gonna have to do all this useless, unnecessary stuff because of osha.
• 14:07
  Greg Alvarado: But it was at that same time because some forward people thinking, people saw it coming.
• 14:13
  Greg Alvarado: When API put out a bid.
• 14:16
  Greg Alvarado: For facilitating development of risk-based inspection technology.
• 14:20
  Greg Alvarado: And that was back in like 91.
• 14:22
  Greg Alvarado: And so they saw this performance based standard coming and people were dreading a prescriptive type of rule, which is not what happened, it's performance based.
• 14:34
  Greg Alvarado: But now you gotta realize that RBI is a very holistic way to approach issues and you know, making people accountable.
• 14:44
  Greg Alvarado: So.
• 14:45
  Greg Alvarado: You know, going back to Adam Smith and you know, to his credit too, he's the guy that came up with Separational labor, with our division of labor, which was very important especially, you know, for automobile making and other things, but anything really divisional labor.
• 15:01
  Greg Alvarado: That was another thing just wanted to mention, but really it goes back to safety, environmental responsibility, reliability, and, and what I wanna say is that they're not mutually exclusive.
• 15:11
  Greg Alvarado: And what I see over time is that the far what I believe are the forward thinking producers who are of the, you know, Hey, let's not strangle the goose to get the last golden egg out of it.
• 15:23
  Greg Alvarado: Instead, let's nurture the goose.
• 15:25
  Greg Alvarado: Let's take care of it so we can get a lot of golden eggs.
• 15:28
  Greg Alvarado: So instead of being shortsighted and greedy, they're being more long sided, sided and making decisions.
• 15:37
  Greg Alvarado: For the health of the organization to continue being profitable and learning how to balance all these things, learning how they all fit together so that we can be safe, we can be environmentally responsible and make a profit.
• 15:52
  Greg Alvarado: So, you know, that's kind of what I, and we're still struggling with that.
• 15:56
  Greg Alvarado: Right?
• 15:56
  Greg Alvarado: Because I think a big thing that I'll say personally for me, and maybe this will cause some debate out there, is automation.
• 16:05
  Greg Alvarado: You know, we've got all these software programs out there now, like asset performance management, software applications that are supposed to help us be more effective, be more efficient, and I say it that way because sometimes you know how engineers are we, you guys can work on, you wanna be efficient, efficient, efficient.
• 16:24
  Greg Alvarado: The problem is if you're not effective first, you might just be doing the wrong thing faster.
• 16:28
  Greg Alvarado: So it's important that we have the SMEs engaged and, and what I was gonna say is these asset performance management automation programs that are out there, they make a lot of promises but they really have to be stewarded and implemented properly.
• 16:46
  Greg Alvarado: And I think that's a big challenge for the industry.
• 16:49
  Greg Alvarado: You know, if you, if you listen to the McKenzies and the Ernst and Youngs and the Deloittes, and the Accentures and all these guys is the greatest stuff since sliced bread, and yeah, you're gonna spend X amount of dollars and you're gonna get a 5,000 x return for doing it.
• 17:04
  Greg Alvarado: I never hear the people come back talking about getting the 5,000 x.
• 17:08
  Greg Alvarado: They seem like they're still struggling just to really get these systems up and running and where they're user friendly.
• 17:15
  Greg Alvarado: And they're being adopted and implemented fully and taken advantage of by the people in the plant.
• 17:21
  Greg Alvarado: So that's, that's what I see realistically as still a big big challenge for us going forward.
• 17:31
  Branden Stucky: So like any new endeavor at this point, we unfortunately experienced a small technical difficulty.
• 17:39
  Branden Stucky: And so we had a call it quits for the day.
• 17:42
  Branden Stucky: However today's a new day and we are starting back up, hopefully somewhere near where we left off, and are continuing our conversation forward.
• 17:56
  Branden Stucky: What is, what is your goal with these, with, with, with this endeavor?
