Skyriders Access Specialists (Pty) Ltd. has garnered nearly 20 years’ experience and expertise at Kendal near eMalahleni in Mpumalanga, the largest indirect dry-cooled power station in the world.
The rope-access specialist’s latest project at Kendal saw a 12- to 30-member specialist team deployed for internal inspection of the pressure pipes of the Unit 1 boiler. Ancillary work consisted of safety-net installation, in conjunction with inspection of coal bunkers and associated Pulverised Fuel (PF) pipes.
The project was carried out successfully during a planned shutdown towards the end of 2018, which placed considerable pressure on the team to complete the full inspection programme within the non-negotiable outage timeframe.
Challenges associated with the project focused mainly on coordination with simultaneous activities taking place on-site, such as sandblasting and X-ray inspection, Skyriders Marketing Manager Mike Zinn explains.
“Considering the challenges, our latest project went very well, largely due to the considerable experience we have garnered here, having worked on-site at Kendal since 2000,” Zinn reveals. Despite this longstanding relationship, Skyriders is continuously raising the bar for its client in terms of its professionalism and value-added service offering, he adds.
Apart from ongoing contracts at existing older power stations such as Kendal, which was constructed in 1982, Skyriders recently carried out the first-ever boiler inspection at the new Medupi power station in Limpopo. This was one of the largest boiler inspections of its kind ever undertaken in South Africa.