In December 2022, an inspection team of PICA and Simpson Gumpertz and Heger (SGH) conducted an inspection of 8.5 miles of 78-inch and 84-inch embedded cylinder PCCP that delivers low-pressure agricultural water to an Arizona Indian Community. PICA deployed Near Field Testing (NFT) technology for wire breaks along the entire 8.5-mile length and Remote Field Testing (RFT) technology for cylinder corrosion on one mile of pipeline found in the NFT inspection to be of highest distress (i.e., highest number of wire breaks). SGH conducted visual and sounding inspection along the entire pipeline length but focused their efforts on the pipe segments found through the NFT inspection to have the highest wire break counts.

On-site analysis of NFT data enabled the PICA/SGH team to collect the best inspection data possible by a combination of inspection methods while the pipeline was out of service. Results of the inspection and the subsequent failure analysis by SGH enabled the community’s engineering consultant to plan and budget for further targeted inspections of distressed pipe sections and rehabilitation efforts that will prevent any unexpected outages of this pipeline and disruption of water delivery that is critical to the farming operations.