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The past year has seen many changes for Pinnacle Renewable Energy: in February 2018, the company completed an initial public offering; in March, it commissioned its Entwistle, Alta. facility; and in September, it acquired a 70 per cent interest in a pellet plant in Alabama.
Buying into Pinnacle’s safety culture
The construction of this plant was not without its hiccups.
“There’s always challenges in construction – that’s why we have a great team that can overcome those challenges, and I think they’ve done a nice job of not allowing the things that did arise to stand in their way of delivery,” Reitsma says.
He emphasizes how impressed he was by the team, including Chris Barber, Pinnacle’s general manager of strategic capital, Darren Swaan, the senior project manager, John Grime, the construction manager, Jaden Tupper, the junior project manager, and Bill Penno, the safety officer on site.
Speaking with Canadian Biomass, Penno agrees that there were a few challenges during construction, but says that the project ran smoothly overall. Penno, whose formal title is construction safety advisor at Pinnacle, was in charge of worker safety at the site.
“Every construction worker is coming from a different background,” he explains. “We’re trying to get everyone working safely together, trying to get them to buy into Pinnacle’s safety culture.
“Although I do not have a role in the plant’s operational safety on a day-to-day basis, anytime I am at the plant, I try to look out for the safety of everyone while I am there, construction workers and operational workers alike,” he adds.
Each employee received safety training before starting work, and several policies were implemented to ensure continued safety.One of those policies is “Take Two,” where employees are encouraged to stop and take two minutes to think about their task and how to do it safely, says Penno.
Part of this includes performing field level hazard assessments (FLHAs), whereby workers identify all the hazards and risks associated with a task before starting it, and reassess if something changes during the task. Penno recommends this as a safety best practice.
Other steps include “working safely for yourself, for your family, and your coworkers,” he says.
In the event of an emergency, Pinnacle has several protocols in place, such as confined space rescue and rescues from height.
“If we had to go into confined space, we’d always have a rescue team behind, depending on the space we went into,” Penno explains. “If it’s a space that we could rescue ourselves, we would practice getting the first aid equipment to the work platform, onto the lift and securing it, and then bringing it down to the ground and treating the person on the ground.”
For such rescues, Pinnacle hires outside agencies to provide training.
“No task at Pinnacle is so important or urgent that it can’t be done safely,” he adds.
Owning safety, every step of the way
This focus on safety extends far beyond the construction process. Pinnacle’s safety program, Owning Safety, is also a key part of the company’s safety culture, and has been implemented across all facilities.
“It really starts with our employees, with our Owning Safety program,” Reitsma explains. “It’s a cultural thing that we have made a core part of who we are. When we add people to our workforce, there’s a lot of focus on hiring people who want to live our values. And from there, we back that up with management, training and facilities which are designed to reflect those values.”
As part of the operations process at each plant, the managers perform a dust audit. “Every plant has a dust management tool, a check that they do every day going through the plant, checking for dust levels,” Penno elaborates. “It’s rated on a scale of one to five, five being clear of dust, four a minimal amount of dust, and if we ever hit two or three, that means you have to stop and get things clean.”
Employees at each plant are also encouraged to record observations, identifying hazards and recognizing other employees’ good safety practices.
All plants have emergency response plans in place, such as spill response and emergency evacuation protocols.
Thanks to the Owning Safety program and these best practices, Penno says “the workers are very in-tuned to the safety culture.”
Owning Safety also applies to the contractors Pinnacle work with.
“As we select contractors to work for us, we check that they are registered with WorkSafeBC and that they are insured. We check that the mobile equipment the contractors bring onto site are safety certified and we check that the workers they bring to the worksite are certified to do the work required of them,” Penno shares.
Technological safety
Of course, a big part of safety at a pellet plant is installing the proper safety equipment, and the Smithers facility features a range of them, such as explosion vents (including flameless ones) on the conveyors.
The flameless vents “pop open if there happens to be a pressure build up because of a deflagration inside of a conveyor,” Penno explains. “They’re engineered to quench the gas stream while directing the flow at such an angle that minimizes the chance of harm. This relieves the pressure in the conveyors so the conveyors don’t explode; just the explosion panel itself would pop.”
The conveyors and bins at the plant also feature CV Technology fire suppressant technology. According to Penno, “They sense a pressure change, and automatically inject a chemical compound into that conveyor that suppresses an explosion or fire before it can materialize.”
In the pneumatic conveyance system a spark detection system from Grecon detects and triggers a suppression of sparks with water.
Temperature sensors in the equipment also help prevent fires and explosions. “When a bearing starts to get hot, it alerts and shuts down the drive before we start having a fire,” Penno explains.
The facility also features cameras, bin level sensors and Sonic Aire dust control technology in the ceiling. The fans oscillate and turn in different directions, blowing air to keep dust from accumulating on high surfaces that workers may have difficulty cleaning.
Keeping the dust from accumulating is “one of our most important acts of owning safety,” says Penno, “as removing dust from our buildings reduces the risk or chance of a combustible dust explosion from occurring.”
What’s next?
In Penno’s experience, Pinnacle has come a long way with these safety practices.
When he joined the company in 2014, WorkSafeBC was concerned about safety at Pinnacle’s plants. But since creating the Owning Safety program, Pinnacle has been working hand-in-hand with WorkSafeBC, Penno says. In fact, he refers to Pinnacle and WorkSafeBC as “partners in safety.”
This focus on safety will only continue in the future as Pinnacle grows, Reitsma adds.
“Alongside of that, we continue to advance new projects that will increase our production capacity in line with the growth of the market that is set to maintain a 17 to 20 per cent year-over-year growth for the next five to 10 years,” he says.
Originally published in Canadian Biomass - all rights reserved.
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