Safety is the priority when power stations shut down for maintenance

Power plants regularly have to go offline, and when they do it is essential that the right safety protocols are in place to safeguard maintenance workers. Ed Sullivan explains.

Planned shutdowns, turnarounds and outages (STOs) are often scheduled for preventative maintenance and new equipment installation. To minimise downtime, this work must be completed within a tight timeframe. As such, STOs are often feats of engineering, planning and co-ordination – work that begins months, even years, before the event.

At the top of the list during any planned shutdown is safety. To prevent injury or loss of life, reduce liability, and keep insurance rates in check, safety departments must provide the required safety training, products and services that will ensure all on-site personnel and company assets are protected throughout the scope of the operation.

“Safety comes first,” says Clay Sharpe, safety manager for Power Plant Field Services. “Our crews are trained in safety measures for the work they perform, whether a scheduled outage or an emergency repair. It is our philosophy to make every effort to ensure that potential accidents never happen.”

During STO, a typical power plant can
see its ranks swell from 50 to perhaps 300 additional workers, who the safety department and contractors must properly equip, train, and provide rescue and standby emergency services for. This often requires managing multiple vendors of safety products and services as well as workers who are not familiar with the facility or its processes yet are performing challenging, even high-risk tasks.

Now, in a move designed to eliminate a point of complexity in an already complicated process, some power plant safety departments and equipment service contractors are outsourcing to a single combined provider that can deliver all the safety-related products and services.

The benefit of this one-stop shop approach for an STO is: the single point of co-ordination; reduction in facility personnel required to manage the safety effort; access to extensive safety expertise and technical knowledge; potential cost savings on basic and more advanced PPE (personal protective equipment); and ability to respond quickly to unexpected situations.

Despite the focus on timely return-to-service, those who have participated in planned shutdowns will attest that the primary emphasis is not how fast the work is completed but rather ensuring the safety of all workers involved. This is the prime directive, even if that means going over budget or, in some cases, extending the project. Even when emergency services are required, safety is the number one priority.

Well before any work starts, plant and contractor project managers are holding safety meetings and orienting employees on safety. This occurs both before and during the project, with managers reviewing daily reports about how many personnel are working, what they are doing, and if any are hurt they want to know exactly what happened.

As a safety manager, Sharpe has a high awareness of the risks that exist in field services. Outages normally involve disassembly, inspection, component repair or replacement, and then reassembly of equipment such as steam and gas turbines, and generators.

Sharpe says: “The type of work we perform in the field is often potentially dangerous. We have many methods we can choose from to reduce the possibility of injury to our workers. First, we attempt to eliminate the hazard. If that is not possible, we resort to controls on the work processes, and directing various types of safety equipment to be used.”

In some cases, Power Plant Field Services will outsource specific services from a vendor. “This is generally a service we contract on an as-needed basis,” Sharpe says. “And we need to know they will provide qualified workers who are fully aware of high-risk situations and have the equipment and expertise to handle an emergency.”

The benefits this approach begin well before the STO. As part of the pre-planning, a safety adviser from a combined service provider meets with facility safety and maintenance personnel to learn about their existing procedures and processes. For shorter projects this can be two to four weeks beforehand, or for a more complex project 12-18 months in advance.

The safety adviser then evaluates and monitors safety hazards, and control strategies to ensure compliance with the facility’s safety rules, policies, programmes, criteria and procedures as well as all governmental regulations.

Given the unique requirements of each facility, there are no one-size-fits-all safety plans, so each project is client-specific. In addition, the scope of involvement can be scaled from a single worker to a complete programme for the entire scope of the STO.

Ed Sullivan, freelance energy consultant