Rope Access Solutions - Case Studies

Client:   Seabank Power Ltd

Location: Hallern, Bristol

Incident: Smoke Contamination

The blade, rotating close to the speed of sound; detached itself from the shaft and flew, like a missile, into one of the adjacent steam corridors, ricocheting around inside severing pipe work. The loss of the blade caused an immediate imbalance in the turbine, causing it to jolt which in turn caused shaft bearing lubrication pipes to be come detached pumping out oil under pressure. Unfortunately the released oil quickly ignited and within a short space of time a severe fire developed spreading under the turbine through the bunded pits on either side. The turbine hall was immediately evacuated. The fire was largely contained within the turbine enclosure and thermal damage was restricted to the immediate vicinity however smoke logging was extensive and heavy throughout the entire steam turbine hall and even extended into the adjacent gas turbine hall.
BELFOR were called in on June 16th and soon established that the entire building envelope, all services and machinery/equipment contained inside would require decontamination. The main problem to contend with during the decontamination were identified as the height of the building (33 metres at the roof) and the highly ‘congested’ nature if all of the steam and water pipes, electrical cable trays and air extraction ductwork. Discussions with the management of Seabank Power determined that all decontamination  work would have to be carried out during a six week time window whilst the steam turbine was away for repair. The three factors of height, congestion and time window meant that ‘alternative’ access solutions would have to be employed. The problem of the roof height was overcome by the erection of a sophisticated hanging scaffold platform built at a height of 28 metres. This left the problem of decontaminating the walls and pipework/ductwork exteriors. This is where our specialist rope access team were brought into action. After two weeks planning and preparing health and safety documentation and work protocols and 8 man rope access team assembled on site and over the next 6 weeks decontaminate  all the walls, high level ductwork/pipework and assisted in decontaminating low level services and surfaces inaccessible by any other means. Without this resource not only would BELFOR not have been able to complete the work on time but also the costs  would have been dramatically higher as ‘traditional’ scaffolding would have been required.

When asked about BELFOR’s performance on site and the use of rope access in particular Nick Ashby, Maintenance and Production Manager at  Seabank Power Station replied that “he has been very happy with the job” and “the job was well executed, managed and supervised and health and safety was good’. He went on to say that “the delivery was excellent and rope access provided an appropriate solution to the problem”