A multifaceted approach to its equipment is helping Epiroc eliminate live work.
Machinery is what keeps the wheels of the mining industry turning, so as every miner knows, maintaining these assets is critical to operational success.
But performing maintenance on these enormous machines – which break rock and haul tens of tonnes of material at a time – can be a dangerous affair. This is especially true when it comes to live work, which denotes work conducted within the operating footprint of an energised machine.
That’s why original equipment manufacturer (OEM) Epiroc has spent the last seven years working tirelessly to eliminate live work in the mining and construction industries.
“There have, very unfortunately, been a few accidents in the industry involving maintenance on heavy mobile equipment,” Epiroc regional performance centre manager Asia Pacific Paul Lucas told Safe to Work.
“Around 2016 there was a fatality during maintenance, and that’s where my journey with live work elimination began. The industry had an epiphany that people were getting hurt unnecessarily by working on machines that are still running.”
The journey towards eliminating live work began with ‘soft controls’, procedural changes to the way maintenance was conducted that removed the operator or maintainer from the machine’s footprint wherever possible.
“Back then, we started by rewriting our procedures to facilitate working on zero-energy machines,” Lucas said.
“The first phase of any sort of the hierarchy of controls is soft controls. For example, our approach shifted from physically measuring hydraulic pressure while the engine’s running to using a pressure gauge to measure while the operator stands outside of the machine’s footprint.
“Of course, soft controls will only get you so far. We then took the longer-term approach of designing live work out of our machines.”
Epiroc performance centre lead engineer Tim Nawrocki said the company’s approach to redesign began with live work mapping and auditing.
“In partnership with our R&D (research and development) team in the factory, we looked at where live work activities came up in the operation of our machines,” he said. “We were able identify those instances of live work and then look at ways to eliminate them.
“The next step was to actively partner with our customers to understand their live work activities and their priorities in eliminating them.”
One such design evolution is Epiroc’s automatic bit changer (ABC) system for drill rigs, which allows operators to change bits without leaving the cab, or even from a control room.
“Previously, a bit change was a fairly high-exposure activity where you needed someone on the drill deck near moving parts to execute that bit change,” Nawrocki said.
“Epiroc design engineers in the US developed the ABC system to eliminate that live work.”
Another redesign example is the SmartROC D65 MKII drill rig.
“One key difference between the MKI and the MKII is that the newer model allows you to adjust all your pump pressures within the cab, rather than manually adjusting the pumps on the machine,” Lucas said.
“Hydraulic pump adjustment was previously a very manual task. Our rig control system allows the operator to measure and adjust the pressure from within the cab, allowing them to set up the machine for specific operating conditions.”
As Nawrocki said, the elimination of live work isn’t always a high-tech affair. Sometimes it means a new component, rather than a new model of machine.
“Fluid sampling is typically something that requires the machine to be running, with someone opening a tap to collect the sample,” Nawrocki said. “We worked with a supplier to integrate a sampling system that allows the operator to remotely command a sample to be taken, and then collect the sample later once the machine is switched off.”
In some cases, Epiroc can also retrofit its live work solutions to older models, which means customers don’t always need the latest and greatest equipment to keep workers safe. In fact, the OEM has an entire engineering team devoted to precisely that dynamic.
“Epiroc has a multi-tiered approach where we’re looking at delivering new machines with features that eliminate live work, but also trying to reduce the risks on our existing fleet by adapting the same principles and applying them as retrofit kits,” Lucas said.
“That way our customers don’t have to buy a new machine to get some of the newer safety features.”
Beyond the realm of safety, live work elimination also translates to improved operational efficiency.
“If you take away the need to be working on a live machine, you can actually reduce maintenance time as well,” Lucas said.
“So in that way, not only do you improve safety, but you also improve maintenance and maintainability on our machines, which is a win for everybody.
“Machines are cheaper to run with less exposure to risk for operators and maintainers.”
Though Epiroc is one of the main drivers behind the movement to eliminate live work, Lucas is happy to report that the effort is industry-wide.
“There has been a lot of collaboration across OEMs and customers towards the elimination of live work,” he said.
“A lot of dialogue and examples are being shared across the industry in this space, because safety is paramount in mining and everybody wants to come home from work.
“I think that when it comes to safety, you have got to set aspirations quite high. Epiroc’s goal in the near future is to deliver a machine that requires no live work.”
This feature also appears in the Januar-February issue of Safe to Work.