Ideagen Plant Assessor and Nacap

Nacap is owned by Quanta Services, a US based S&P 500 Company with over $7.8 Billion in revenue, and is well known for its extensive Australian pipeline construction work including pipelines for the Victorian Desalination Plant and pipelines in Queensland and South Australia for APLNG, Santos and Epic Energy.

Plant Assessor is the leading plant risk assessment tool in the Asia Pacific region.

The comprehensive cloud based risk assessment tool, contains a database of over 80,000 makes and models of plant and equipment and allows users to conduct comprehensive, thorough, consistent and professional plant risk assessment reports quickly and efficiently. Since 2004 Plant Assessor has conducted hundreds of thousands of plant risk assessments, the results of which are embedded in the systems.

The traditional plant & equipment risk assessment process is highly subjective and requires unerring consistency, deep technical machinery and safety legislation knowledge.

Consequently, traditional plant risk assessments are often inconsistent, incomplete, and often do not apply the correct controls to manage the risk of each hazard identified. The traditional risk assessment process can take hours to complete. Plant Assessor simplifies and speeds up this process.

Nacap’s former Corporate HSEQ Manager, Tony Vervest made the decision to use Plant Assessor as Nacap’s principal plant safety management tool in 2010.

“One of our key competitive differentiators is safety – we run very robust systems across all areas of our business. Once I saw and tested out Plant Assessor, I knew it was going to help us continue to lead the way in this important area,” he said.

Jack Roberts, Nacap’s HSE Coordinator recalls that prior to using Plant Assessor, it was very rare for a plant safety inspection to give rise to substantial corrective actions.

“It was interesting how many times contractors would come back after conducting a Plant Hazard Assessment and confirm they hadn’t found any problems,” he said. 

After Nacap implemented Plant Assessor, Roberts conducted a rapid deployment of the system on a large number of plant inspections of pipeline construction plant on the 938km long QSN3 pipeline for Epic Energy.

This deployment highlighted some of the deficiencies in the previous inspection regime, and was also a good platform for Nacap and Plant Assessor to work more closely together.

As with any rapid deployment, this process did highlight some areas requiring immediate attention – including addition of a range of types, makes and models of plant not previously available in Plant Assessor.

Nacap is one of Plant Assessor’s most proactive clients in management of corrective actions flowing from plant inspections. Plant Assessor has worked closely with Nacap in this area, and the ongoing improvements to the Plant Assessor system in this area are largely attributable to this ongoing working relationship.

“The data in Plant Assessor is able to give good transparency into the volume and status of outstanding actions, and an insight into plant safety activity levels. We are looking forward to Plant Assessor’s future enhancements in this area to help us continue to proactively manage this,” said Roberts.

According to Roberts, Plant Assessor has also been very helpful in the area of managing subcontractor plant and equipment safety.

“In remote location work, it is not uncommon to deal with subcontractors who are not aware of the latest plant safety requirements. Plant Assessor is thorough and unequivocal, and a good tool to help make sure gear belonging to these subbies is assessed and safe for use on our projects.”

Nacap is not only leading the way in its plant risk assessment regime using Plant Assessor, but also in using new technology to improve its plant pre-operation check process. 

Nacap was awarded the 2013 International Pipeline and Offshore Contractors Association (IPLOCA) Health and Safety Award at the annual convention held in Washington, USA in September 2013. Nacap was also awarded the Australian Pipeline Industry Association (APIA) Safety Award at the National Convention in Adelaide in November later that year.

These awards were presented in recognition of Nacap’s CodeSafe Initiative, which is an innovative use of QR code technology aimed at educating plant operators on how to conduct pre-operation plant checks.

This technology sees QR codes placed on plant items, which the operator scans with a smartphone or tablet to view a brief instructional video on how to correctly conduct a pre-operational check.

Nacap was also a finalist in the Worksafe Victoria Awards for its development of a hydraulic Pipeline Inspection Gauge Catcher, abbreviated to PIG catcher for short.

Cylindrical, magnetised devices known as “pigs” are used to perform various maintenance operations on new and active pipelines. These operations include but are not limited to cleaning and inspecting the pipeline.

The pig is launched from a launching station (an oversized section in the pipeline) and the pressure-driven flow of the liquid or gas in the pipeline is used to push it along down the pipe until it reaches the receiving trap – the ‘pig catcher’.  The safe catching and removal of the pig has caused problems in the past and Nacap designed and implemented a hydraulic system to minimise the risk of impact and escape accidents.

The relationship between the two businesses continues to thrive based on a mutual respect for safe worksites, especially the safe operation of plant and equipment, as well as a shared interest in innovation and a willingness to invest time and money into development and implementation of these types of measures.

At Plant Assessor we applaud Nacap for it’s innovative thinking and willingness to invest time and money into development and implementation of these types of measures.