Celebrating a milestone safety achievement of three-million work hours without any lost time through injury, diversified steel manufacturer Belmet Marine & Engineering recently announced the company had been awarded a major oil rig contract by subsea engineering, construction and services company Subsea 7, in Ghana.

Speaking at a function to mark the safety milestone at the Bellville-based premises, Belmet MD Pieter Kroon acknowledged the company’s safety record as underpinning its ability to tender for and win contracts within the offshore sector. “Safety is non-negotiable in the oil and gas industry. It is an item that you have to take seriously; you need to have systems in place and you cannot hope to win tenders without a good safety record.”

He adds that the aim is to strive for and comply with international standards, especially in terms of safety, in the industry.

The entire Belmet team can benefit from a safety culture – alternatively, all employees could be disadvantaged if a high accident rate occurs, says Kroon, adding that important contracts would be lost without the safety milestones being achieved.

“The workforce is encouraged by these milestones and buys into measuring and celebrating these successes,” he says. Safety is an ongoing strategy with Belmet, with training on an ongoing basis and safety reminders and safety procedures being continuously addressed.

Kroon adds that safety is a standard part of the tender process for bigger contracts and that, in many cases, a company’s safety record is as important as its commercial one. It is a development that he welcomes, given its impact on Belmet and its move to become ISO 18000-accredited as part of its safety strategy.

Specialised engineering for the subsea environment means that workers are often fabricating at heights, at high-pressure or at high temperatures. “The more diversified the project, the more complex the risk assessment and risk analysis required,” he says.

Belmet has safety incentives in place that, Kroon says, encourage everyone to buy into the process of creating a safe working environment. These include the funding of a games room on the premises and a canteen.

“Everyone benefits from his or her commitment to safety and we also have a biweekly prize-giving for the employee that best demonstrates this commitment,” he says.

“Complacency is the biggest challenge to safety in the workplace,” says Kroon, explaining that the inclination to take shortcuts needs to be addressed continually.
“The bottom line for safety is the need for management buy-in and the ability to create an ongoing process that focuses everyone’s attention on compliant behaviour. Safety is the responsibility of everyone – not just the safety officer.”

Subsea Contract
Revealing details of the Subsea 7 contract, he explains it will include three scopes of work requiring the fabrication of about 1 700 t of steel and ensure job security and a full workload for the company.

The workload involves about nine months of work employing 130 people, during that time, he says, adding that. in the fabrication industry, a company is seldom able to look beyond two to three months of work.

Having established Belmet Ghana two years ago, the new contract represents the first project to be undertaken by the company on Ghanaian soil. A portion of the fabrication work will, however, be completed in Cape Town, with the bulk of the rest of the work being done in Ghana.

“The idea was to establish something significant in Ghana on the back of a project such as this,” he says, explaining that the first work scope, consisting of six suction piles of about 120 t each, will be fabricated on site in Ghana. Kroon adds that similar projects have previously been fabricated by Subsea 7 in Nigeria and Angola.

The second scope of work involves the fabrication of 18 sleepers that will use about 200 t of steel. These sleepers will be partially completed in Cape Town before being shipped to Ghana for completion.

Belmet plans to start the Cape Town fabrication work next month, with balance of work starting in January 2015.

The third and final scope of work will consist of 17 subsea structures with high-pressure piping. Fabrication on this 500 t steel portion of the contract will also start next month, with a delivery date of June 2015.

Skills Development
In other news, Belmet is in the process of revitalising its training centre.

“Our aim is to provide internal training for the upskilling of our own people. We know that training artisans is a big problem in our industry and we do not see the quality of youngsters coming into the system that we need, so we hope to start at home,” concludes Kroon.