The document provides details about the internship of Serge Bachinsky at NW Natural. It describes several pipeline projects Serge was involved in, including replacing over 16 miles of pipeline in Corvallis and South of Monmouth. Serge created weekly reports and forecasts to monitor project progress and costs. He also assisted with other tasks like identifying conflicts between an existing gas line and an ODOT highway redesign, and designing equipment for transporting stopple and nitrogen tanks. The summary concludes that the internship exceeded expectations and exposed Serge to many aspects of engineering at NW Natural.

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Serge Bachinsky
Phone:
Email:
MENTOR:
Katie Gough
NW Natural Engineering Supervisor
Phone:
Email:
October 31st
, 2013
Civil Engineering

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………...… 3
Intern’s Role…………………………………………………………………………………….. 3
Project List………………..…………………………………………………………………….. 4
Corvallis Loop………………………….………………………………………………... 4
South of Monmouth Bare……………………………………………………………….. 5
Highway 101 ODOT Re-Design, Lincoln City………………………………………….. 6
16” Stopple Equipment Stand…………………………………………………………... 6
Horizontal Nitrogen Tank Carrying Rack……………………………………………… 7
Executive Summary…………………………………………………………………………….. 7
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………..... 8
Buzz Words………………………………………………………………………………............ 9

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INTRODUCTION/COMPANY DESCRIPTION
NW Natural over the years had slowly evolved from the very first gas company in the
Northwest, Portland Gas Light Company, whose main goal was to provide gas lamps in the
streets of Portland. The company was founded by H. C. Leonard and John Green in 1859, just a
few weeks before Oregon had become the 33rd
state. On June 1st
, 1860, gas had begun to flow
through the streets of Portland, providing service to 49 customers and gas lamps in Portland
Downtown. At the time, gas was manufactured from coal or oil in local plants, until the arrival
of natural gas to the region in the 1950s. It was shortly right after in which the company had
closed its last gas manufacturing plant in 1957. After a being renamed a few times and
exchanging ownerships, the Portland Gas & Coke Company had changed its name to Northwest
Natural Gas Company in 1958.
It was during this time; the 1960’s through the 80’s, that the company had witnessed an
enormous boom. Not only providing natural gas to Portland, but now to Vancouver, Willamette
Valley, and the Oregon Coast. In 1997, the company’s name had changed once again to NW
Natural and was introduced into the stock market. Today, more than 150 years later, NW
Natural, a business that started with 49 customers in one square mile of Portland now serves
more than 686,000 homes and businesses in 107 communities in Oregon and Southwest
Washington and employs over 1,000 individuals. NW Natural remains headquartered in
Portland, just a few blocks from its original site with service centers in Albany, Astoria, Coos
Bay, Eugene, Lincoln City, Salem, The Dalles, and Vancouver, Washington.
INTERN’S ROLE
My role here as an intern with NW Natural, was in the engineering large projects group
in Tualatin, OR. It is here where project engineers are given the task to complete the installation
of high pressure transmission steel gas pipe throughout the northwest region of Oregon. I had
arrived to NW Natural right when their two major projects were about to begin construction, in
which consisted of a 10 mile section of 12” steel pipe to be installed in Corvallis, OR and a 6
mile section of 12” steel pipe in South of Monmouth, OR. I was instantly involved in meetings
between project managers, NW Natural crews, property owners, and other outside contract
representatives. My mentor, Katie Gough, is the Engineering Supervisor of our department and
communicated with me often. Throughout my internship though, I worked mainly with Project
Manager Brian Konrad and Project Engineer Mark Schaefer. Brian has 30+ years of pipeline
construction experience meanwhile Mark had graduated as a Civil Engineer from OSU along
with a Professional Engineer License and has 10 years of experience. This duo has made a great
team and was able to complete numerous large scale projects within a timely fashion and under
budget successfully.

