Walk safely on a locomotive with SPI Health and Safety

Walking on the rooftop of a railway car to perform maintenance work is not an easy task. In westerns and James Bond movies, we regularly see the actors running on the roof as the train is in motion. In reality, the risk of falling is high, even when the train is completely still!

SPI had received a request from a mining company that wanted to improve the safety of its employees’ work environment during railway car maintenance. We had to invent a fall arrest system. For Bruce Davis, Expert Advisor, Fall Protection at SPI, “it was a major challenge as the equipment had to offer a wide range of mobility.”

The FALL PROTECTION solution: a davit arm

Following the analysis of a number of different options provided by the workshop where the employees are working, Bruce Davis says that our SPI team chose “to use the beams from the workshop wall to install a series of motorised davit arms with 9 rail system.”

These davit arms could be positioned above the cars and offer the appropriate mobility. The only thing left to do was to secure the employee to the davit arm using a self-retracting lifeline for safe work conditions.

“As a team, we have analyzed this situation extensively in order to create this engineering system, explains Bruce Davis. We had to be very creative.”

Are you experiencing seemingly unsolvable health and safety problems at work? Ask SPI for help, this is the kind of challenge we are eager to face!