• 18:00
  Branden Stucky: What is your goal with this endeavor?
• 18:02
  Greg Alvarado: Right?
• 18:04
  Branden Stucky: I mean, what is it?
• 18:06
  Greg Alvarado: Well, my goal with this.
• 18:08
  Greg Alvarado: Is to cover topics that are important to people running facilities today.
• 18:16
  Greg Alvarado: Oil and gas, petrochemical, upstream, downstream, midstream related to fixed equipment, reliability, and mechanical integrity.
• 18:25
  Greg Alvarado: So that means it's gonna cover the gamut.
• 18:27
  Greg Alvarado: It's gonna, when I say mechanical integrity, most people conjure up the notion of compliance with regulators.
• 18:34
  Greg Alvarado: When I say reliability.
• 18:36
  Greg Alvarado: It's satisfying.
• 18:37
  Greg Alvarado: The business side of it is how do we be profitable?
• 18:40
  Greg Alvarado: So it's like, how do we be profitable without hurting or killing people?
• 18:45
  Greg Alvarado: And I believe that those are both achievable.
• 18:47
  Greg Alvarado: They're not mutually exclusive.
• 18:50
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah.
• 18:50
  Greg Alvarado: And, and, and we gotta overcome, we gotta give management the ammunition they need.
• 18:56
  Greg Alvarado: Because in the old days, and maybe it's still today, somewhat, is management feels like compliance is an albatross.
• 19:04
  Greg Alvarado: You know, it's like, like a slug.
• 19:06
  Greg Alvarado: It's like, yeah, let's, you know, we have to do compliance.
• 19:09
  Greg Alvarado: We're gonna spend a lot of money, wasting money on compliance.
• 19:13
  Greg Alvarado: But what we really want to do is keep as many pounds flowing through the pipe as possible, because that's profitability, especially because things are so competitive.
• 19:24
  Branden Stucky: Right.
• 19:25
  Greg Alvarado: So, but also, but also keeping cover,
• 19:27
  Branden Stucky: yeah.
• 19:27
  Branden Stucky: And also keeping the safety piece in there, right?
• 19:29
  Branden Stucky: Like
• 19:30
  Greg Alvarado: Absolutely.
• 19:31
  Branden Stucky: You know, we can be, yeah, we can be profitable, we can be profitable, but we can also, you know, make sure that we're doing it in a responsible way.
• 19:39
  Greg Alvarado: Absolutely.
• 19:40
  Branden Stucky: Yeah.
• 19:40
  Branden Stucky: Yeah.
• 19:40
  Branden Stucky: And so, so for me, my goal with this endeavor is, is to try and share as much knowledge as we can.
• 19:49
  Branden Stucky: For, for me, it's for people that are out there in the industry, sharing, sharing stories, sharing tidbits, little pieces.
• 19:58
  Branden Stucky: If there's something that if, if we bring somebody on on the show or if we have a conversation between us and it provides even the slightest amount of value to somebody, whether it's in their personal development, somebody up and coming and being able to grow themselves or take a little piece and think differently about something.
• 20:17
  Branden Stucky: Or if it's something that some type of manager or inspector or somebody had that they're able to take away and they're able to run their operation in a safer way or in a smarter way.
• 20:32
  Branden Stucky: That's something that I'm interested in providing back.
• 20:34
  Branden Stucky: And then just the humanizing point, like there's a lot of names and there's a lot of people that you and I both know.
• 20:40
  Branden Stucky: That we see one side of'em, but everybody else doesn't, maybe, doesn't see that, or it's just a, it's a name.
• 20:46
  Branden Stucky: It's somebody that's up on a pedestal and, and humanizing a lot of the people in this industry and helping people realize that.
• 20:52
  Branden Stucky: Like, you can be that person too.
• 20:55
  Branden Stucky: Yeah.
• 20:55
  Branden Stucky: There, you know, everybody, everybody's just a person.
