The Realities of an Evolving Plant

Enviro Pacific operates a large facility in Altona that performs the following services: the remediation of land and soil; water treatment; the construction, maintenance and decommissioning of fuel storage and handling facilities; and hazardous waste management.

While it was built with all the necessary access requirements in place, like all evolving facilities, the facility had grown in a modular way. With advances in technology, newer components had been added on, changing the physical arrangement of the plant significantly over time.

But as many of the components work in unison, if one part breaks down, often the entire plant needs to be shut down so that modifications or repairs can be made, which adds to Enviro Pacific’s costs. Many similar companies often remedy this by building makeshift, temporary facilities, although this can be dangerous, and Enviro Pacific wanted to stay well clear of such practices.

Navigating Complexity: Bespoke Equipment, Precise Measurements and Material Compatibility

The brief was deceptively simple: Enviro Pacific needed to construct safe access points to various parts of the facility so that the workers could access the machinery without affecting the functionality of the entire plant.

Our process involved first identifying the areas where improvements could be made. Then, Workplace Defender worked closely with their engineers to draft detailed blueprints displaying our suggested improvements overlaying Enviro Pacific’s equipment, so that they could easily envisage how the facilities would be upgraded.

Enviro Pacific was a particularly complex job as staircases, guardrails and custom platforms needed to fit around bespoke equipment that had been bolted to the ground and adapted as required. There were clearances for forklifts and other heavy machinery that needed to be factored in. The depth of drill holes and the lengths of bolts had to be calculated precisely to ensure they did not affect the working of the various components. And because of the chemicals and compounds being processed at the facility, we had to test and ensure the compatibility and durability of our building material in the particular circumstances of this plant.

Minimising Downtime

Once the designs were approved, Workplace Defender was able to quickly fabricate the necessary parts and install them with only a minimal amount of disruption to and shutdown of the facility, which thus saved Enviro Pacific much time, money and delay.