Safety and productivity aren’t mutually exclusive. While productivity should never come at the safety of workers, when it comes to designing fall protection or crossover system, ease of use can enhance both safety and productivity. That’s what NALCO Energy Services Division found when it worked with SafeRack to develop a gangway and fall protection system aimed at giving workers safe access to unload isotainers.
Engineering Safety and Productivity
The NALCO Freeport, Tex. facility produces raw materials for its other plants. Some of the materials required to produce these raw materials arrive in isotainers, which led to a project with two objectives:
- Provide workers with safe access to the tops of isotainers for safe unloading of materials
- Enable workers access to the isotainers without being tied off in a harness, and make the solution easy to operate
The first objective was fairly straight forward. However, the second objective is where the SafeRack team worked with NALCO Plant Engineer Bill Brown and his team to design an easy, more productive approach than the harness.
“Safety is definitely number one at NALCO,” said Brown. “All of our operations, all of our projects take safety into consideration and it’s our number one priority. If it’s not safe, we don’t do it.”
The SafeRack team designed an adjustable safe closure that includes a cage and gangway. Workers can easily lower the safe closure manually over the existing floor atop the isotainer. A gangway is also lowered enabling workers to safely walk onto the top of the isotainer. The closure, which meets OSHA height requirements, was designed to eliminate any gaps between the cage and the existing floor.
“SafeRack was very responsive with their engineering group and their sales force,” said Brown. He explained that the engineering collaboration identified NALCO needs and arrived at a viable cost-effective solution to meet those needs.
Learn how you can apply a fall protection system that encourages safety and productivity.
