Q&A with B.J. Lowe and John Tiratsoo, Co-Producers of PPIM

Inspectioneering is honored to partner up with John Tiratsoo (left) and BJ Lowe (right), co-producers of the Pipeline Pigging and Integrity Management Conference (PPIM), to put together this special edition issue. For 20+ years, John and BJ have initiated a number of successful conference series, dealing with pipeline pigging, pipeline integrity, and pipeline risk management and reliability. These events are now held in Houston and elsewhere, and are combined with an increasingly-successful series of industry-based training courses. We were recently able to sit down for an interview with these two to get to know them a little better and ask a few questions about the state of pipeline integrity management in the United States today.

(IJ) Clarion Technical Conferences and Tiratsoo Technical have been co-producing the Pipeline Pigging and Integrity Management Conference since 1989. What was PPIM like back in those early years and how much different is it today? 

JT: We were delighted that the first US event in 1989 (following on from several in the UK and Europe) attracted over 200 delegates to the conference. Since then the industry has been good enough to support the conference and the exhibition which started subsequently, although there have been some lean years as interest in the subject waned before new attitudes and US legislation took over a decade or so ago.