Load & Haul

Ken Andrews: A passion for safety

Ken Andrews was awarded the prestigious international Caernarfon Award by the Institute of Quarrying in 2010, in recognition of the presentation he has given at IQA branch meetings and seminars across the country about his passion for safety ? particularly, in the area of fluid power safety ? and his personal experiences that illustrate why proper care and precautions in this area should be non-negotiable.
On 31 July, 2004, Ken worked an overnight shift, attending to tools and maintenance equipment. He specialised in diesel engines and fluid power at the time. ?I was carrying out replacement of a rope sheave on our dragline bucket rigging,? he explains. ?A part of the task was to ensure the bearings in the sheave wheel were adequately greased. The service truck driver and I could not get grease to come out of the bearing housing, so I loosened a grease nipple about one-sixth of a turn to see if we could get grease to come past the threads.
?After loosening the nipple, I stood back for a short time and looked down on the nipple, shining light on it with my cap lamp. There was a loud bang, and the grease nipple was fired out of the sheave, striking me in the safety glasses and destroying them. Following the grease nipple, a stream of high pressure grease and air was expelled from the sheave, which shot me in the face and into my right eye.?
The impact of the grease stream was so great it shattered the bones around Ken?s eye and socket, destroyed the eye completely and forced pieces of bone on to his brain. 
?It was not realised for about 10 hours that I had suffered penetration to the brain,? explains Ken. ?A doctor spotted cranial fluid leaking from my eye socket, something that was missed during the initial assessment of my condition. At that point, I had been in triage for 10 hours. It took an additional five hours to form a team to operate on me.?
The 11 hour procedure that ultimately saved Ken?s life required surgeons to remove a section of his skull in order to clean out the grease and remove the embedded fragments of bone. They were astonished that his brain had suffered no major damage.
Due to the loss of his right eye and damage done to his hearing, Ken has not been able to return to working with equipment. Despite the traumatic ordeal that hospitalised him for 14 days, Ken returned to a limited office work role after just 16 days, and after another two weeks, he returned to working full time hours in a support role within the maintenance department, managing projects, lending tech support and undertaking failure analysis. This is a role he continues to occupy to this day.
An investigation into the incident, undertaken by Ken?s employer and the NSW Department of Primary Industry (now Industry & Investment NSW – or I&I NSW), ruled that no blame could be apportioned to Ken or his employer. The explanation for why the grease nipple and the grease were fired out at such high velocity remains uncertain, but was attributed to the large volume of compressed air and grease in the sheave, at 4200 psi. Ken was deemed to have extensive knowledge of the dangers of fluids under pressure and had explained the hazards to the person working with him. He had assessed the risks of dealing with grease under pressure, and suffered the misfortune of being ?in the line of fire when it all went wrong?.
TOOLBOX TALK
Upon returning to full time work, Ken was encouraged by his general manager to put together a toolbox talk that would educate the company?s workforce about the dangers of high pressure fluids. The toolbox talk evolved to address the hazards of hydraulics and hydraulic tooling, as well as the dangers of high pressure water blasters, compressed air and the increased dangers to mechanics from high pressure common rail fuel systems.
After telling NSW IQA branch committee member Jim Gardner about the incident, Jim proposed that Ken share his experiences with members as a guest speaker at an IQA dinner. It wasn?t long before Ken found himself speaking nationally at IQA dinners and seminars, and the response has been, in Ken?s words, ?overwhelming.?
?From the positive feedback I have received,? says Ken, ?members are very keen to improve safety in the areas of fluids under pressure at all their sites. Most members had a total lack of knowledge of the dangers and hazards before my presentation.?
In his presentation, Ken seeks to raise his audience?s awareness of precautions and procedures that need to be enforced by those working with fluids under pressure, and makes the dangers abundantly clear. He emphasises the need for workers in maintenance roles to be sufficiently knowledgeable about this unique hazard.
?They need to be able to recognise that damaged or leaking hoses and components are a time bomb,? Ken stresses. ?Maintenance of machinery by trained personnel needs to be a priority. Maintainers need to have experience and knowledge to recognise the hazards and to carry out quality maintenance; the company?s maintenance strategies must allow for scheduled hose change outs and the use of tested hoses.?
UNDER-REPORTING OF INCIDENTS
The other serious issue that Ken?s presentation raises is the alarming problem of under-reporting of accidents involving pressurised fluids. ?Within the mining industry there is a good recognition of the hazards presented,? he explains. (DPI statistics show that there were 746 incidents reported between December 2006 and January 2009.)
?This is promoted strongly by the I&I inspectors and the Machine Design Guidelines (MDG) 15 and 41 they have developed to award standards for fluid power systems; all mines are challenged to have fluid power management systems in place.?
However, Ken worries about the level of incident reporting in other industries. ?Outside the mining industry the dangers of pressurised fluids receive little promotion. When someone gets caught there is no communication mechanism to share lessons learned from the incident. If there is a death, we may hear about it briefly through the media, but when it then gets tied up in the legal system we are unlikely to discover anything more about the incident.?
The overall message that Ken seeks to convey is one of knowledge and understanding. He recommends that all quarry managers and maintenance managers obtain a copy of MDG15 and MDG41 from I&I NSW to use as a basis for their standards for machine build and maintenance.
He adds that any tradesman or operator who works with fluid power systems should ? at least ? have basic hydraulic training.
 
?Unfortunately most basic training does not go far enough, unless the trainer has had some experience with injury,? Ken laments.
As someone who experienced a serious injury from fluids under pressure, Ken?s message carries an extra poignancy. Not only does he understand the nature of the hazard, his first-hand experience adds a compellingly emotive element to what he has to say.
Such is the impact of his presentation, Ken received the Atlas Copco Award in 2009 for the best technical paper presented at an IQA meeting or seminar. A year later, he received the Caernarfon Award, presented annually for the best paper given at an Institute of Quarrying conference, seminar or meeting anywhere in the world that is judged to have contributed most to the advancement of some aspect of the industry, technical, environmental, strategic or otherwise.
But as proud as he is to receive such recognition, accolades are not what drives Ken to educate workers and employers about the seriousness of the danger to which they are potentially exposed. ?I don?t do this for the rewards,? he says. ?I do it in the hope I can prevent one person ? or hopefully more ? from enduring the serious injuries that can be inflicted by fluids under pressure.?

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