• 20:58
  Branden Stucky: You.
• 20:58
  Branden Stucky: So like That's right.
• 20:59
  Branden Stucky: So you can be that person too.
• 21:02
  Branden Stucky: Because they are, as my daughter says, they're a human, they're all humans.
• 21:07
  Branden Stucky: You know, we're, we're all people.
• 21:10
  Branden Stucky: Yeah.
• 21:10
  Branden Stucky: So I mean, that's, that's what I'm looking to get out of this.
• 21:13
  Greg Alvarado: You Yeah.
• 21:14
  Greg Alvarado: And, and when you look at the, the continuum, the whole thing, it's like why do refineries and petrochemical plants and upstream and downstream oil and gas facilities exist?
• 21:26
  Greg Alvarado: And it's to improve life for humans.
• 21:30
  Greg Alvarado: The, it's ultimately it's about delivering products that help us enjoy the best way of living.
• 21:38
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah.
• 21:38
  Greg Alvarado: It's not for the sake of technology or for the sake of plastics or oil or gas.
• 21:45
  Greg Alvarado: It's for people.
• 21:48
  Branden Stucky: Yeah.
• 21:48
  Greg Alvarado: Right.
• 21:49
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah.
• 21:49
  Greg Alvarado: I mean, that's the end game.
• 21:51
  Branden Stucky: They're the, they're the final cons.
• 21:52
  Branden Stucky: They're the final customer.
• 21:54
  Branden Stucky: Right.
• 21:54
  Branden Stucky: We talk about internal external customers and sales.
• 21:57
  Branden Stucky: You know, they're, they're the, the, the people, the general public is the final customer.
• 22:01
  Branden Stucky: The end customer.
• 22:02
  Branden Stucky: That's right.
• 22:02
  Branden Stucky: Yeah.
• 22:02
  Branden Stucky: I get people all the time.
• 22:04
  Branden Stucky: They're like, are you concerned with where oil and gas is going?
• 22:07
  Branden Stucky: Do you think that it's gonna go away?
• 22:09
  Branden Stucky: No, it's not gonna go away.
• 22:11
  Branden Stucky: It's not gonna go away.
• 22:12
  Branden Stucky: We're, we're too right now, especially, at least for the next 20 years.
• 22:16
  Branden Stucky: It's too ingrained in the things that we do there.
• 22:19
  Branden Stucky: If, if, if the world is moving towards.
• 22:22
  Branden Stucky: Lith lithium ions and batteries, that's fine, but there's, there's still plastic and so people will just pivot on what they're developing.
• 22:31
  Branden Stucky: We'll see refineries reconfiguring and moving more towards the plastics, if that's the way that the market is gonna go.
• 22:38
  Branden Stucky: We we're gonna see that happen.
• 22:40
  Branden Stucky: We already see it with some of the companies out there selling, selling off the refining assets and staying mainly in chemicals or selling off chemicals and move.
• 22:47
  Branden Stucky: They're taking bets on whichever way they think the market's gonna go, but.
• 22:51
  Branden Stucky: Once the market makes a move and that happens, we'll see all of these companies pivot to the way that provides money.
• 22:57
  Branden Stucky: Right.
• 22:58
  Branden Stucky: It's again, it's all about, it's, it's that profit piece.
• 23:01
  Branden Stucky: They have to continue to show value back to their shareholders.
• 23:04
  Greg Alvarado: Exactly.
• 23:05
  Greg Alvarado: I mean, even if you look at the nuclear industry and how that's going through a renaissance and you know, a reemergence because of the amount of energy that it can produce.
• 23:16
  Greg Alvarado: Still though, at the end of the day, I love the energy transfer commercial.
• 23:20
  Greg Alvarado: I think it was on during the la, not this past Super Bowl with the previous one.
• 23:25
  Greg Alvarado: But you know, it showed this lady who was pregnant and her water broke and she was having to go to the hospital and she got there.
