Remote control safety solution for construction applications

A remote-controlled excavator that was engineered to provide a safer work environment has won the 2015 National AWA Water Industry Safety Excellence Award. The ultimate aim for the innovation was to eliminate risks arising from manual handling and it could have wider applications in the construction industry.

As one of Sydney Water’s longest-running alliances, the Priority Sewerage Program (PSP) Alliance consists of Sydney Water, MWH, John Holland Group, UGL and RPS Manidis Roberts. It was formed back in 2002 to provide improved sewerage services in some of New South Wales’s most pristine and environmentally sensitive towns, most recently Cowan, West Hoxton, Wilton, Douglas Park, Bargo and Buxton. The success of this alliance has been exceptional, achieving between 89-93% community satisfaction, industry-leading KPI outcomes for non-cost objectives and increasing cost-efficiency through the life of the program.

During the 12-year program, the team maintained a culture of collaboration and formed a Safety Focus Group to ensure a consistent program-wide approach to all WHS matters. Manual handling-related injuries were identified as the highest injury risk factor by the group and it set out to challenge some of the construction work methods used to ensure its safety vision was maintained.

Methodologies previously employed may not necessarily comply with current workplace health and safety (WHS) and/or duty of care expectations.

One such task identified by the group was the use of excavator equipment on some of the residential properties that were part of the sewerage program works. A safety risk occurred on sites with low clearance and limited access to the rear of the property which prevented the use of standard excavation equipment, without the removal and reinstallation of the roll-over protection system (ROPS).

Past projects have managed this issue by strictly controlling the removal and refitting of ROPS by workforce trained by the equipment manufacturer. There are costs associated with the required training and time off-site by the workforce while ROPS equipment is removed and refitted. However, this approach now contravenes legislation so this work practice is no longer permitted.

Current legislation and regulations state: “The person with management or control of earthmoving machinery at a workplace must ensure that the machinery is not used unless it is securely fitted with a protective structure.” This requirement excludes temporary removal of the ROPS and the request for exemption from the regulator was declined.

It was identified that manually excavating the sites presented a manual handling risk to the workforce as many of the areas were sandstone, which required extensive use of pneumatic equipment. Excavation by hand also exposed the workers to unacceptable risks of body stressing injury, so a new method for enabling excavation in these limited-access sites was required.

The team engineered a solution to eliminate the risk by modifying a 1.5-tonne tracked excavator to include remote control tracking with a folding ROPS. The solution resulted in eliminating the requirement for workers to unnecessarily manually handle spoil or hand-dig trenches by allowing them to safely access the rear yards of properties with the excavator that was designed for the task.

Through discussion at the Safety Focus Group meetings and meeting with others that have implemented similar solutions, the team identified that if the ROPS structure could be modified to allow it to be folded to reduce the headroom, then access to all properties would be possible. A team member further suggested that it may be possible to operate the excavator undercarriage via remote control capability. The operator could then walk alongside the excavator while it travelled beneath the structure, rather than being seated in a location that had the potential for the operator to come into contact with the low structure.

Although there are similar remote-control safety solutions available for forestry, mining and transport industries applications, this innovation was unique in that it included a combination folding ROP and remote control operation. This eliminated the need for an operator to sit on and operate the machine without the appropriate safeguards and protection in place. The team said that the equipment modifications and/or the concept could also be adopted for other types of machinery.

Rob Salisbury, RPS Australia Asia Pacific Executive General Manager NSW/Qld, commented:

From the perspective of an Alliance Leadership Team member, it was great to see the team work together to find an innovative solution to a problem that they were faced with. Especially a solution that resulted in reduced safety risks, savings in time and money and lower community impacts than the traditional approaches that could have been taken. I hope that this and other innovations developed by the PSP Alliance can be used elsewhere in the industry with similar results.

Ashley Jagoe, Manager Major Projects, Sydney Water, added:

A key project consideration was to minimise the impact on customers by getting in and out of their properties as quickly as possible while ensuring the complete safety of both the contractors and members of the public. The development of this simple yet highly effective innovation was testament to the alliance embracing these objectives.

Mal Shepherd, Industry General Manager – Water John Holland, said:

The alliance has demonstrated excellence in safety leadership, which has driven effective implementation of cultural change with the workforce in risk awareness and behaviour.

This award recognises our outstanding capability and strength in delivering projects interfacing with operating networks through good planning to deal with project risks in the design, planning and execution phases.

Ian Butler, Alliance Delivery Manager, concluded:

It was pleasing for the alliance management team to see the project teams identify key safety issues with the works to be completed and then work collectively to combine previously held knowledge of available technologies to develop a solution that could be applied to provide a solution that eliminated those issues.