Regulatory Insights Turn into Operational Preparedness for SGA Members.
If you’re leading compliance, safety, operations, or field readiness inside today’s environment, you’re likely feeling the growing gap between what regulations say on paper and how they actually play out operationally in the field.
That is why SGA is bringing former PHMSA Chief Investigator Tiffany Ziemer directly inside the association to support members year-round as Director of Pipeline Safety & Regulatory Excellence.
In our industry, a commitment to safety is not an issue. The issue is complexity created by regulatory noise, evolving expectations, and mounting operational pressures.
What teams–like yours–need now is practical insight that helps you prepare earlier and identify gaps proactively.
When a former PHMSA Chief Investigator starts working for operators, safety gets stronger because organizations gain a clearer understanding of how regulatory expectations are evolving operationally in real time.
From Reactive Compliance to Earlier Preparedness
with Greater Safety
For more than a decade, Tiffany Ziemer sat on the other side of the audit table. As a Chief Investigator and senior leader at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), she managed enforcement programs across 11 states, led national accident investigation teams, and reviewed the same record-keeping systems operators like you navigate every day.
With operators historically learning where the compliance pressure points exist only after an inspection identifies a gap or an enforcement action begins, SGA is working to help members close that gap.
Designed to augment valuable programs like AGA Peer Review that already help you understand how your operations compare to others across the industry, Tiffany adds a complementary perspective.
Her expertise will help SGA members better understand how your operations will hold up when the regulator arrives and where preparedness gaps may exist before larger operational or safety concerns surface.
Beyond audit outcomes, this training and preparedness work produces safer systems, stronger incident response, and better-protected people.
When preparedness gaps are identified earlier, operators like you have a greater opportunity to address vulnerabilities before they escalate into broader operational or safety concerns.
Her role is designed to help you and your organization:
- Strengthen safety
- Reduce uncertainty
- Identify documentation vulnerabilities earlier
- Fortify operational readiness
- Better navigate the realities surrounding deregulation and performance-based compliance
Best of all, the value she brings our members will go far beyond regulatory interpretation and into strengthening preparedness, response capability, and safety outcomes across increasingly complex operating environments.
That’s because her perspective is shaped by years of seeing how inspections, enforcement priorities, and operational expectations unfold in real-world environments.
Practical Support for More Complex Operating Environments
Whether you’re leading compliance, safety, operations, or field readiness right now, you’re already navigating many of the same shifts operators across the industry are trying to understand:
- Leadership transitions inside PHMSA
- Evolving enforcement priorities
- Active deregulation efforts
- The shift toward more performance-based compliance
Those shifts are already affecting operational decision-making, documentation practices, preparedness strategies, and field execution across the industry.
That’s where Tiffany’s experience becomes especially relevant to the operational realities you’re working through right now.
“I want to help demystify PHMSA and give operators a practical advantage, not just theory,” said Tiffany Ziemer, SGA’s incoming Director of Pipeline Safety & Regulatory Excellence.
To help operators apply this type of operational insight more practically, several member-first initiatives are launching this summer:
- The Ask the Regulator Webinar: Coming up on July 15, 2026, at 11:30 a.m. Central Time, this member-only session will focus on what today’s evolving PHMSA environment means for operators and what your teams can do now to prepare before an inspector arrives.
- The Pipeliners Podcast Feature: Listen in as Tiffany sits down with Russell Treat to translate complex regulatory expectations into a practical, no-jargon field strategy.
- The PHMSA Audit Readiness Toolkit: This new framework is being designed to help operators like you evaluate documentation practices and operational preparedness through the lens of how investigators actually approach inspections.
- The SGA Safety Readiness Index (SRI): Developed as a benchmarking and self-assessment tool, the SRI will help your organization identify operational blind spots, strengthen cross-functional visibility, and reinforce ongoing preparedness efforts over time.
Training and Collaboration Built for Real-World Execution
Beyond standalone resources, these regulatory insights will be woven directly into SGA’s core training and community environments to help emerging leaders and teams step more confidently into increasingly complex compliance roles.
That means Tiffany’s expertise won’t live exclusively inside webinars, workshops, or council discussions.
Through SGA’s training subscription, her operational insight will be embedded into the ongoing development of your operators, field technicians, safety managers, and emerging leaders year-round.
Helping Newer Teams Build Stronger Regulatory Foundations
Launching as a Virtual Instructor-Led Training (VILT) program, PHMSA 101 is designed to help your new operators, safety professionals, and managers build confidence in understanding how regulations translate into day-to-day operational responsibilities without getting buried in dense regulatory language.
The focus is practical interpretation, operational application, and helping your teams connect changing regulatory expectations with the real-world decisions, documentation responsibilities, and field execution realities they are stepping into every day.
Turning Audit Preparation Into Operational Practice
The In-Person Audit Readiness Workshop, debuting at OpsCon in Austin this July, is designed as an interactive learning experience where your teams can work through real-world enforcement scenarios, documentation reviews, and operational preparedness exercises modeled on how inspections unfold in practice.
Rather than treating compliance as a one-time event, this workshop will reinforce the operational habits and preparedness mindset that your teams need to sustain readiness over time.
Tiffany will also be presenting at OpsCon, where conference attendees will hear her share deeper operational insights surrounding performance-based compliance, preparedness, and evolving regulatory realities affecting operators across the industry.
Enhancing SGA’s Pipeline Safety Council
SGA is also evolving the Pipeline Safety Council. It’s currently a practical, operator-driven forum focused on operational realities. Tiffany will elevate impact. Creating a space where operators can openly discuss preparedness concerns, recurring challenges, incident learnings, and field realities in ways that strengthen collaboration across the industry, in a safe space that prioritizes peer-to-peer experience and learning.
Tiffany’s investigative background brings an additional layer of operational perspective into these conversations.
A Longer-Term Investment in Operational Readiness
This new role is ultimately a long-term investment to help operators strengthen preparedness, operational visibility, workforce readiness, and ongoing system safety in increasingly complex environments.
The broader goal is to help member organizations–like yours–apply operational insight more effectively across training, documentation, field execution, incident preparedness, and day-to-day operational decision-making.
Because in today’s environment, natural gas operators–like you–do so much more than keep up with changing regulations and expectations.
Since you’re looking for practical support that helps your teams prepare earlier, operate more confidently, and navigate increasing complexity with greater clarity over time, now is the time to hear directly from Tiffany about what today’s evolving PHMSA environment means for operators.
Register now to join us live on July 15, 2026, 11:30 a.m. Central Time.
