Speaker’s name: Mark Stone

Organization: IMRANDD

Job title: Operational Data Team Lead

Biography:

Mark is a Mechanical Engineer with over 30 years of experience in equipment integrity and inspection.
His work focuses on helping clients optimise the use of inspection to support effective and efficient integrity management practices, with particular emphasis on the application of advanced analytics.

Mark’s key areas of expertise include:

  • Statistical methods for inspection planning and data analysis for pressure equipment
  • Design and evaluation of NDT-based inspection strategies
  • Pressure vessel non-intrusive inspection (NII)
  • Fitness-for-service and remaining life assessments 
  • Development of industry recommended practices and guidelines

Presentation title: EEMUA 247 for planning and evaluation of robotic in-service storage tank floor inspections

Presentation abstract/summary: 

The increasing availability of robotic tools for inspecting storage tank floors has created a need for clear industry guidance to support effective planning and evaluation of such inspections. This need led to the development and publication of EEMUA 247, which is aimed at assisting tank owner/operators and their inspection vendors with consistent methods to:

  1. Define inspection requirements, including technique performance metrics, inspection coverage, and inspection locations, as part of the planning process.
  2. Evaluate inspection results, assessing conformance to planned requirements and enabling estimation of key parameters such as minimum remaining thickness, corrosion rates, and remaining life.

In practice, especially for very large diameter tanks, in-service inspections frequently involve only partial coverage of the tank floor. EEMUA 247 acknowledges this constraint and is underpinned by well-established statistical methods for partial coverage inspections.

This presentation provides an overview of the guidance set out in EEMUA 247, illustrating the recommended approach through examples. It also discusses the broader application of statistical methods in support of equipment integrity management and inspection strategy development