The Yamal-Europe Gas Pipeline: The Quality Assurance System

It was decided that both the design and construction of the System of Transit Gas Pipelines in the territory of the Republic of Poland should be based on the most stringent international technical standards and demanding criteria of technical safety estimation in order to provide adequate operational life and long-term integrity of the System. According to the Agreement between the Governments of the Republic of Poland and the Russian Federation dated August 25, 1993, technical standards applicable in Poland and on those in force in other member-states of the European Union have been applied for the project. The project execution, from preparatory efforts to commissioning of the pipeline for operation was subject to Polish regulations and, in particular, the statutory regulations of: the Construction Law, the Spatial Management Law and Environment Protection Law.

EuRoPol GAZ s.a., as both the Investor and owner of SGT in the territory of Poland, was definitely committed to provide the highest quality of the project according to the recommendations of the ISO 9000 standard family. Dedicated Quality Assurance System, has been developed and deployed specially for the needs of this project. Requirements of this system covered to the same extent activities of the project designer, manufacturers and suppliers of materials and equipment as well as the main contractors, subcontractors and the investor’s supervision service. In order to obtain a high project quality level, uniform across the whole system, the Technical Conditions for Execution and Acceptance were developed, specifying the Investor’s requirements for every single engineering operation within construction of the pipeline including the compressor stations and its whole infrastructure - from macro-levelling of the R.O.W through excavations, welding, anti-corrosion coating, construction and assembly operations, testing and commissioning, up to the pipeline backfilling, finishing works and land reclamation.

Procedures and process instructions, worked out by the contractor for each engineering process and approved by the Investor, specified the order of operations, tools, equipment and materials used, qualification requirements for the contractors’ personnel as well as scope and acceptance criteria for quality control and testing. Furthermore, these procedures set forth the principles for acceptance of completed phases of a given process as well as conditions for commencing its next phases. They also specified requirements for the contractors to provide comprehensive as-built documentation and inspection and commissioning records at the project completion.

Irrespectively of the above-mentioned principles, the Quality Assurance System covered also a permanent Designer’s and the Investor’s supervision, required by decisions on the construction permit.

Having completed the construction of the facilities, basing on assessment of the engineering design solutions (including especially both static and strength calculations), the execution processes and procedures applied as well as confirmation of correctness of the works completed and the acceptance tests conducted, EuRoPol GAZ s.a. was granted the Conformity and Safety Certificates for the gas pipeline and all five compressor stations, issued by Bureau Veritas and Polish Ship Register ( Polski Rejestr Statków S.A.).

All the completed facilities of the project were reported to competent authorities of local state’s administration units as ready for operations.