Temporary Hire Solution Provides Effective Fume Control during Cruise Liner Maintenance Works

Project Overview

A&P Group is one of the largest ship repair and conversions specialists in the UK. With over 650 employees and two facilities in the UK based in Falmouth and Tyne, A&P has earned a reputation for delivering engineering strength across the commercial marine and defence sectors.

On this particular project, A&P had a cruise liner scheduled to dock for three weeks at Falmouth to carry out maintenance. Activities included hot works such as welding, cutting and grinding.

Challenge

During planning, it was identified a large amount of hot works were due to be carried out deep within the ship, presenting a health and safety challenge. Fumes from activities such as burning, cutting and grinding can quickly build up creating hazy, uncomfortable working conditions, and exposure to these fumes can lead to serious health affects for workers such as irritation of throat and lungs, asthma, and metal fume fever. Welding fume is classified as carcinogenic, which means that it has the potential to cause cancer.

With a good standing relationship with RVT Group, the Project Manager reached out for our expertise. One of our Defence consultants visited Falmouth to provide a free hazard control assessment. The Project Manager was then able to share drawings so RVT Group could advise a fully compliant, effective solution, tailored to A&P needs.

Solution

RVT Group put together a solution that ensured A&P were protecting its people, the surrounding environment, and complying with legislation. After agreeing the solution and set up with A&P, RVT Group engineers carried out the installation.

The solution consisted of the VENTEX^® Centrifugal Fan 200S-HP and DUSTEX^® SuperFilta 40. A&P wanted to minimise downtime as much as possible whilst the cruiser was docked, this solution supported this as the DUSTEX^® SuperFilta 40 features pulse-jet technology that means it self cleans, removing the need to manually change the filters.

Both the 200S-HP and SuperFilta 40 were situated on the dry dock on a temporary stand, with 80 meter long ducting being fed through the cruiser to the location where the hot works were being carried out. Even at 80m long, the duct velocity required for welding fume was still maintained. At the end of the ducting, we used welding capture hoods to extract the contaminants directly from the source with minimal fuss.

With an effective fume extraction system in place, RVT Group successfully supported A&P with the hot works carried out.