“We have 70 employees here. So, it’s a lot of people to ensure understand what we’re trying to put out and to understand the safety process.” can. But with our dryers, for example, we can only put so much through them. They have a point where we can’t go any higher because of emissions,” Bedford says. “We are balancing meeting our production targets while also staying in compliance, we’ve basically put a ceiling on all of our temperatures and anything from the dryer that puts the WESP (Wet Electrostatic Pre -cipitator) at risk of being out of compli -ance. We’ve done multiple performance tests to get the balance right on production and emissions. Right now, where we sit is where we need to be as far as hitting compliance.” Safety is of utmost importance at Drax. The Burns Lake facility has a significant number of first aid trained employees on site anytime the plant is in operation. “We have Level 3 First Aiders on site. We do not run if we do not have a Level 3 on site,” Bedford says, adding that all em-ployees are required to do some comput-er-based training. The site also has a Joint Health and Safety Committee that works on safety initiatives and training. The staff have mandatory daily safety meetings. Paul Fletcher, HS&E manager for Drax’s Burns Lake and Meadowbank plants, focuses much of his time on push-ing compliance and performing safety audits on site. “It’s to help build that safety culture and make sure everybody understands the training, that everyone’s on the same page,” he says. “We have 70 employees here. So, it’s a lot of people to ensure un -derstand what we’re trying to put out and to understand the safety process.” To promote employee engagement related to safer operations, the plant’s central system allows employees to enter hazard IDs. “All employees have access to it. So, if they see something out in the field that they feel is a concern, they put in the haz-ard ID in the same place we do our inves -tigations. They can see our investigations, any of our observations, which we require weekly,” van Wyk explains. “Our plant management teams do multiple observa-tions and audits throughout the week in the same system. It’s one system where all of our safety documentation goes.” Drax has also put a system in place where the company’s various production plant safety teams in the region can com-municate with each other. “We have a really good system within our plants,” Bleay says. “Our plant man-agers are all connected through a com-munications program for HS&E (Health, Safety & Environment), making sure everybody’s on the same page when it comes to what is going on at other plants. As well, all the guys have lockout/tagout. Everything from the first aid to health and safety systems are connected across the board. Our operations team has noticed a palpable increase in safety from the pre-Drax days.” Drax going above and beyond for in -stalling explosion mitigation and protec-tion is something that every employee appreciates, noting that many employees have been around long enough to have seen the side effects of not having these systems in place. “We’ve also seen the reaction by hav -ing them in place. Having put the money – and its millions of dollars – into vent-ing, bottle, suppression, on all of our con-veyance and detection, the safety side of things has gone a long ways,” he says. • Combustible Dust Specialists NFPA68 NFPA69 NFPA77 NFPA91 NFPA499 NFPA654 NFPA664 Allied brings 49 years experience to help you meet current NFPA Standards with: system design/documentation, spark detection, isolation, grounding, PLC, venting, blast path management, clean-up systems and duct audits — CWB certified and member SMACNA. Sawmill – Biomass – Boardplants – Pulp & Paper – Power Generation – Mining www.alliedblower.com Phone: 800-576-3611 Surrey,BC Vernon,BC WilliamsLake,BC Edmonton,Alberta PrinceAlbert,Sask Mobile, Alabama 50 years of Industrial Air Systems CFI_AlliedBlower_JanFeb24_MLD.indd 1 Canadian BIOMASS 2024-01-23 1:51 PM 21
Canadian Biomass Spring 2025: Page 21
