PHMSA General Investigative Questions

Notice and Request for Comment

The Department of Transportation (DOT) Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) recently published a notice and request for comment regarding the development of general investigative questions that may be used by PHMSA’s Office of Hazardous Materials Safety (OHMS) personnel when investigating safety issues. It should be noted, the general investigative questions would not add any new paperwork burden on regulated entities such as maintaining additional records or providing specific reports. Rather, PHMSA intends to build a pool of commonly used questions that can be customized to each specific situation.

Below you will find some of the questions PHMSA plans to submit to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). They are broken down into 8 categories:

• Introduction Questions
  1. What are your typical operations? Can you provide a general overview?
  2. To the best of your knowledge, was a hazardous material involved in your operations?

• General Hazardous Materials (Hazmat) Information
  1. Can you describe the hazardous materials in transportation you normally see?
     • How often do you see them?
     • Are you shipping them?
     • Are you storing them?
  2. Are there any specific requirements for the condition of the hazardous material that must be followed before the identified material is transported?

• Hazardous Materials Training
  1. What have you or your industry done to mitigate risk around this hazardous material?
  2. What solutions have been found to be helpful during hazardous materials incidents?

• Safety
  1. What have you or your industry done to mitigate risk around this hazardous material?
  2. What solutions have been found to be helpful during hazardous materials incidents?

• Emergencies/Incidents
  1. Do you have the means to contain the hazardous material if there is an accident or an incident?
  2. What remediation companies are potentially contracted at this location or by this company?

• Industry Process/SOPs
  1. Can you identify other companies involved in the transportation of this hazardous material? Can you share their contact information?
  2. What are the locations of your hazardous materials operations?

• Carriers/Shippers/Testers/Manufacturers
  1. Do you manufacture any hazardous material packaging?
  2. Are any other entities involved with the preparation, handling, or transportation of hazardous materials?

• Packaging
  1. Where do you purchase hazardous materials packaging?
  2. Is the product loaded at any specific temperature/pressure?

Please remember this is not the exhaustive list of questions, but a sample of what PHMSA is proposing. To view all of the proposed questions you can see the notice and request for comments in its entirety HERE!

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