By Rachael King
Pacific Gas and Electric said it has cleared a new hurdle toward meeting government safety recommendations issued in the wake of a deadly pipeline explosion in September 2010. Many of the steps the company took in meeting those safety recommendations were accomplished with the help of the utility’s IT department, says Karen Austin, PG&E’s CIO.
PG&E received a letter from the National Transportation Safety Board confirming on Tuesday it has completed three additional safety recommendations, of the 12 recommended by the agency after the 2010 pipeline explosion in San Bruno, Calif., bringing the number of recommendations followed to seven. “There’s a lot of technology we’re deploying to make that happen,” Austin told CIO Journal. The PG&E IT department’s work has been instrumental in helping meet several NTSB recommendations, including validating the maximum allowable operating pressure on pipelines running through populated areas, digitizing records and creating emergency procedures, she said.
The NTSB considers PG&E’s progress on the five remaining recommendations “open—acceptable pending completion.”
Read the rest of the story at WSJ’s CIO Journal blog.
