Svetlana Kamaeva: “Russian Technologies for Export”

In an interview with RIAC, Transkor-K Research and Development Center CEO Svetlana Kamaeva shared her insights on the activities of this innovative company, on the triumphs of Russian technology, on what is missing in the interactions between business and the state, and on the need to hold an Innovation Olympics. The interview was prepared for publication by RIAC Program Director Ivan Timofeev and RIAC correspondent Yaroslav Menshenin.

In an interview with RIAC, Transkor-K Research and Development Center CEO Svetlana Kamaeva shared her insights on the activities of this innovative company, on the triumphs of Russian technology, on what is missing in the interactions between business and the state, and on the need to hold an Innovation Olympics. The interview was prepared for publication by RIAC Program Director Ivan Timofeev and RIAC correspondent Yaroslav Menshenin.

Svetlana Sergeyevna, recently Transkor-K completed a joint project with PETRONAS in Malaysia. Could you describe the activities of your company using the example of this project?

We have implemented two major projects with PETRONAS. One of them involved development of an inspection technology for underwater pipeline systems, while the other involved the so-called “zero inspection” of the export pipeline, stretching over 500 km through the mountains. The complexity of this technical problem was due to the failure risks of new facilities that have no corrosion defects, but carry an additional load. It was exactly under these conditions that a serious accident on the island of Borneo (Malaysia) took place: a section of the welded field joint of the pipeline exploded and ignited following a landslide.

It took us about four months’ work under extremely hard conditions to examine this pipeline. As a result, Russian technology (namely, magnetic tomography) has confirmed how unique it really is in solving this very tough problem. For the first time in history, micro-cracks were remotely detected at the welded field joints of an underground facility. This defect was the cause of the accident and had not been detected by either traditional methods of autoradiography, or ultrasonic examination, or in-pipe inspection, or hydraulic testing.

Another joint development with PETRONAS included the modification of our system of inspection by the Magnetic Tomography Method for underwater pipelines of offshore facilities in the shelf zone. The result of this work – the AQUA MTM technology – won the “Spotlight on New Technology Award” at the International Arctic Technology Conference (Houston, USA, 2012) and the leader of the world practice. For the first time across the world, we are able to remotely detect not only defects in the metal, but also the real operational loads. These additional loads caused by underwater currents, sagging and bending are peculiar to underwater objects and reduce their working capacity, increasing the risk of accidents. The whole world is grappling with the problem of early detection of such phenomena. Companies such as Shell and StatOil have invited us to work on solving similar problems. We have every reason to be proud of AQUA MTM, developed in cooperation with our Malaysian colleagues, and we are confident that the Houston award will not be the last.

What kind of intellectual property makes up the basis of your business?

transkorgroup.com
Transkor-K Staff

Our main invention is the Magnetic Tomography Method (MTM). In a way, it is similar to the medical method of magnetic resonance imaging: we've all seen how a patient passes through the frame of a medical tomography system, scanning the patient's field and digitizing the image. After processing the data, physicians look for abnormalities in the layerwise tomographic images of the biological unit called the “The Human Being.”

The MTM functions in a similar way, except that the “patient” here is a stationary object, namely an underground pipeline. Our operator walks with a non-contact portable scanner-magnetometer above the axis of an underground pipeline. The distance between large-diameter pipes and the scanner can reach up to 25 meters. The device scans the self-magnetic field of the pipe. The process looks so fantastic that our customers, as a rule, do not believe in its performance capabilities when they first encounter the technology. Indeed, imagine that the ILI (in-line inspection) technology – which is the alternative to MTM– had been developed for 60 years. The ILI involves placing a flaw detector inside the pipeline and moving it though the pressure of the product in order to read information from each tie point of the sensor and the pipe surface. This technology requires serious preparation procedures for inspection: stopping pipeline operations and cleaning, magnetizing metal pipes, as well as strictly controlling the velocity of the smart pig. The shank bore cross-section of the object can create flow through problems, since the smart pig may get stuck inside the pipe. The MTM faces no such problems.

Could you say a few words about your experience in China? What is the attitude of Chinese partners towards working with an innovative Russian company?

Interacting with the Chinese is difficult for us. In previous years, their interest boiled down to the prompt purchase of “one unit” of our equipment. We believe that they wanted to immediately put on the market “two million cheap Chinese copies” of our equipment. We do not want this to happen. We understand that the commercial world builds its marketing strategy by introducing the service first and only then selling the equipment. Secondly, we do not want to risk losing the quality and prestige of the innovative technology on account of the understandable desire of the Chinese to reap its fruits.

