For pipeline OPIDs, there are three contacts - primary, technical, and public – that are associated with the OPID. The primary and technical contacts are used by NPMS staff; these contacts are not distributed. During the review and processing of the NPMS data submission, NPMS staff will reach out to the technical contact when clarification or re-submission is needed. If the communication is by email, NPMS staff will often include the primary contact as well. NPMS staff will also email both primary and technical contacts to alert the operator that the submission has passed the initial review and is progressing to the processing workflow stage. The primary and technical contacts are also both included on the email NPMS staff sends alerting the operator that the submission data has been incorporated into the NPMS national layer and is viewable on the PIMMA and Public Viewer map viewers.
Once the data submission has completed the entire NPMS submission workflow, if a question about the pipeline data or OPID in general arises, NPMS staff will reach out to the primary contact for assistance. If the communication is by email, depending on the topic, the technical contact may also be included in the email. Additionally, the primary contact is the one to receive mass communication emails from NPMS staff to all operators, for instance, when a change in the submission workflow or requirements has occurred (such as the release of OSAVE) or when a reminder regarding submission dates is sent. Depending upon the topic, the technical contact may also be included on the mass communication emails.
The primary contact must be directly employed by the operating company. The technical contact may be directly employed by the operating company or may be a consultant/subcontractor that the operator designates to fill that role. In some cases, the same person that is directly employed by the operating company may fill the role of both the primary and technical contact.
Within OSAVE the operator has the option to mark that the technical contact is the same person as the primary contact; the tool will copy over the information automatically, preventing the operator from expending duplicate effort.
Unlike the primary and technical contacts, the public contact is posted on the NPMS website and is available to every website visitor. Specifically, visitors may view this information via the
Find Who’s Operating Pipelines in Your Area tool, PIMMA, and the Public Viewer. The public contact may be a person or an entity; however, both a person and an entity cannot be entered. The person/entity designated as the public contact should expect to receive communications from the general public, emergency responders as well as local, state, and federal government staff with questions regarding the operator’s pipelines. Like the primary contact, the public contact must be directly employed by the operating company; the public contact may not be a consultant/subcontractor.
The primary, technical, and public contacts may be updated, as needed, anytime throughout the year. A submission is not required to update contact information for an OPID. Additionally, operators are prompted to review and update, if applicable, all contact information as part of the NPMS submission and notification workflows. Through OSAVE, the operator can view the current contact information and change only the information that needs to be updated. When the operator updates the primary and technical contact information through OSAVE, the NPMS database source tables are edited directly; the operator is not editing a copy/staging table. As a result, changes should be made with extra care. On the other hand, while the operator is directly editing the source table for the public contact information, the exported ‘snapshot in time’ that PIMMA and the Public Viewer utilize is not automatically edited. The ‘snapshot in time’ version displayed on PIMMA and the Public Viewer is updated by NPMS staff, along with the other map viewer data, approximately every two months.