Pipeline Safety Management Systems Committee

Where this committee focuses

Your safety management system has to work in the field and hold up to a PHMSA or state inspection.

The Pipeline Safety Management Systems Committee helps operators manage pipeline safety as a whole system: risk and asset management, formal processes and procedures, systematic decision-making, monitoring of program effectiveness, safety culture, audits and communication. It serves the people who implement SMS programs and the wider workforce who live with them, with tailored education and best-practice guidance for each.

Who you’ll work alongside

PSMS and SMS program managers and coordinators (API RP 1173)
Risk and asset-management professionals
Quality assurance, audit and program-assurance staff
Management-of-change and document-control owners
Contractor management and oversight leads
Operations leaders building safety culture, and the employees affected by the SMS

What you take back to work

For you. A clear picture of your responsibilities within your company’s safety management system.
For your company. Stronger contractor oversight and inspection readiness, with traceable records, managed procedure changes and contractors who have current procedures.

Contract partners do much of operators’ field work, and a safety management system is only as strong as their place in it. The committee’s planned guide would give members a practitioner-tested approach to contractor oversight under RP 1173; completing it and sustaining direct engagement with API are the outcomes to watch in 2027.

What members worked through in 2026

Learning from peer SMS programs. The year opened with a presentation from CenterPoint Energy on the company’s safety management system structure and how it measures success within that structure.
Integrating contractors into SMS and safety culture. Contractor engagement was the main thread of the year.
Taking the conversation to the Operations Conference. The committee turned this work into Operations Conference programming and held an in-person committee meeting there.
RP 1173 and a contractor-oversight guide. The committee then brought API into its own meetings.

What came out of it: Contractor Engagement and Oversight best-practice guide or white paper. It is in early development, with planned coverage of document control, communicating procedure changes, management of change, training, risk, operations and emergency response.

Where the work goes in 2027

Contractor oversight guidance, and new work on regulatory preparedness and inspection readiness.