Pipeline Safety Standards

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) regulations reference industry standards. This practice of referencing proprietary information is called Incorporated by Reference (IBR). This procurement is aimed at providing PHMSA and NAPSR (National Association of Pipeline Safety Representatives) inspectors with access to IBR standards. Other standards often are needed due to incident, accidents, training and history facilities. Over the last decade, costs for furnishing standards and their usage has widely varied by year and month. In the past, PHMSA was in a forecasting mode. For this requirement, PHMSA will use a model from the manufacturing industry; Just-In-Time (JIT) is a model that is more reactive and furnishes the right item (in this case, book) at the right time or just in time. It strives for cost and availability efficiency. PHMSA’s use of standards is mainly for internal purposes however, public requests may come in occasionally and result in a procurement of a permanent paper licensed copy of a standard. Otherwise, the main subscription will utilize electronic copies of standards for a more global use of a standard as described in the Subscription Scope section of this Statement of Work. In every instance, PHMSA will determine when a request will be fulfilled by adding a standard to the main subscription or procuring a single or multiple paper copy license.