Jeff Maier, P.E. is the national Infrastructure Practice Leader at Garver and is based out of Denver, CO. He is part of Garver’s Water Technology Team and serves offices nationwide. He is responsible for business development, client services, and providing technical expertise for a variety of trenchless rehabilitation technologies, advanced pipeline condition assessment methods, and asset management strategies. Jeff is a Colorado and Utah registered professional engineer and a graduate of the University of Michigan with over 23 years of project management, specialty construction inspection, and engineering design experience. He is recognized as an expert in the fields of advanced condition assessment, corrosion mitigation, and trenchless rehabilitation of pipelines, manholes, and water and wastewater facility structures.

Pipeline condition assessment, accurate inspection information and proactive decision making based on this data play vital roles in a municipality’s asset management program. Recent advances in gravity and pressure pipe inspection methods have provided water and wastewater utilities with highly accurate, quantifiable pipeline inspection information, through a variety of minimally invasive internal and external technologies that can utilize electromagnetic, acoustic, pressure wave, ultrasonic systems and/or multi-sensor combinations. Inspection information collected can include pipe wall thickness measurements, leakage detection, air pockets, and defect identification.  In addition to condition assessment, recent developments in pipeline 3-D mapping technologies are starting to provide utilities with methods to accurately locate pipe alignments with X,Y,Z coordinates, either internally or externally, and now can even map and identify pipe material type simultaneously. An overview of the currently available advanced pipeline inspection methods, as well as the latest breakthroughs in mapping technologies will be covered. Advancements toward artificial intelligence inspection platforms, reliable machine learning capabilities and emerging trends in pipeline inspection technology development will be discussed and highlighted throughout the presentation. Faster quantifiable inspection information, more consistent data, accurate predictive modeling, better proactive decision making, and ultimately money saved… welcome to the future of pipeline condition assessment!