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I was instantly given the task to monitor the progress of each project, create weekly
reports, take pictures, answer questions that crew leaders may have, and provide any additional
help whenever needed. Spending most of my time outside of the office and in the job field, I
was able to absorb and learn very quickly the process and procedures that were being
implemented. The projects were given a deadline of four months for completion. Towards the
deadline, there was no way for anyone to know whether the projects were on track to stay within
budget or not, especially with a big push of overtime hours in the final month. That’s where I
had come in, designing an excel spreadsheet consisting of project up to date costs, commitments
owed, and estimated future project costs looking from previous monthly spending’s that gave a
forecasted overall project cost. Besides these two main projects, I was always pulled in by other
NW Natural engineers in need of help with overwhelming workloads. I was very thrilled to be
able to work with a broad range of employees within the company and get a feel for each
department and the work they do. This internship had been a very great experience for myself
and was beneficial not only to me, but to NW Natural as well.
LIST OF PROJECTS INVOLVED IN:
 Corvallis Loop
 South of Monmouth Bare
 Highway 101 ODOT Re-Design, Lincoln City
 16” Stopple Equipment Stand
 Horizontal Nitrogen Tank Carrying Rack
CORVALLIS LOOP
The purpose of the Corvallis Loop Project is to provide a more extensive back bone for
the Corvallis area natural gas distribution. NW Natural has a planned route alignment to
construct and install a 12” nominal MAOP 720psig pipeline between the Albany Gate Station
and Western Boulevard and 35th
Street in Corvallis. These two points are separated by 10 miles
and the Willamette River. The installed pipe will be 12” diameter by 0.312” thick coated steel
natural gas pipeline. The pipe will have a minimum cover of 4 feet over the pipe in native
material and 15’ of cover at water body crossings. The Corvallis Loop route lies within Linn
County and the City of Corvallis. The entire route is 50,120 feet (9.49 miles) long. The route
runs along a combination of private property and public right-of-way and includes
approximately: 4 water crossings, various wetland crossings, 12 local and county roadway
crossings, 3 State Highway crossings and 3 railroad crossings.

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An evaluation matrix was developed to rate three possible routes with an outcome of the
best suggested route. The alignment was chosen over two other alternative routes. The deciding
factors were based off the combination of length of route, availability and width of right-of-way,
number of water crossings and wetlands, distances from homes and development, number of
road crossings and various other elements. The design of this project had started in the year of
2010 and $27 million later, the project had come to completion on October 31st
of 2013. There
were a few hiccups along the way, with frack-outs into the Mary’s River and under Highway 34
causing a 12” heave. The sub-contractors that were running the drilling equipment were very
responsive to the incidents and took charge in taking care of the issues. They had gone over and
beyond in making sure that everything was fixed and brought back to normal, if not better.
Overall, the projects were a great success, everyone came home safe at the end of the day, and
the projects met the budget.
SOUTH OF MONMOUTH BARE
The purpose of the Mid-Willamette Valley Feeder Project is to provide for a more
extensive network for natural gas distribution in the Mid-Willamette Valley and replace the
aging transmission line south of Monmouth. NW Natural has a planned route alignment to
construct and install a 12” nominal MAOP 720psig Transmission pipeline (Mid-Willamette
Feeder) between the Central Coast Transmission pipeline and the Albany-Corvallis Transmission
pipeline. These two points are separated by 12 miles and the Luckiamute River. The route
selected was one of three possible routes. Each route was broken into a matrix that provided the
safety concerns, agricultural impact concerns, technical concerns, environmental concerns,
geotechnical concerns, cost concerns, and other concerns. After all was reviewed, the route
selected was the one with the least amount of concerns.
The design of this project had taken place late 2011 through 2012. The S. of Monmouth
Bare project was then decided to be broken down into two different phases, 6 miles each. This
year, Phase I construction begun in early July of 6 miles and was successfully completed and
gassed up by October 31st
of 2013. The project provided successful results, requiring very little
contingency in which brought the project cost well below the budget. There were of course a
few issues along the way, mainly with equipment simply breaking down and taking longer to
complete the horizontal directional drilling. With the short deadline and the big push to have the
pipe gassed up by the deadline, the contractors alongside with NW Natural crews were putting in
long hours each day. At the end of the day, the project was completed 32 hours before the
deadline, everyone came home safe and sound, and all met the expectations. Construction of the
next phase to complete the installation of the 6 miles of 12” steel pipe will begin early next year.
The goal is to retrieve all land easements and permits as early as possible, so construction can
begin earlier. This way, there will be no big push in the end to meet the deadlines with long
hours and hopefully all will be smooth sailing

