SGB-Cape, a division of WACO Africa, has devised an innovative solution which allows the installation of floating pontoons to support scaffolding within cooling towers.
A first of its kind, SGB-Cape’s patented solution has enabled SA’s largest energy and chemical company, to remain operational while maintenance work was undertaken inside the cooling towers.
Due to capacity constraints, shutting down the cooling towers for maintenance was not an option. Instead, SGB-Cape was able to erect scaffolding on floating pontoons inside the cooling towers. SGB-Cape has successfully completed three cooling towers since 2018 and currently commenced work on the fourth cooling tower project. Each cooling tower base typically covers 10 000m 2 . This innovative solution ensured the client could keep 80% of the cooling tower operational while repair work was performed on 20% of the tower.
Floating pontoons
Louis Naude, Divisional Director at SGB-Cape explained, “We came up with the idea of the building floating pontoons to allow us to erect scaffolding inside the cooling towers. It was such an exciting project to work on and we are very pleased with the results. We brought in thousands of square metres of floating pontoons that floated in the live cooling tower waters, and then erected 350 tons of galvanised scaffolding to gain stable access to the cooling trays at a height of 14m. At the peak of each cooling tower project, our staff on-site worked day and night shifts, every hour of every day, to ensure that the project was finished within the shortest amount of time to get the cooling towers 100% operational.”
He continues, “We are very proud of the fact that, in a very challenging environment there have been zero serious safety incidents since the work commenced on the first cooling tower back in 2018.”
SGB-Cape’s service on the project includes:
- Special design of floating scaffold (registered IP)
- Installation of floating pontoon base
- Erecting, modifying and dismantling scaffolding inside the cooling tower on the floating pontoon
- Erecting crash decks outside the cooling tower to safely enable maintenance work on the outside of the cooling tower
- Sandblasting of columns inside the cooling tower for inspection purposes. This enabled the client to reduce the cleaning process by 2-3 days per section compared to high pressure water blasting
- Installation of Lifelines and Anchor points inside the cooling tower by the SGB-Cape Rope Access technicians
- Installation and movement of netting inside the cooling tower by the same Rope Access technicians
- Emergency Rescue stand-by crews.
