Moving safety to the forefront: Part 1

The need to regulate safety is a given in any industry, but this is especially true when working in oil and gas applications.

Though many tend to focus on the upstream and midstream sectors when discussing the generalities of oil and gas safety, industry professionals know that safety is just as critical when constructing infrastructure or while conducting many of the support tasks that happen far away from the drilling site or pipeline.One such support task is simply getting the appropriate equipment or materials to the jobsite using dedicated material handling equipment. This seems basic enough – but due to the sheer size, weight and quantity of the various items that need to be moved or transported, safety must be kept at the forefront of any discussion involving material handling for the oil and gas industry.

Getting material around

One common handling application is moving and placing heavy pipe. Over the years, equipment manufacturers have developed a multitude of solutions for this task to cover everything from moving pipe around stockyards, to shipping pipe hundreds of kilometers, to placing it during the actual construction of a pipeline.

However, not all of these solutions were originally conceived with this exact application in mind. For example, the wheel loader is a highly versatile machine that can be equipped with a multitude of attachments to tackle many different jobs, including fork and grapple attachments for lifting pipe. But despite its secondary functionality, a wheel loader is primarily designed to dig and move dirt. As a result, users have to compromise on certain performance characteristics when using it as a pipe handler.

On the other hand, there are dedicated pieces of equipment that are engineered specifically for material handling applications like lifting and placing pipe. These types of purpose-built machines offer a number of design features that can contribute to accomplishing these tasks in a safer and more efficient manner.

Visibility

The fact that the length of a pipe is typically greater than the width of the machine carrying it immediately makes it an awkward item to move. In order to manoeuvre safely, having as much visibility as possible around the vehicle is vital.

When moving pipe through stocking yards, drivers are constantly moving up and down narrow aisleways and are sometimes stacking pipe as high as 10 - 12 ft. Loading the pipe and transporting it around the yard without incident is a situation that generally requires the machine to be driven while its load is lifted up in the air.

With a wheel loader, operators experience at least some degree of obstructed visibility under these circumstances, since the lift arms of the vehicle are located directly in front of them.

By stark contrast, machines like those found in Pettibone’s Cary-Lift rough terrain forklift line have no structural components obstructing the forward view. These vehicles have a unique overhead lift arm design, where the arms are mounted behind the cab instead of on the front of the unit. When lifting, placing or transporting loads, this design gives the operator full forward visibility of more than 180° with no obstruction.

Of course, when it comes to material handling, rear view visibility is also a critical factor. Equipment manufacturers across several product lines and industries have increasingly worked to streamline the body styles of their machines to provide more all-around visibility. Sloped engine compartments and other enhancements help to keep more lines of sight clear for the operator around an entire vehicle.

For good measure, optional back-up cameras and even front-facing cameras are often available to provide an additional level of safety for machines that are constantly shifting and changing direction during use. High output LED lighting is another fairly recent improvement that is now often a standard feature on many machines. LED lights provide the double benefit of increasing light output while requiring less electricity than older style light systems. By better illuminating the jobsite, these lights naturally contribute to creating a safer work environment.

Written by John Major, Pettibone Heavy Equipment Group, USA, and edited by Hannah Priestley-Eaton

To read the full version of the article, please download a copy of the August issue of World Pipelines.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/29082014/moving-safety-to-the-forefront-part-1/