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HIGHWAY 101 ODOT RE-DESIGN, LINCOLN CITY
Oregon Department of Transportation had notified NW Natural that they will be re-
designing approximately a one mile section of Highway 101, between 23rd
Street and 35th
Street.
Alongside a summary, NW Natural had received a plan and profile for the new re-designed
section of Highway 101, showing where new barriers, guard rails, culverts, retaining walls,
fencing, storm lines, and sewer lines are planned to be constructed. It is now NW Naturals
objective to find and determine where the conflicts lie between the existing gas pipeline that runs
along HWY 101 and the new planned re-design construction. It was my task to locate where the
gas line runs within the planned re-design section and point out all the conflicts in which the gas
line route will need to be redesigned. Once all the gas lines involved in the general area of
construction were determined, it was now needed to look at the specifications of all construction
within the alignment. Any gas lines that crossed new: designed culverts, cuts/fills of road,
excavation below subgrade, temporary diversion channels, storm sewer, drainage structures,
lighting/signal base poles, utility “Manholes,” retaining walls, and structures were all obtained
with x, y, and z coordinated of conflict. All conflicts were identified and were noted onto an
excel spreadsheet. With the given information, a NW Natural engineer is now able to approach
and work with an ODOT highway designer to determine the best alternative for the conflict.
Whether relocating the proposed construction object or having to completely redo that section of
gas pipeline that is in conflict within that specific area of construction.
16” STOPPLE EQUIPMENT STAND
The stopple stand project was one of which that was assigned to me within the first few
weeks of my internship. A stopple is a plugging machine that serves as temporary block valves
installed anywhere in a piping system. They are used to isolate a section of line for repairs or
additions without interruption of service. The stopple plugging machine consists of three major
sections: a hydraulic cylinder or jackscrew, plugging head housing, and a plugging head. NW
Natural owns stopples of all sizes, ranging from 6” to 16” in 2” increments. The transmission
crew already has transportation/storage stands for the lower sized stopple equipment and needed
a similar one made up for their 16” stopple in which they did not have. My project was to go off
the smaller stands and design a similar stand for the 16” stopple in which the weld shop would
put together. This stand would of course have more complicated support requirements to
consider due to its massive weight (1,791 lbs.) and length (13’ 5”). I have successfully
completed the design of this 16” stopple equipment stand and it is currently in progress of being
built.

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HORIZONTAL NITROGEN TANK CARRYING RACK
The nitrogen tank carrying rack project was another project that was assigned to me
within the first few weeks of my internship. The transmission crew of NW Natural required a
pallet that they could use to carry 4 nitrogen tanks with a forklift and transport in the back of
their company vehicles. Their current method was to simply place individual tanks in the back
of the truck and jam them with random tools to prevent them from rolling around. After some
research, tank racks were found online, but for only the vertical position. The transmission crew
needed the tanks to lie horizontally at an angle, so the tanks can lie secured and safe in the bed of
the truck and be accessed easily at the job site without having to be moved. It was now my task
to work with the transmission crew to get the specific needs for the horizontal rack, and then go
the drawing boards in designing the rack. This project was completed successfully and the rack
is currently in use. This assignment was a design project that involved me in communicating
with different groups and helped me see a different aspect within NW Natural.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
During my time here at NW Natural, I was involved in many different projects with many
different individuals. I was fortunate to be able to work with not only the engineering side, but
with the geotechnical, environmental, land acquisition, technical, surveying, archeological side,
and so many more as well. Being exposed to all of the aspects of engineering, I was able to
absorb a tremendous amount of information that I will one day be able to use as a resource. With
the Corvallis Loop and S. of Monmouth Bare Projects, I was able to see the process and steps it
takes to get tremendous amounts of pipe in the ground. I quickly learned of how important
design, planning, scheduling, and documentation, especially documentation was in a large scale
project. It was amazing to see how so many engineers and technicians can put their minds
together, work harmoniously, and do individual pieces of a project that resulted in the main big
picture.

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CONCLUSION
My internship here with NW Natural had exceeded my expectations in every possible
way. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of individuals to work with than the ones I was
surrounded by. From the day I first started to the very last day, everyone was always very
welcoming, kind, and always willing to help. My experience here was all positive and I was
very blessed to have been able to be a part of such a great team. I was never treated as an Intern,
but more like an entry level engineer, and always felt as one of the team members. I was
instantly given tasks and responsibilities that had given me the opportunity to be exposed to the
engineering and construction side of NW Natural. I was quickly able to meet many new
individuals and build relationships that will last a lifetime. Everyone I had met throughout the
company was absolutely great and always positive and willing to help. As my first internship in
NW Natural I was exposed to a lot of fundamentals behind engineering in the true world,
knowledge that can never be obtained in school.
Throughout my internship, not only was I the beneficiary, but so was NW Natural. For
myself, I was fortunate to work with different areas of engineering throughout the company.
This had exposed me to the complexity of NW Natural and the different tasks of engineers. I
was able to see the different departments and how they differ from one another. For NW
Natural, I was able to do tasks that other engineers simply did not have time to accomplish due to
the workload each one had. I was able to jump in and help many different individuals with tasks
that have been on their to-do list for a long period of time. This allowed the engineers to have
more time to work on the more important tasks that they simply couldn’t hand off. I was very
thrilled to be able to help out everyone I could. It was during these individual projects of mine
that I was able to learn the most out of my internship. The challenges were great at times, but
they provided a great reward once completed. I could have never asked for a better place to
intern then at NW Natural. All the great people, work ethic, professionality, and the work itself
had made it an amazing experience. I one day hope that I will have an opportunity to be a part of
the NW Natural team. I thank you all for the amazing opportunity!

