Stair / Ladders / Walkways Inspections

The Challenge

As part of the guidance under the GENSIP regulations aimed at coal fired power stations, a requisite is to maintain the condition of all accessways to avoid injury or death from operatives using stairs, ladders, and walkways, especially those that are used infrequently and out of site/out of mind. The challenge was for GGP to check every one of them and report back.

The Solution

GGP Consult have an inspection team set up to inspect all assets. This is done on a three-year programme, and no asset should fall beyond four years between inspections. 

The previous inspectors had undertaken the surveys, by sending numerous inspectors at specific points in the time frame. GGP immediately got to work in altering this to allow a constant number of assets to be inspected per month and flatten out the process to be continual over the three years. This meant interrogating the previous surveys to identify which order to undertake them, and make sure that our new approach didn’t let any assets fall foul of the four-year re-inspection criteria. 

The inspections were done by travelling to every single asset, recording the status on a spreadsheet and including photos of any defects. The spreadsheet was setup to give every asset a unique alphanumeric code to indicate its location on site, and within a building/structure. 

Toughbooks are used to populate the spreadsheet while out on site and take (and store) photo as required. The spreadsheet has predetermined items to inspect, with drop-down menus for defects arising, and the option for the inspector to write text for issues beyond the standardised entries.

Each month GGP have a meeting with Drax to monitor progress and discuss any issues (health & safety, outages, access, RAMS etc).

The Result

GGP finished the first round of surveys with a couple of months spare on the three-year target. 

With all parties happy with progress and results, GGP retendered and successfully won a second round on inspection which will continue until the end of 2024. 

In all this has been an excellent project for GGP and Drax Power, with safety taking precedent.

This project allowed GGP to increase their Inspection team size and expand out into other clients.