Safety measures taken at Oak Ridge
The Johnson Controls Building Efficiency project team took extraordinary measures to ensure worker and customer safety at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory during the dismantling of existing equipment and installation of new lighting and a new biomass renewable energy steam production plant. The measures were necessary due to the age of the buildings and equipment, the presence of hazardous materials, the intertwining of steam pipes, gas lines, and electrical circuitry, and the need to not disrupt operations at the site.
Among those measures were:
- Planning meetings with facilities managers, construction foremen and safety experts from Johnson Controls and from the customers.
- Walk-throughs of the site to determine safety challenges.
- Safety training for all participants.
- Informing the customer ahead of time of when, where and how every procedure and operation would be conducted.
- Glove-bagging piping insulated with asbestos and disposing of it safely.
- Taking down lamps, ballasts and sheet metal and examining each item with a Geiger counter to detect any presence of radiation.
- Locking and tagging out electrical devices and verifying there would be no potential for electrical current on any fixture or motor being worked on.
- Color coding equipment and materials for presence of lead paint or mercury and indicating which items had to remain on to support the facility and which items were safe to remove.
- Dry runs of all safety-critical operations, such as the delivery of ammonia that’s used to reduce emissions.
All these safety measures and more were implemented, resulting in nearly 1,100 days without a lost time injury.
“We take safety very seriously and it showed in this project,” said project executive Allen Summey. “Customers can be confident that we engage our employees in rigorous safety practices for every project, not only to protect them but our customers’ personnel as well.”
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