TRS were sent CBH’s replacement ropes as they had been in storage for many years and the reels had rotted and the rope lubrication was inadequate. TRS re-lubricated the ropes and fitted them to reels suitable for the rope spoolers being used on the job. These were dispatched back to CBH in preparation for the works scheduled to start on the 1st of September.
Equipment including a 20t electric / hydraulic rope spooler, an 8t air rope spooler, a genset, a compressor, steel reels and tools and rigging equipment was mobilized from TRS on the 29/08/19 and a team consisting of Jason Gardner, James Shine, Jamie Brown and Justin Russell traveled down on Saturday the 31/08/19 to start the works on 01/09/19.
Works began on the 1st of September and were scheduled to be completed by the 10th of September.
The Albany ship loaders are capable of being slewed and luffed down onto cradles which support the booms, removing the need to pin and secure the booms in their fully luffed position, this made replacing the ropes a lot more simple than we are used to on these jobs. We were able to override the encoders and run the drums out to a single wrap of rope. This put plenty of slack in the system and once ropes were secured allowed easy removal of the old ropes from the hoist drums.
The ship loaders were done one at a time and placement of machinery was critical as some parts of the wharf were not able to support the combined weight of the equipment.
The method we employed was to sock and tail the old rope on the land side and haul using the 20t spooler. The new rope was lifted to the machine deck and connected to the new rope using the strand splice method on both ropes for safety. We used the 8t air spooler to tail the new rope into the system while hauling it through with the old rope.
Shiploader 1 went incredibly smoothly however we encountered problems with the equalizing sheaves on 2 and 3. These sheaves do not move much during normal operation of the shiploader and were not well maintained. The result was a lot of tension was put into the system when we started hauling. We over came this by greasing the sheaves and using a Tirfor to haul in the first 20m to avoid breaking the tailing ropes. Once we had 3 wraps of wire rope on the hauling drum we felt safe to haul through and the sheaves freed up.
This was an extremely smooth job from start to finish with no incidents or near misses and was completed 3 days ahead of schedule with no deviations from the original procedure. James travelled to Albany again on the 15th of September for commissioning which was problem and adjustment free on all shiploaders. The Weather was extremely poor with up to 50kn winds and rain for the first 3 days so I would like to take the opportunity to thank James, Jamie and Justin for their hard work, perseverance and professionalism.
“I would like to comment on the professionalism and the safe work practises that you and your team executed at the recent Albany Terminal shut- down (ship loader wire rope replacements). It was good to work with a team that was well organised and confident in the tasks they preformed and all work was carried out in a safe, efficient way with good communication and feed back as required to all parties involved, even with you taking time to insure all excess wire rope lube etc. was cleaned up prior to leaving site.
Looking forward to working along side your team again in the future.”
Karl Cattanach
M & A Steel Fabrication