In December 2014, the President and the Russian Government issued directives to increase the access of small and medium-sized businesses to procurement from state-owned companies. What effect do you expect from the implementation of this directive?

transkorgroup.com
R&D Transkor-K in co-operation with
PETROLIAM NASIONAL BERHAD (PETRONAS,
Malaysia) have designed a remote controlled
device for submerged pipeline testing

Unfortunately, we do not expect any effect, as the oil and gas monopolies clearly tend to keep their services market closed. The barriers to enter the market are so high that no small business can clear them. In our area, there can be no “import substitution” simply because Russians today are the world pioneers in the magnetic technology of non-destructive testing. But if Russia does not accelerate progress in technical rule-making and operational national standardization, we run the risk of losing these leading positions. To prevent this, we had to apply to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers to introduce an MTM amendment to the US code of laws on the safety of pipeline transportation. In the United States, they wonder what kind of a Russian company is insisting on this? But we are moving step by step in this direction to preserve the priority of Russian technology. We believe that if the barriers to its widespread using at home are still impassible, then we will have to “break through the conservative approach wall” abroad.

As to the Directive, there is some splitting of words: monopolies always try to substitute the issue of “the share of small business” with the issue of “the share of purchases from small business.” In practice, this means that buying staples from small businesses will be recorded on the books as “the share of purchases from small businesses.” Given this, any talk about the share of technological services becomes irrelevant, although we could qualify for a significant share of this market and grow fast enough to become a medium-sized business. We believe that in the West, any technology of this caliber would sure entail the establishment of a partnership within some international corporation to capture the world market, as it solves the world's problem of testing the unpiggable or hard-to-inspect pipelines, and such pipelines predominate in the world. This global problem has been solved by a Russian company. As it currently stands, we just cannot afford to show our hand, which should be rightfully carried by Russia.

What percentage of pipelines is hard-to-inspect?

Up to 80% of the world pipeline industry are of this type. Freight traffic provided by pipeline transport is 100 times more than by other modes of transport. Pipelines are the circulatory system of the industry; without them there is no power, no water, no life, in other words – no civilization actually.

What measures of government support do you consider necessary? How can the state help the development of companies like yours?

State support for us means doing by the state the same things that other nations of the world do for their national companies, namely, defining common clear-cut rules of the game in the form of technical standards. If the amendment proposed by us concerning the compulsory testing of all metal pipes is included in the Technical Regulations for Pipeline Transport Safety, and quality control has to be reported and verified, while the contracts for this are awarded to the company providing the best performance, then the best national domestic innovative technologies will secure a victory due to the “non-arrival of other participants in the bid,” just because there are no foreign players in our sphere of activity.

Today, there is actually an artificial barrier (no requirement for the choice “by quality”), which allows the owners of pipeline systems not to check the condition of the metal in their objects. The objects are tested after an accident or the condition of the metal is controlled within the limits of the permissible norms of “two bore pits per one kilometer.” Suppose there are a hundred kilometers of a pipeline where in-line inspection method is inapplicable. Two excavations per kilometer are carried out, the insulated coating is removed, and the thickness of the wall is measured in several places. Then, by “the power of thought,” the data about the defects of metal are extrapolated to the entire length of the pipeline. In other words, the decision over the repair or restoration of the pipeline is taken on the basis of the condition of 2% of the metal, which has been examined in the pits! You can replace ten kilometers of the pipeline, or all one hundred kilometers without any objective foundation.

Do you face difficulties due to the sanctions imposed against Russia?

Underwater pipeline testing device is being
prepared for submerging

The first contracts came amidst general anxiety in the world and appeared right after the imposition of sanctions: a number of American companies invited us to their facilities. Some of our potential clients among producers of shale oil went bankrupt, but this was due to economic reasons. If the Americans forbid us to work, their pipes will be left without our service and who will suffer from these sanctions then?

In other words, you have no direct competitors in the US either?

Quite right. According to our information, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been trying to reproduce our technology for three years, but so far without avail. Another thing is that when they get their first results, the developed technology will be immediately unloaded onto the global market. Because in the US there are not the same kind of foreign trade barriers as our country erects with respect to knowledge-intensive technologies.

In fact, we are fighting against ourselves. I'm not talking about the absence of efforts on the part of local lawyers and our jurisdiction as a whole to contend for truth, its law and its order. For example, under international contacts, we have to recognize the priority of the British or any other law.

Getting back to the support of the state, we all witnessed our leadership in sports, demonstrated so convincingly by the Olympics in Sochi. It would be great, if some kind of Innovation Olympics were organized just like the Sochi Winter Olympics. Russian technologies could be brought together at this nationwide arena and demonstrate their actual capabilities compared to foreign competitors. I am sure that in many cases the significant superiority of Western technology over the Russian one, which is assumed a priori, would prove untrue. Many of our businesses have faced the problem of proving their worth against the background of time-tested technology of capturing the market and persuading customers by adducing arguments of a “non-technical” nature, which our foreign competitors successfully practice in Russia.

