WALSH / ATKINSON JV
USA
Balancing Logistics and Safety When you are essentially building a 27-story building straight down into the ground , with every person and material coming in and out through two shafts , managing logistics is vital for maintaining efficiency as well as workplace safety . Workers are at high risk , and conditions must be monitored for issues like dust and hazardous gas . The Walsh Group has had to employ several practices at the Easterly Tunnel Dewatering Pump Station project to keep workers safe and production humming along .
“ We have two cranes onsite , and all the access is done by these two cranes , so we have a ‘ brass in , brass out ’ safety board ,” explains Weitzel . “ If anybody ’ s going down into the shafts or the caverns or the tunnel , we have a brass tag to show that they ’ re in there . Then if something were to happen safety-wise , we can identify who ’ s not accounted for and go find them or figure out where they are and what happened . Everyone ’ s on the brass board and , when they ’ re going into the hole , we lower them down with a man cage . We have schedules for who ’ s working where and when , and we follow those as best we can .”
The Walsh Group also maintains a core group of workers specifically trained in rescue operations , a practice that has also served the company well on other projects including the recent Black River Tunnel project . “ We have a rescue team in place , ten or twelve of us , trained for getting anybody out of the cavern shaft or tunnel ,” says Weitzel . “ We have to maintain that throughout the job as one of our core safety issues .”
Building Relationships on Trust Any major multimillion-dollar municipal project is likely to employ more than one contractor or subcontractor , and the Tunnel Dewatering Pump Station project is no exception – The Walsh Group has been working continuously alongside Atkinson Construction our JV partner , ( who performed mining operations ) and Subcontractors like , ESI , Ductfab , and Ricman Construction throughout the project . Building strong relationships with subcontractors is just as critical to a successful finished product
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