PROBLEM? – SOLVED!
CREATING EQUIPMENT FOR THE MOST DEMANDING CONDITIONS
Recent years have seen an incredible growth in offshore installations, especially in the renewable sector with offshore wind turbines being commissioned almost daily in the North Sea.
This development has brought new challenges to the sector, in an effort to create equipment that can satisfy the most demanding conditions. Great focus has been placed on manual handling, joint studies to prevent incidents have been conducted by HSE and sector companies.
With an optimised design, managing manual handling risks becomes much more achievable through promoting good handling practice and management.
TAKING UP THE CHALLENGE SubC partner has been working in the offshore wind and oil & gas sectors since 2005, directly faced many of these issues. In recent years, the company decided to take up the challenge and develop internally a piece of lifting equipment that would maximise safety and increase flexibility and ease of operations offshore.
A bespoke support bracket was designed and manufactured to fit the turbine in question. All key personnel have been trained in the FlexiCrane use, by a course held at SubC Partner facilities and onsite.
RESULTS
The results achieved have been incredible. Manual handling was drastically reduced, speed and flexibility of lifting operations was greatly increased, requirement of offshore personnel was also reduced due to simplification of the operation and most importantly safety for all people involved
RECENT STUDIES ON MANUAL HANDLING INCIDENTS
The result of the studies interestingly showed how the root cause for offshore manual handling incidents tended to occur more at a management level rather than with the operators more visibly involved in the incident.
Poor design and layout of facilities were found to be the most common root cause, along with the use of inappropriate equipment. If equipment or the offshore workplace has embedded design deficiencies, almost all efforts to minimise manual handling risks will be limited to finding the best way to accommodate and work around the mismatch between the design and the operators’ requirements.
Specifically the company was faced with the need to move heavy steel components in an offshore wind turbine, from the external platform to internal platforms. With such weight, manual handling was not an option and that is when the ground breaking solutions were found.
FLEXIBLE CRANE
A flexible crane, called FlexiCrane, was developed to be assembled directly offshore and as support structure, the same turbine tower door frame was used. Components of the crane were manufactured in sea water resistant aluminum, ensuring lightness and strength – the heaviest component being only 14Kg.
was obtained, with great praises from the Health and Safety Managers involved in the activities.
SAFETY FIRST
The FlexiCrane developed had a lifting capacity of 240Kg and a span of 4m. More variants are now being developed and deployed in offshore projects, with the key focus always in mind: Safety First!
SubC Partner
www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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