The Paris–Dakar rally is a good example. Here are the trucks, here is the desert, so come out and show who is faster and more reliable? Or take the Tank Biathlon, where our tanks are unmatched. The same should be implemented in practice to create our national innovation environment: it will make us technological trendsetters first at home and then in the world arena.

The negative effects of the economic crisis are obvious, but can you identify any positive effects that it can produce? What should we do to take advantage of them?

If the state sees the real market potential of small businesses, it will take an interest in pursuing the policy of “adding and multiplying” rather than “taking away and dividing.” For example, if we follow the path of establishing public-private partnerships, we can achieve far greater results. Today businessmen are rather afraid of the state. Inspections alone count for a lot: there is a great desire to audit a company without knowledge of the subject area, let alone the ever-changing rules of the game, in which you are bound to lose.

Dmitry Peskov:
Invest in Advantages

If the state wants to earn money with business and lobby innovative solutions to this end, rather than pick feathers off it – it will cost dearly. If the state provides a platform where you can show off your product to the best advantage and physically demonstrate the benefits of the Russian technology, then the waves, now riding over us, will roll back. Once developed countries are convinced of the real advantages of our technology, we will win many markets. In fact, many potential customers from these countries now ask about the State Standards, which they were accustomed to trust during Soviet times, but the standards for new products/technologies are missing. There is a discrepancy between existing Russian technologies and the absence of Russian or even American regulations over them. The continued deferral of relevant actions will result in the adoption of regulations on all innovative products in the United States.

Your company will celebrate its 15th anniversary soon, but you started your personal career in the scientific community. Could you tell us through the example of your own experience, how important the relationship is between scientific knowledge and a possible technological development, based on such knowledge, and, most importantly, the commercialization of this technology?

There is no innovation without commercialization; the notion of innovation implies the implementation of the new into practice. An invention without implementation is not worth a brass farthing. It’s amazing to me that during the meetings of various committees, “experts on innovation” claim without a second thought that the effectiveness of innovative enterprises should be judged by the number of employees with scientific degrees on the their staff, by the citation index of published works or by the number of patents recorded.

One should distinguish a scientific approach from an innovative one. We have worked for ten years and earned money, commercializing our inventions, while a Russian expert at the patent office all this time kept casting doubt on the “functional ability” of these inventions on account of the discrepancy between the terms “stress concentrator” and “stress concentration,” and explaining to us why our technology “cannot work.” And at that very time, this “impractical technology” successfully won prizes at prestigious international forums in Russia, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, USA, and China, is introduced in the technical practice of 25 countries around the world, and provides stable salaries to our employees.

Our scientific and even “pseudo innovative” companies will never be successful, if they regard recording a patent as their final product. Recording a patent is only the first step. Then it should be put into practice or sold, and these are the issues of competition, marketing, quality system debugging and, most importantly, of demonstrating the real competitive advantages of the new technology. For many domestic inventions, this stage, which abroad is called a “start-up” and is largely an established well-defined practice working like a single well-oiled machine, has become an insurmountable obstacle in Russia.

What would you advise to scientists-entrepreneurs, who want to start their own business, to pay special attention to? Do you think that now is the right time to open one’s business in high-tech sector?

By starting your own business, you realize oneself as an individual, because, to quote a well-known source, “the feeling of independence begins with a sense of personal property.” Of course, there are scientists who do not need this. But others who aspire to the practical and, hence, commercial success of their projects are no less numerous.

Positive examples of "their" case are a must for us. The Chinese, for example, have no scruples about being successful and wealthy: their religious dogma says that such people please God. I don’t mean that we are all spoiling ourselves for becoming as rich as Bill Gates is, the matter at issue is making good money and enjoying the fruits of years of study, not being oligarchs, but ordinary Russian scientists and engineers.

What role does the team play and how does your company select personnel?

Successful projects are always because of the people and the team. Successful projects require harmony between two factors: a scholar engrossed in his research and a tough financier, counting every penny... Finally, there are people who are eager to fight their way to the top no matter what: overcoming difficulties and the challenges of “insurmountable obstacles” make their lives meaningful. That is why the role of a harmonious team cannot be overrated.

How do we select personnel? We value education and enthusiasm. Sometimes it is necessary to fuel the latter, which is particularly true for those of our good guys who worked in huge companies, where they were taught to take the time to express their own opinions. Fortunately, this is reparable. An individual should realize oneself. And the task of the leader is to explain that only the team can achieve victory and bear decent fruit.