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ENERGY INTERNATIONAL
Dec 2010 / Jan 2011 www.esb.ie/em
Moneypoint station surpasses safety targets to win merit award
GENERATION OPERATIONS
At the recent ESBEI Generation Operations Safety Conference, Moneypoint Station won a merit award.
Achieving this award would not have been possible without the support of everyone in Moneypoint and their ongoing commitment to improving safety in the station. This commitment is very evident from the high level of safety auditing and the reporting of good catches / near misses. Moneypoint has achieved, and surpassed, ambitious targets set at the start of the year in these areas.
The feature outlines some of the safety initiatives taken in Moneypoint during 2010, which have made the station a safer place and moved us closer to our ambition of having an injury free environment.
Five safety forums where held during 2010. The idea behind the forums is to give staff an opportunity to take time out to discuss issues relating to site safety. A forum is typically a three-hour session with a mix of presentations, video clips and workshops designed to stimulate discussion and to challenge participants. Items on the agenda have included a review of all 2009/2010 accidents, incidents and near misses from Moneypoint and also significant accidents and incidents from across ESBEI.
The first of these forums captured inputs for the Moneypoint Safety Improvement Plan for 2010. Some of the forums immediately preceding the Unit 1 Overhaul focused on making the overhaul an injury free work environment. The most recent forum had a workshop on a lost time incident involving ash spillage that occurred in the station in June.
A particularly effective agenda item at these forums has been a presentation from the station chemist on the hazards and required PPE associated with the some of the new materials on site and used in the new environmental emissions abatement plant. Commenting on the safety forums, Moneypoint Station Manager Glenn Pope said he was impressed with the quality of the presentations and the interaction and suggestions from staff. “I am delighted to say that over 150 people, staff and contractors, have attended these forums. There is no shortage of material to cover and, every time we run another forum, we collectively learn something new. I genuinely see the safety forum as a positive initiative and a great mechanism to involve the wider staff grouping in discussions on their personal safety and that of the colleagues. We will continue to run these events in 2011.”
Aside from the safety forums, all in Moneypoint have been very focused on meeting and beating our key performance indicators for safety. At time of writing, 309 safety audits had been completed in Moneypoint. The target for the entire year was 300. There were 130 audits completed during the Unit 1 overhaul, against a target of 100. The audits were carried out by a wide cross-section of staff from within Moneypoint and many involved contractors. There were 253 ‘good catches’ reported. Of these, 102 were reported during the Unit 1 overhaul. A lot of these good catches got resolved immediately by the individual reporting the good catch/near miss. If a good catch couldn’t be resolved immediately, the corrective action required was entered into the maintenance management system to be completed by the relevant maintenance section.
The station also installed widescreen TVs in the station canteen, workshops, control room and bulk materials area as another means to communicate safety and other business-related issues. Safety presentations were prepared and are on display on these TVs and have been well received. These presentations have now been made available to other ESBEI locations.
During the recent Unit 1 Overhaul rescue exercises were carried out on a number of plant areas. All of the areas chosen presented significant challenges for a rescue as all would be defined as “confined spaces” under our safety rules. Commenting after the exercises, John Casey, Nominated Safety Engineer, said that ‘useful lessons had been learned, and while these exercises are necessary, the focus needs to remain on injury prevention’. In addition to these exercises, there were weekly contractor safety specific meetings where representatives from all contractor groupings had a chance to share issues of concern with others. These meetings proved very effective in highlighting safety issues. In all, there were in excess of 700 staff working directly on this outage, including 80 temporary staff and around 500 contractors. Approximately 145,000 hours were worked during the five-week period of the overhaul, which was completed with no lost time injuries.
The year 2010 was a good year for safety in Moneypoint – well done to all.
Sustainability Update
Senior management Sustainability workshop
GENERATION OPERATIONS
By Fergus Keane, Sustainability, Energy International
SENIOR managers from Energy International, led by Executive Director Pat O’Doherty, gathered in Dublin in September to develop a Sustainability Change Plan for Energy International.
Energy International has benefited from enthusiastic sustainability champions who have developed Sustainability Improvement Plans for their areas, including offices and power stations across Ireland and abroad, over the last two years.
We are approaching the mid-term point between the launch of the ESB Sustainability Strategy and 2012, which is our first major milestone. We have decided to review the progress we have made and develop a change plan for the recently formed Energy International business unit. All other business units in ESB will be holding similar workshops to develop change plans for each business unit of ESB.
ESB Energy International Executive Director, Pat O’Doherty, opened the workshop and underlined the importance of sustainability in the new business unit. The workshop was facilitated by Derek Fuller and assisted by the sustainability team. The workshop developed a number of different strands: actions relating to management responsibility, personal responsibility, process change actions required and actions to support the sustainability brand of ESB. The outcomes of the workshop were subsequently presented to the GMT of Energy International in October.
