Each year, dozens of workers lose their lives in accidents related to lifting, rigging, and material handling, which encompasses lifting and moving heavy loads using cranes, hoists, and other equipment. In fact, workers who move heavy loads represent the occupational group with the most fatalities, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Additionally, the U. S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration places lifting, rigging, and material handling activities in their “Fatal Four” ranking of the top four leading causes of death in the construction industry. Most frequently, these accidents occur from losing control over the load, equipment failure, improper rigging techniques, falling objects, and unbalanced loads.
Avoiding accidents requires proper training, equipment, and procedures. EPRI’s Hoisting, Rigging, and Crane Users Group (HRCUG), an offshoot of EPRI’s Plant Reliability and Resilience Program, was created in the early 2000s in response to a need for coordinated guidance and collaboration in the nuclear industry for moving heavy loads. The HRCUG comprises EPRI members, equipment manufacturers, and service providers involved with lifting, rigging, and material handling. The group collaborates to capture best practices and strengthen safety culture through research to help electric industry workers stay safe while performing standard, critical, and complex tasks.
At its inception in 2003, the HRCUG played a significant role in improving lifting and rigging guidelines for synthetic slings. EPRI researchers and the HRCUG committee collaborated with manufacturers to test and develop high-performance synthetic slings in power plants, including the criteria for inspecting and removing the slings from service. To this day, high-performance synthetic slings are one of the safest and most widely used forms of rigging.
While important, training, information exchange at conferences, and research documents alone do not have the most direct impact on safety. The benefit is realized when safety behaviors are applied to the lifting, rigging, and material handling activities performed in power stations daily. Exhibiting the proper behaviors is crucial to ensuring everyone goes home safely at the end of the workday.
Virtual reality (VR) is proving to be a valuable tool in helping workers develop these necessary behaviors. VR can safely place power plant personnel in virtual environments that replicate real-world situations, allowing them to develop the behavioral proficiencies needed to complete critical tasks. Collaborating with an industry leading VR environment developer, EPRI designed its Creation Lab, which provides users the tools to create their own customized environment. This enables crane operators, signal workers, riggers, spotters, and others to practice complex lifts and become proficient with the behaviors and communication skills that prevent accidents without ever being in actual danger.
For example, the Creation Lab is key to an EPRI project under development, which will allow workers in pressurized water reactor containment buildings to practice complex lifts performed during a nuclear refueling outage. Through physics-based modeling, crane operators will use replicas of the polar crane controls to operate a virtual crane that will respond to their actions exactly as the real crane would. With the multiplayer feature in EPRI’s VR simulations, all the operators who would be inside the containment building can practice the lifts together. This increases proficiency of the lift procedure, vital communication skills to perform the task, and most importantly, the behaviors to safely execute the task.
To help protect the lives of the individuals who perform these tasks in the electric sector, EPRI and the members of the HRCUG continually monitor, communicate, and update their guidance. With the retirement of experienced operators who have honed best practices over decades in the industry, a new generation of workers has the advantage of relying on comprehensive manuals and simulations to safely master critical tasks, sustaining the industry’s notable safety record.
EPRI’s Plant Reliability and Resilience program recently launched a web application that provides easy access to an organized suite of products and research covering the full breadth of nuclear power plant engineering and maintenance, including hoisting, lifting, and rigging. Explore this resource at: https://nuclearprr.epri.com/
