The US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory is a massive science lab that gets $400m of government funding every year for its research work. Much of the laboratory’s focus is on high energy physics (it houses the world’s largest particle accelerator) but other studies range from pollution-eating bacteria to quiet jackhammers. Based in Long Island, New York, the laboratory employs 3,000 staff and hosts 4,000 visiting researchers a year.
With so much research going on, support engineers must assemble or take apart huge experimental apparatus or move heavy equipment from place to place. As well as more than 100 overhead gantry cranes ranging from 2t to 36t safe working load, the laboratory owns a fleet of five mobile cranes. They are: a 136t (150 US ton) Grove HLT 150 lattice boom truck crane, a 68t (75 US ton) Terex RT-175 rough terrain, a 36t (40 US ton) P&H 670 lattice boom truck crane, a 23t (25 US ton) Lorain MC32 B, and a 14 US ton (12.7t) Stinger boom truck. It also has a truck that is fitted with an Atlas knuckle boom loader crane. When this equipment is inadequate, outside lifting contractors are brought in.
Two years ago, contractors were called in to lift a 97t component of a decommissioned nuclear reactor. The load was heavily contaminated with radioactivity. ‘The plan was for the rigging company to pick up the structure, put it on a truck, and drive it away,’ says Steven Kane, a chartered engineer in the physics department.
‘A question that was not resolved before the lifting was what happened to centre of gravity of the load when the weight was taken off the hook. Because it was an informal review, nobody gave it any better consideration, including the rigging company. So when it came to the lift day, when they settled it down, the load flipped over, and flipped over the truck. The investigation of the mishap revealed all of this, and concluded that we needed a standard system for reviewing critical lifts.’
Thus the accident, in which no one was hurt, proved a catalyst for change. An informal system of lifting reviews had been developed in the mid 1990s during the construction of a new piece of experimental apparatus. Now it was decided that a much more formal procedure had to be devised.
The new risk assessment procedure was introduced in October 2002. A standard review process is now in place for all equipment and machinery lifting on the site. By mid January this year, 15 lifting projects had gone through the new procedure and secured formal approval to go ahead.
With increasing emphasis being placed on risk assessment and pre-lift planning all around the world, driven by a combination of regulations and insurance providers, the procedures that have been developed by Brookhaven could offer a template to others.
A lifting safety committee has been established, chaired by Kane. Under the new scheme, any technicians planning to make a difficult, complex or risky lift must first apply to the lifting safety committee.
‘Usually they are good at calling me [to discuss proposed lifts]’ says Kane.
‘If they decide it is not a critical lift, and there is an accident, there will be an investigation, and I’m the chair of the accident investigation committee. They can tell me now or tell me later. That persuades most of them to go through with the review.’
James Mills, another committee member and also a chartered engineer, explains: ‘It is a formal process, fundamentally directed toward making people who are responsible for lifts stop and think beforehand, rather than in the field while the lift is taking place.’
If the lift operations are simple, Kane or a colleague may examine the plans themselves. If, however, the risks are great, then the applicant will be asked to make a presentation in front of the seven-person lifting safety committee.
As well as Kane and Mills, the committee consists of mechanical engineer Alexander Pendzik, rigging supervisors Alex Korol and James O’Malley, crane and rigging inspector John Hynan, and safety engineer Michael Gaffney. Kane and Pendzik are employed by science departments. Mills, Korol, O’Malley and Hynan are all employed by the plant engineering department, while Gaffney is from the safety & health department.
‘We wanted to get a group with varied experience in lifting safety, independent of an organisation or entity or department within the lab to review the proposal. The idea was that we should establish standards of what needs to be looked at when proposing to plan a critical lift,’ says Kane.
The committee decides any other details that need investigation, and when the application is complete, it forwards the application to the associate laboratory director for operations.
The task force that developed the standard lifting process borrowed ideas from the Department of Energy lifting handbook*, Kane says. The Brookhaven safety process is also based on the procedures of other site safety committees, such as the laboratory safety committee or the radiation safety committee. And though the procedure had to be made to work in an unusual bureaucratic structure – the lab compromises nine units, none of which has overall control – it could still be adapted to other environments, Kane believes. ‘Any corporate entity that has lifting as a part of its operations could use our basic structure, he says.
‘All big institutions seem to be going this way,’ Mills says. ‘I won’t be surprised if other labs start doing it. It’s a small world.’