• 23:35
  Greg Alvarado: It was like, well, what if we didn't have oil and gas and they walked into the room and there's nothing there.
• 23:41
  Branden Stucky: Yeah.
• 23:41
  Greg Alvarado: Right.
• 23:42
  Greg Alvarado: And then it Have you, did you see that one?
• 23:45
  Branden Stucky: I did.
• 23:45
  Branden Stucky: Yeah.
• 23:45
  Branden Stucky: And
• 23:45
  Greg Alvarado: then it all fills in when the oil and gas comes in.
• 23:49
  Greg Alvarado: I mean, I.
• 23:50
  Greg Alvarado: Like it or not.
• 23:51
  Greg Alvarado: I mean, that's the reality.
• 23:53
  Branden Stucky: Yeah.
• 23:53
  Greg Alvarado: All these products, you know, medical products, our clothes, our homes, our cars, everything is in one way or another, dependent upon hydrocarbons.
• 24:04
  Greg Alvarado: And we play a pivotal role in that in mechanical integrity and fixed equipment reliability.
• 24:11
  Greg Alvarado: So we wanna protect the people in the plants.
• 24:14
  Greg Alvarado: We wanna protect the people in the communities around the plants.
• 24:17
  Greg Alvarado: We wanna protect the environments and there are ways for everybody to be happy at the end of the day, right?
• 24:24
  Greg Alvarado: To, to see this.
• 24:25
  Greg Alvarado: And that's what I hope we're able to impart in these series of podcasts through our different guests is you know, stories on how, how to get your heads around this and, and how to use them.
• 24:38
  Greg Alvarado: And the other thing too is how not to abuse them.
• 24:42
  Greg Alvarado: 'cause you know, in the earlier discussion I mentioned about automation, you know, there's all these cool software programs and, you know, we got ai, we've got these enterprise programs for managing assets and businesses and everything.
• 24:56
  Greg Alvarado: But this is tough.
• 24:58
  Greg Alvarado: I mean, things are moving at breakneck speed.
• 25:01
  Greg Alvarado: Technology's moving at breakneck speed and it's hard for people to all the time get their heads around this stuff.
• 25:07
  Greg Alvarado: And, and let's face it, I was.
• 25:10
  Greg Alvarado: I'll say this in a nice way, but there's overly aggressive salesmen out there and, and I'm hoping we can help add some sanity to this are some common sense to this and say, yeah, this technology and everything is great.
• 25:24
  Greg Alvarado: It has a lot of promise.
• 25:26
  Greg Alvarado: We just gotta apply it responsibly and with common sense and to make sure that another thing is about unqualified people making decisions'cause.
• 25:38
  Greg Alvarado: A lot of times you don't know what you don't know.
• 25:40
  Greg Alvarado: And, and I think that our, or I hope that in the course of these podcasts and our discussions, it'll help everybody get a better handle on this stuff.
• 25:50
  Branden Stucky: Well, that, I mean, that's a big point, right?
• 25:52
  Branden Stucky: Consumer education is a huge thing.
• 25:54
  Branden Stucky: You know, when, when any of these new technologies, even, even just in conversations I have with people about RBI.
• 26:01
  Branden Stucky: You know, you get people that are like, oh, we want RBI this, well, there's a, there's a certain level of consumer education that has to occur when we start talking about CML optimization again.
• 26:10
  Branden Stucky: The technology behind those things.
• 26:12
  Branden Stucky: Consumer education that has to occur.
• 26:15
  Branden Stucky: Same thing, even at those low levels, same thing can happen at the higher level as well.
• 26:19
  Branden Stucky: Educating the overall public or the consumer around these different concepts and ideas.
• 26:24
  Branden Stucky: And that again, that we can, we can operate profitably, but we can also be responsible about it.
• 26:30
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah.
• 26:30
  Greg Alvarado: And exactly.
