BY KEITH LACEY
If you look up in the skies over the next three weeks and see men dangling from Sudbury?s tallest structure, there?s no need to panic or call the authorities.
After a large chunk of concrete fell off Inco Ltd.?s superstack in Copper Cliff three weeks ago, the company immediately ordered a safety review.
?After the chunk fell off...we felt in order to ensure safety, we needed to conduct a thorough examination of the entire exterior wall of concrete,? said Mario Paventi, Inco?s superintendent of special projects.
As a result, two companies have been called in to complete a thorough review of the entire exterior concrete wall of the 1,250-foot high stack,
which remains the largest industrial stack in the Western Hemisphere.
Experts from Hazco Environmental Services Ltd. and Remote Access Technology (RAT) have been granted a contract to do the work.
Workers from RAT will be using technology and methods never seen in Sudbury to conduct the examination.
Starting today, experienced and highly trained workers from RAT will be secured with high-strength ropes, which they?ll use to repel their way down the superstack, while taking pictures and providing analysis of the strength of concrete from top to bottom.
These workers are members of the Industrial Rope Access Trade Association (IRATA) and are among the most experienced workers in the country, said RAT safety training co-ordinator Dan Meade.
?Rope access technology is as common in Europe as construction work is here in North America,? said Meade.
The work looks dangerous, but isn?t because these are highly trained workers with thousands of hours of individual and team training, said Meade. As well, the equipment they use is the best in the business.
Paventi said the exterior examination will take three weeks to complete and will give the company a clear picture of how many exterior repairs, if any, are necessary.
?The workers will provide us with information and photographs that will then be passed on to Inco?s engineers, who will review all the data,? he said. ?Based on that assessment, the companies we?ve called in may be asked to begin physical repairs immediately.?
Coincidentally, Inco is conducting repairs of certain sections of the interior steel lining of the superstack too, said Paventi.
?We?ve been conducting repairs of the metal steel tubing on the inside liner for the past couple of years,? he said.
Phase I of those repairs were completed last December and the company will be continuing interior repairs at the 1,100 and 1,500-foot levels,
starting the middle of September.
That work is expected to be completed some time in December, he said.
Starting in January, a full 12-month project to complete further interior repairs of the superstack will begin.
?The interior repairs are part of our regular maintenance program,? said Paventi.
Hazco was called in after the falling chunk was discovered and Hazco hired RAT as a sub-contractor to conduct the exterior examination, said Paventi.
Hazco is one of the leading environmental remediation and decommissioning companies in the country.
The workers conducting the exterior examination will be held in place by steel rope just under half-an-inch in diameter, capable of holding up to 8,000 pounds of pressure, said Meade.
RAT employees have worked on similar repair projects on the CN Tower, Bruce Power Generation Plant and some of the largest industrial structures in the country, he said.
Workers were busy setting up rope rigging systems all day Monday. Safety and rescue plans were formulated before workers started repelling on ropes and doing the actual exterior examination this morning.
?The forecast is to complete the entire exterior examination within 21 days, but that could change depending on the weather,? said Meade.
Only the most experienced Level III workers are qualified to work on difficult projects like this one, said Meade.
?Three of our four guys working on this project have more than 20,000 hours each on the ropes,? he said. ?They are the best of the best.?
Besides completing a certain amount of hours, workers must be assessed by independent experts from IRATA before being certified at each level,
said Meade.
