HEALTH & SAFETY
Additionally, standards, codes of practice, legislation and general industry good practice will also indicate the risk reduction measures which should be in place or at least considered.
• Segregate/Separate - with the hazard in mind, it may be possible to rearrange the turbine locations on the site to move T1 and T2 further away from the residential area which could again reduce the risk.
• Reduce personnel/time exposure - not applicable – the public can’t be relocated or asked to spend less time in the area.
• Improve personnel awareness - not applicable – whilst it would be possible to alert the public to the nature of the hazard, it is unlikely that this information would provide any demonstrable risk reduction.
• Personal Protective Equipment - not applicable – it would not be appropriate to protect the public from a blade throw event using PPE.
• Recovery - monitoring of the turbines would detect if a blade failure event had occurred. This could be used to inform an emergency response plan with the relevant emergency services being alerted. Clearly this is the least satisfactory measure as it does not affect the frequency with which the hazardous event occurs.
CHOOSING BETWEEN CANDIDATE RISK REDUCTION MEASURES Once a list of candidate measures has been produced, these will need to be considered in terms of the risk reduction they present and the cost of their implementation, as discussed last issue. Each individual measure should be implemented unless the cost can be demonstrated to be in gross disproportion to the risk benefit.
The optimised final position for a project may involve a selection of risk reduction measures from a variety of “steps” on the staircase, e.g. an increase in separation distance, as well as an engineered vibration detection system and a detailed emergency response plan.
This process must be carried out as early as possible in the project, even if at that stage the risks are not fully quantified. Not considering risk reduction measures early can present a major project risk. Significant cost may be incurred to rework a developed design to incorporate a measure which could have been introduced earlier at a reduced cost or the hazard designed out completely.
SUMMARY
Intuitively, some risk reduction measures are more satisfactory than others, whether they are simpler, result in larger risk reductions or are more reliable. All projects must be able to demonstrate that they know the hazards that they present, understand the level of risk involved, have considered all options to reduce the risk further and have then made informed decisions as to which measures to implement whilst adhering to the ALARP principle.
The earlier this process is undertaken the better both in terms of the project risk exposure and the overall efficacy of the risk reduction measures.
Andy Smith
Risktec Solutions Ltd
www.risktec.co.uk
www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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