• 26:32
  Greg Alvarado: And when we're, like, for instance, in the case of automation, these enterprise systems that are hooking up with.
• 26:39
  Greg Alvarado: The ERPs, like, SAP and Oracle and so forth.
• 26:45
  Greg Alvarado: What we, what we need, not forget, are the people charged with implementing this stuff.
• 26:53
  Greg Alvarado: So we talk about all this technology, but are you thinking about work processes in the field?
• 26:59
  Greg Alvarado: Are you thinking about how user friendly it is?
• 27:03
  Greg Alvarado: I mean, yeah, they're disruptive technologies, but the juice has gotta be worth the squeeze.
• 27:07
  Greg Alvarado: Right?
• 27:07
  Greg Alvarado: There's,
• 27:08
  Branden Stucky: there's so much more that goes into it, right?
• 27:10
  Branden Stucky: We're we can sell these things to, to the upper levels, but there's all the other pieces that, that, that trickle down to, to the frontline forces that, that nobody, nobody at that high, high level understands or sees.
• 27:24
  Branden Stucky: You can bring that software piece in, but how are we gonna get information in?
• 27:27
  Branden Stucky: How are we gonna get the data in?
• 27:28
  Branden Stucky: How does, what's the workflow?
• 27:29
  Branden Stucky: Right?
• 27:30
  Branden Stucky: All those things that you said.
• 27:31
  Branden Stucky: That, that's, that's not what's being sold.
• 27:33
  Branden Stucky: What's being sold is, is the, the big picture.
• 27:36
  Branden Stucky: And that's great.
• 27:37
  Branden Stucky: The big picture is really important, but we can't forget about how it, how it affects the day-to-day operations and Yeah.
• 27:44
  Branden Stucky: Okay.
• 27:44
  Branden Stucky: We can say, oh, it's gonna help everybody.
• 27:47
  Branden Stucky: That's a sales thing.
• 27:48
  Branden Stucky: You gotta really set it up and be forward thinking about how you operate, how you set it up so that it can help on the day to day.
• 27:55
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah.
• 27:55
  Greg Alvarado: And, and one of the things I see us lacking is I.
• 28:00
  Greg Alvarado: Lacking in is that, that, and again, not to so much pick on automation, but they come in with these grandiose promises of, boy, if you spend this money to implement our system, it's gonna save you a gazillion dollars.
• 28:17
  Greg Alvarado: Is anybody going back and saying, okay, we implemented these systems.
• 28:24
  Greg Alvarado: What's the ROI been?
• 28:25
  Greg Alvarado: What have we seen?
• 28:27
  Greg Alvarado: What have the results been?
• 28:28
  Greg Alvarado: You know,
• 28:29
  Branden Stucky: I, I don't think we're far enough in, right.
• 28:31
  Branden Stucky: I think, I think all of those, I think for when we're talking automation and those, those types of efforts, I, I don't think we're far enough in to actually be able to show that I.
• 28:41
  Branden Stucky: For, for the big picture, we can sit there and say, oh yeah, this last two months, you know, we saved X number.
• 28:46
  Branden Stucky: But that's not the big picture, I think, I think people are still learning and figuring out.
• 28:50
  Branden Stucky: That's why, that's why I don't think virtual reality is something that's gonna be a long, a long term value adder for, for the, the people in the plant.
• 29:00
  Branden Stucky: I don't think, I just don't see it.
• 29:02
  Branden Stucky: Because I don't, I don't think that it's something that's gonna show that level of return.
• 29:06
  Branden Stucky: I think that that augmented reality, like we talked about, I think that shows value, that shows return.
• 29:11
  Branden Stucky: But some of these other things that are already in place, i, I, I think it's still too new for them to really be able to report back on.
• 29:20
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah, I, well, I agree.
• 29:22
  Greg Alvarado: I agree with you on the automation, but on the technology side, let me give you an example.
• 29:28
  Greg Alvarado: So years ago.
