Speaker: Brett Lindsay
Brett Lindsay: Hello, I'm Brett Lindsay, senior director, Cement Operations and environmental at Salt River Material Groups, cement manufacturing facility here in Clarkdale, Arizona. We're very proud of our gearbox platform project and excited that the Portland Cmon Association chose it as a winner in this year's safety Innovation award contest. Replacing a vertical mill gearbox is always a serious job with many safety challenges. While we have a number of vertical mill gearboxes at our facility, the one on our raw mill presented a unique challenge as we began our plans to replace it. During our last outage, the gearbox weighs a massive 47 tons and is 11 ft tall. We dismissed using an overhead hoist because it wasn't rated for the weight of the gearbox. We also considered using a mobile crane but found there wasn't enough clearance to safely move the crane into the work area. We assessed using cribbing, but because of the clearance issues and other impediments in the work area, the idea was shut down because of additional safety concerns. We considered several other approaches. But at the end of the day, the team wasn't enthusiastic about any of them. A team member finally suggested we build a platform which we could raise and lower beside the gearbox. The crew thought this was a great idea. So plant employees and contractors worked together and communicated our ideas throughout the planning and building process that took several months. The platform raises and lowers on hydraulic jacks held in place by pens and allows us to roll the gearbox onto and off of it. And when the outage came earlier this year, the gearbox was removed and the replacement gearbox was installed at through the use of this platform. Everything went by the numbers. The platform gave us peace of mind knowing that the gearbox could be secured and blocked from unplanned movement. We prevented strains, sprains and hand injuries for our miners because we didn't use cranes or cribbing the platform not only served its purpose during this job, but it will also prevent injuries and plan for planned and unplanned outages down the road. This project was the best example of how to work together as a team, how to do a risk assessment and how to arrive at a better way to remove safety hazards. Before doing a job. The proof was in the pudding as there were no injuries when we successfully changed out the gearbox.
