Federal Inspectors: Please request the IA Desktop installer by emailing ocioclientcenter@dot.gov.
State Inspectors: Coordinate with your organization's IT department. Depending on your organization's policy, actual installation of the software may need to be performed by IT staff. Installers for state inspectors may be found here.
IA-Desktop will typically prompt on startup if there are pending updates.
Federal Inspectors: Please visit CompPortal on your DOT iPad. From there you should see a blue "IA Mobile" icon as an option to download.
State Inspectors: IA-Mobile installers for state inspectors may be found here.
IA-Mobile will prompt on the login screen if there are pending updates.
IA-Desktop will typically prompt on startup if there are pending updates. Occasionally these updates can fail. This is typically a result of a connection failure during the update process or an attempt to update from a deprecated version of the IA-Desktop software. When this happens, it is necessary to re-install the desktop client. The installer instructions can be found above.
In order to preserve any unsaved data that may exist on your machine, it is highly advised to re-install the software without first removing the old version.
No. The IA question content is organized by system type. A multi-system type inspection would have to be done as two separate inspections in IA.
Yes, but there are some things to be aware of. Some things like OPID, asset lists, and team configuration can be altered, but the PRS/question dataset cannot be altered after an inspection has been created.
Yes, IA automatically offers a list of the most current PRS/question data sets (from Federal and State organizations) for selection during the inspection creation process.
Inspectors should be cautious about creating the inspection in IA far ahead of the actual inspection because the question content is set at the time of inspection setup and is locked thereafter. Inspection set up too early could result in an out of date question data set when the inspection takes place.
Once a participant is added to the inspection team they will have access to all of the information. Upon initially entering into the inspection the new participant will notice the IA may take a longer time to load all of the information. This is due to the complete (larger) set of information being transferred to their computer.
Some inspections such as II inspections can involve more than one OPID, so IA provides the flexibility to accommodate those situations.
When an inspection is first created, IA asks what system type/content type the inspection will be for (example: GT (gas transmission), GD (gas distribution)). If the inspection is set up other than a GT inspection, questions associated solely with GT will not appear in the planning directives list.
Inspectors should be careful to select the correct type of inspection being done. In addition, directive names can evolve over time. For example, the previous GT "IM Field Verification" directive was revised to be the "GT IM Implementation" directive. IA provides hover-over help text to clarify each directive.
The IA "Plan Implementation" interface provides the mechanism to assign respective portions of the inspection plan to as many implementation activities as needed by the inspection team.
Yes. "Over-implementing" an inspection is acceptable in IA. Regardless of where/when a question is answered, IA applies the answer to the applicable asset(s) specified by the user. If a question has already been answered in one Implementation Activity and appears in a subsequent Activity, the user will see the previous answer and not have to re-answer and/or search for the previous answer.
Yes, but only if the question is "Unsat" for more than one reason. If this should happen, inspectors should note which SI goes with each Unsat reason in the Issue Summary notes.
Each SI is tied to a particular Unsat reason and can only be assigned one Severity Score.
IA can generally do all inspection-related functions off-line, to accommodate situations when internet access is not available or severely limited. Once a connection is reestablished, all information gathered while off-line will be synced with the IA server (see next question). While off-line, server-supplied items will not be available. These include the creation of new inspections, opening an existing inspection for the first time, "On Line" reports, inspection Overview screen updates, and real-time access to team member inspection updates.
If any offline/disconnected work is done in IA-Desktop or IA-Mobile, when a connection is restored/available, please log in again and open all inspection(s) you worked on during the offline period and allow all records and files to sync (see the bottom left corner in IA-Desktop and Mobile for syncing status). This will ensure that any work you've done and files you've added will be saved to the server.
Primarily the team Lead. If you assign a Director and Supervisor(s) to the team they also have the ability to modify the inspection plan.
No. IA retains and archives all inspection information, and will ultimately be available via normal PHMSA pipeline data reporting means. Therefore, the IA "PROT9" inspection information does not need to be separately copied to OQDB.
No. IA retains and archives all inspection information, and will ultimately be available via normal PHMSA pipeline data reporting means. Therefore, the IM-related inspection information does not need to be separately copied to IMDB.
Code cites are updated at the time the current question set is established.
Yes. Attachments can be linked to Questions, Results and Forms. Attachments can also be made at the inspection level with no links to other entities. See the "Attachments" tab in IA.
Sat+: Indicates an operator approach that goes beyond compliance and is evidence of exemplary performance in that specific area. Selection of Sat+ does not necessarily indicate that a "best practice" has been identified. Details of the exemplary performance are to be provided on the inspection form.
Concern: Indicates an item that is not unsatisfactory but for which the inspector desires to highlight as an area of recommendation and/or that should be given additional attention by the operator to prevent future compliance issues.
- Procedure (P): Questions that involve process oriented reviews such as programmatic and/or procedural requirements.
- Records (R): Questions that specify the review of operator records, regardless of where the records may be maintained.
- Observation (O): Questions that involve the observation of operator personnel performing various tasks and/or observing various locations of the pipeline and associated facilities.
Similar to historical PHMSA practices with paper inspection forms, the IA question set is reviewed on at least an annual basis to incorporate recent code changes, address feedback from IA users, and implement general question set improvements. Annual federal question set updates are issued in the January time frame of each year, and in March for state question sets.
In addition, updates may also be issued as-needed to incorporate major content revisions such as adding new types of inspections to IA, significant updates to how a particular topic area is inspected, etc. [Note: The particular question set version ("Protocol Revision Set ID") is shown on the inspection Configure screen in IA.]
If the inspection has only been planned and no results have been recorded, you may simply delete the inspection. If the inspection already has one or more results, add an "NC" result and result note to all planned questions that do not yet have a result. From there, finalize the inspection via the normal workflow.