• 29:30
  Greg Alvarado: We may have done RBI and we did on thousands of heat exchangers, let's say, and I'm talking 20 years ago almost, has anybody gone back and said, what kind of reliability improvements have we seen?
• 29:49
  Greg Alvarado: Are we getting fewer leaks per year?
• 29:52
  Greg Alvarado: I mean, it's been long enough on that stuff, probably.
• 29:54
  Branden Stucky: Probably, yeah.
• 29:55
  Branden Stucky: Right.
• 29:55
  Branden Stucky: We've been through a couple turnaround cycles.
• 29:57
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah.
• 29:57
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah.
• 29:58
  Greg Alvarado: I mean, you know, RBI now has been around an API, we pretty much shoved off in the late nineties,
• 30:06
  Branden Stucky: so 20, 25, 30 years.
• 30:09
  Branden Stucky: Yeah.
• 30:09
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah, that's been a long time ago.
• 30:11
  Greg Alvarado: So who's reporting on what results we've seen as a result?
• 30:16
  Greg Alvarado: You know.
• 30:17
  Branden Stucky: I, I haven't, I haven't seen, or I, I, I don't know of these.
• 30:20
  Branden Stucky: I mean, I would hope, and I'm gonna guess that probably some of our, our larger facilities and our larger companies are, are maybe keeping track of that internally.
• 30:29
  Branden Stucky: But I, I don't, I don't know.
• 30:31
  Branden Stucky: I, I don't have any, I don't have any knowledge.
• 30:34
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah, I'd like to think so.
• 30:36
  Greg Alvarado: You know, and then when we talk about things like CML optimization and stuff like that.
• 30:41
  Greg Alvarado: Okay.
• 30:42
  Greg Alvarado: We started kind of toying around with that.
• 30:45
  Greg Alvarado: Some years back, but hopefully we'll begin to start seeing some results from that and what the ROI has been from that
• 30:53
  Branden Stucky: for sure.
• 30:54
  Branden Stucky: For sure.
• 30:55
  Branden Stucky: But yeah.
• 30:56
  Branden Stucky: Greg, I'm excited for this, this whole endeavor.
• 30:59
  Branden Stucky: You know, as we've said, it's, it's been a little, little time coming, but I'm, I'm excited.
• 31:04
  Branden Stucky: Every time we talk about it, every time we hop on and, and, and have a conversation about it, it gets me more and more excited to, to get more people on here and get their thoughts and, and continue to, to, to drive the, the thought process in this space.
• 31:18
  Greg Alvarado: Yeah, me too.
• 31:19
  Greg Alvarado: Looking forward to it, Branden.
• 31:20
  Greg Alvarado: I hope everybody else is, and.
• 31:22
  Greg Alvarado: And I hope they let us know, you know, our make recommendations about people to interview.
• 31:28
  Greg Alvarado: I know we've already got a pretty good list, but there's more to come and technology, like I said, like it's developing at breakneck speed.
• 31:37
  Branden Stucky: It is.
• 31:37
  Branden Stucky: It really is.
• 31:38
  Branden Stucky: Yep.
• 31:39
  Branden Stucky: Yep.
• 31:40
  Branden Stucky: So, all right, Greg, we, till next time, we'll talk to you.
• 31:43
  Greg Alvarado: Sounds good, Branden.
• 31:44
  Greg Alvarado: Have a good one, buddy.
• 31:46
  Thank you for listening to Upon Further Inspection, a Mechanical Integrity podcast.
• 31:50
  This episode was co-created by inspection, hearing, and Core solutions.
• 31:55
  If you enjoyed this episode.
• 31:56
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• 32:00
  Until then, stay safe and stay informed.
• 32:03
  Our producers are Nick Schmoyer, Jocelyn Christie and Jeremiah Wooten.
• 32:09
  This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or professional's advice.
• 32:15
  Listeners should seek their own qualified advisors for guidance.