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BUZZ WORDS
 AGA – American Gas Association
 AS-BUILT – A drawing or map of the pipeline or other facility showing changes made
during construction.
 BLOWDOWN – Venting of gas in pipeline into atmosphere
 BRITISH THERMAL UNIT (BTU) – The amount of heat it takes to rise the
temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit.
 CNG – Compressed Nitrogen Gas
 COATED PIPE – Steel pipe that has been coated with a substance that retards corrosion
in combination with cathodic protection. Also called wrapped pipe.
 COMBUSTIBLE GAS INDICATOR (CGI) – A device for measuring the percentage
of gas in air.
 DCL – Distribution Crew Leader
 DIMP – Distribution Integrity Management Program
 ECDA – External Corrosion Direct Assistant
 FOOTLINE – The number of feet from the property line or the center line of the right-
of-way to the Company’s main.
 FUSION – The joint or the process where two ends of polyethylene pipe have been fused
together.
 GATE STATION – The location where the Company’s pipeline is connected to
Northwest Pipeline’s transmission line and natural gas changes ownership. Gate stations
consist of meters for custody transfer, regulators, valves, relief valves, and possibly
odorizers, and are enclosed with fencing.
 HDD – Horizontal Directional Drilling
 HYDROSTATIC TESTING – A strength test of pipe in which the pipe is filled with
water, subjected to pressure, and shut in and monitored for leaks of pressure.
 IDLE SERVICE – A service that is physically incomplete for lack of a meter set (meter
either removed or not yet installed), and flow of gas is stopped by one or more closed
valves, or valves in addition to line caps or screw plugs.
 INLET VALVE – The valve that closes off the flow of gas upstream of a district
regulator or other facility for safety purposes or for maintenance.
 JOINT – Section where two bore rods join together.
 JOINT TRENCE – A joint venture project where the utilities are installed in a joint
trench. Typically occurs in subdivisions where the new utilities can be installed
concurrently in the same trench.
 LNG – Liquefied Natural Gas
 MAIN – A distribution line that serves as a common source of supply of natural gas for
more than one service line.

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 MAOP (Maximum Allowable Operating Pressure) – The highest pressure at which a
pipeline or segment of pipeline may be legally operated.
 METER – An instrument for measuring and indicating or recording the volume of
natural gas that has passed through it.
 METHANE – The primary component of natural gas (CH4).
 MERCAPTAN – The main ingredient that is added to natural gas to give its distinct
odor.
 MX – Main Extension
 NOP – Normal Operating Pressure
 ODORANT – Any material, such as mercaptan, that is added to natural gas in small
concentrations to impart a distinctive odor.
 ODORIZER – A mechanical or electric device used to add the odorant.
 OPS – (One Pacific Square) NW Natural’s main headquarters in Downtown Portland.
 OPUC – Oregon Public Utility Commission
 PIG – An internal squeegee that cleans out the gas pipeline.
 PIG LAUNCHER – An assembly of valves and short sections of pipe that allow for the
insertion of a pig without the interruption of gas flow.
 PIPE PUP – A short section of pipe that is required between fittings.
 POTHOLING – The process of digging a hole to observe and document the depth of the
pipe.
 PURGE – The process of cleaning out a pipeline of unwanted gas or air.
 RELIEF VALVE – A device that prevents the pressure in a pipeline or distribution
system from exceeding a set pressure.
 RISER – The pipe that rises from the ground bringing natural gas to the meter.
 SERVICE – The pipe that carries gas from the main to the customer’s meter.
 SMYS – Specified Minimum Yield Strength
 TCE – Temporary Construction Easement
 THERM – 100,000 Btu, the amount of energy in approximately 100 cubic feet of natural
gas.
 TIMP – Transmission Integrity Management Program
 UPRATING – Raising the MAOP for a pipeline segment or system.