Rope Access Solutions - Case Studies
Client: Metal Improvement Company (MIC)
Location: Broughton, Cheshire
MIC is a specialist engineering firm providing metal treatment services to the aircraft and motor industries. Located in Broughton, Cheshire one of their primary customers is Airbus Industries for whom they process wing sections in a 200,000 square foot factory building.
Incident: Smoke Contamination
Following a fire in a surface linishing machine BELFOR were called in by MIC to handle the decontamination of the entire factory area. The fire itself had been contained within the machine and as a result there was limited external thermal damage however secondary soot damage was very significant with every surface covered in “black snow”. The soot, once analysed, fortunately contained minimal chloride contamination however, because of the nature of the surface treatment process used by MIC – shot peening, it was deemed critical that all of the soot (carbon black) was completely removed to avoid product contamination. The smouldering fire produced so much soot that in places it was up to ½ inch thick on horizontal surfaces. With so much soot present MIC were unable to process and were forced to shut-down.
From the outset it was known that any such production interruption would seriously impact MIC’s customers’ production and therefore the decontamination work was ultra time critical. Discussions with MIC led to the agreement that the entire facility had to be fully decontaminated and made fully functional in 4 days (96 Hours); a previously unheard of timescale for such a large factory.
In planning the decontamination work it was deemed vital, because of the ‘snow like’ characteristics of the soot, to start at the top of the building and work downwards to prevent re-contamination. This meant gaining access to high level areas through a combination of powered access machines, scaffolding erected on overhead cranes and for very difficult areas, using rope access. Rope access was deemed the only solution for decontaminating large sections of the walls behind large machines as conventional access methods were inappropriate and impractical as space was restricted and the time wasn’t available
Within hours of receiving the go-ahead BELFOR had assembled a team of over 100 people comprising engineers, technicians, sub-contractors and our team of rope access specialists. They quickly assessed the health and safety aspects of their tasks and produced work protocols that were integrated into the overall decontamination programme. A 15 foot exclusion zone around their work areas was instituted as a precaution to enable them to complete the job with minimal disruption to the work going on around them. Starting approximately 24 hours into the programme the 8 man rope access team were able to decontaminate their allotted 25% of the walls in less than their allocated time and went on to assist their colleagues with work on more inaccessible parts of machine jigs.
Overall the entire decontamination project was a huge success. The factory was handed back to MIC after 95 hours and soon afterwards they were back in full production. Without the BELFOR rope access specialists this result would not have been possible.
Roger Blackwell:
MIC - Factory Manager
“BELFOR arrived within hours of our ‘disaster’ and gave an excellent first impression” “It seemed an unrealistically tight target but I was impressed with the response – with people arriving by the hour”
“Bridge cranes were utilised to gain access via moving platforms and the rope access was a good way of solving the problem allowing BELFOR to do the job quickly and effectively!”