OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 33
R
obb Parrott had seen enough. After
spending 20 years as an operator in the
oil and gas industry, he had witnessed
multiple incidents, near misses and
honest mistakes where flanges were
taken apart when they were still live
and under pressure. The final straw was
an accidental release at the plant where
Parrott worked that left a colleague with serious burns on
his face and neck. He was in the hospital for weeks.
"He pulled a part of a line that was just over 200 C, 1500
kPa pressure and it was pretty much the heaviest tar we had.
It sprayed everywhere. It was just a little one-and-a-half
inch line; it was nothing," says Parrott. "(But) it was the
closest we had seen without a fatality. We couldn't believe
the guy lived."
The solution put in place at the multinational oil and
gas company was terrible, Parrott says.
"They changed our whole safety protocol. They tried to
roll out something that was safe to the nth degree and they
rolled it out too fast, and this whole thing they tried to...
cover it with paperwork, so it just became a nightmare," he
says. "This happened at a world-class facility with multiple
levels of safety. It still is. It's a really safe place to work —
one of the safest places I have ever worked — and this still
happened there."
Discouraged by the company's solution, Parrott got
together with a couple of co-workers to brainstorm a better
way to stop these types of incidents.
"We knew for sure there had to be a physical barrier. Just
like the locks on the electrical breaker," says Parrott. "So the
three of us, we went into my garage with a MIG welder and
a beer fridge."
They came up with the flange lock: a metal device that
goes across the flanges and securely attaches to nuts on
either side that the worker locks in place with his padlock.
New
lockout
device
hoping
to
put
an
end
to
pipefitter
injuries
By Amanda Silliker
PHOTO:
INTEGO
INDUSTRIAL
SAFETY