CaseStudies-Header-JVD.jpg

ITI Showcase Webinar Archive

Heavy Intermodal Lift & Transport - Engineering Considerations

Heavy Intermodal Lift & Transport - Engineering Considerations

Enjoy the resources!  You will find the presentation pdf, video, and transcription of the webinar below. This webinar originally aired live on Thursday, June 7, 2012.

  • Guest Speaker:  Jim Yates, P.E., SVP of Engineering & Technical Services, Barnhart Crane & Rigging

Agenda

  • The Need for Engineering
  • Lift Planning & Method Statements
  • Ship & Dock Considerations
  • Environmental Considerations
  • Load Handling Equipment
  • Rigging Arrangement, Capacities, and CoG
  • Transport (Barge, Rail, Trailers)
  • Q&A

 

Downloads:

 

TRANSCRIPTIon

Zack: All right, hello everybody. My name is Zack Parnell; I’m the VP of operations here at ITI. I want to welcome you all here, we’re probably going to having some folks entering the proverbial room here, as we get started, but, I want to just introduce our speakers they are really excited to be doing this today, we had about 3 of these webinars, and I’ll kind of go over that, but, the host Mike Parnell is the ITI president CEO. We’ve invited the Jim Yates, to speak today. He’s a senior VP of engineering and technical services at Barnhart Crane and Rigging. And the reason we did this, with the whole  purpose of the ITI showcase webinar series, is to bring  in sight, and just, cool information and cool presentations to our customers, and friends and prospects, and different folks that are trying to learn about ITI, or know about ITI. We have a lot of, I know Mike and Jim will probably touch on some of the folks in the room, and I think we have about 300 folks registered for this event, and probably very excited to see Jim speak, and, I’m going to toot his horn too much, and make him all nervous. He’s a great guy, you guys really have got to know him and meet them. He’s going to be speaking basically on Heavy Intermodal Lift and Transport. I saw this presentation in December, at Mobile Alabama, at the Maritime Lifting Workshop, that we put on with Barnhart. And it was just an awesome, awesome presentation.

Just to get in really quick into the presentation and who ITI is, if you never heard of us. We really focus on the area Crane, Rigging, Training, Consulting, through a bevy of industries, with operations in Canada, and the US, also Brazil, and Peru. And we’re working in Singapore, and Egypt specific quite of bit. We’re working on a few opportunities, at East and the West Africa.

The neat thing about what we do is a lot of costumers obviously come from the variety of backgrounds, industries, from aerospace to wind energy, as you can see here.

And, I’m not going to spend too much time on this, but, you’ll kind of see, who were about, you know as we go through this presentation with Jim and Mike, will be on the Presentation as well. Lot of the world leading companies come to us for this very specific training and advance rigging and lifting applications as well as crane operations etc.

To do a little bit of background, before we get started. There is some past presentations you all can go and view as well. Today is obviously Heavy Intermodal Lift and Transport. We’ve done 3 presentations that are recorded on website, that you can go view, and also download the Power Points. Those are on top there, past presentations. And also in the next 3 month we are pretty excited about the upcoming presentations, regarding the Master Rigger Course, Lift Planning Considerations, and then ASME B30, and P30.

So, let me present pretty quick the guy that are going to be chat with you today. This is Mike Parnell; he’s got over 30 years of experience, in the rigging industry. He and Jim both are very involved with ASME. Mike is the Vice Chairman of the ASME B 30, Main Committee, and the P30, which a lot of you might not heard about , is the committee for lift planning, it’s very , it’s a new committee, Mike  probably will touch on it, little bit. I believe Jim is involved in that one as well.

And then Jim Yates, very neat background, he’s going to be speaking to local presentation today, and again this is his presentation, but he’s actually US Naval Academy graduate, and BS in Aerospace Engineering. And he was in the navy for 7 years, as a Nuclear Navy Officer. And then, he was working at Tennessee Valley Authority, for the 7 years, during the 90’s. And earned the Senior Reactor Operator License and I’ve never heard the full story, he might enlighten us little bit, how he came to enjoy Barnhart but he is really a master mind of lot of their critical lifts, and you guys will see what they do. They are a pretty amazing company, and in how they operate, and the things that they accomplished. So, a really neat fact is they are 25 time winners of the Rigging Job of the Year Award (while Yates has been at Barnhart). That’s given out by the SC& RA.

So, with no further ado, I’m want to turn it over to Jim, he’s going to basically take over the presentation here, and we’re going to take questions as they come in, you guys can post questions to the discussion board, and then Mike and Jim will be handling them at the end of presentation. So, take it away Jim.

Jim: Alright well thanks, Zack, for your kind introduction, and also thank you for the opportunity to continue share knowledge, and information about the industry. As many of you guys know, a vast majority of heavy equipment of, like generators transformers and heavy wall vehicles, are manufactured overseas now, which means they’re arriving in the US, some port. And then it got to be trans located to other means, like barges or heavy transport as a rail, to reach its final destination.

And, so, we designed this presentation to cover the engineering considerations associated with this intermodal movement of this type of equipment. So, the outline we’re going to be covered today is the need for engineering for these types of moves, or going to cover the boundaries which we’re going to, of the topic itself. Now I’m going to go in Engineering Consideration associated with things like the lift plan, the heavy lift ship, environmental consideration, we are going to taking, you know lift plans, we’re going to talk about the load handling equipment, or what they call LHE now. The rigging associated with webs, and then the transport of the equipment itself, whether it’s by barge, or rail, or heavy lift trailers.

And then last thing I want to cover is real quick topic called Management of Change. Heavy Loads require additional diligence to ensure safe delivery. It isn’t like, in lot of the plants and factories where they basically skill the craft lift plans, and go on every day, by skilled ironworkers, or maybe steel doors. And just every day both freight type of activities. When you lift the heavy load, you really have a lot more things to take into consideration. Things that we all might take for granted, like dock strength; it’s got to be evaluated. A proper engineering analysis is going to help us to prevent accidents associated with these types of heavy equipment that comes into the US in these ports. Also known just as a little side note, here, you see my friend here been lifted up, because they messed up the center of gravity. Here in our company we have a thing we like say; we don’t want to look like “Fido” with the rear end up when we do our lifts. Obviously we want to be safe, but we also don’t want look silly. And you can see, these guys over here, having a “Fido” moment, as they loaded their car too much, and actually pick their prime mover off the ground.

Heavy marine lifting/transport is very large topic, and, I want to try a set a boundary for what we’re going to talk about. We could literally spend days, discussing all the elements that really need to be considered. So, what we’re going to meant today, is we’re going to limit our discussion to just meet the engineering its associate with heavy cargo usually that’s the equipment, like heavy load vehicles, or generators; from offload from a ship, to transporter or rail. We’re not going to consider all the things associated with offshore maritime lifting, or things lifting at Open Ocean or even underwater lifting environments, even all those things making in a place sometimes, when you’re talking about maritime work. We’re also not going to get into the operational considerations either. We’ve got a lot of things under the engineering to consider when you’re developing a lift plan; we’re not going to involved those. I’ll touch some of them, but mainly I’m going to focus on engineering associated with the work that we‘re talking about.

First engineering consideration really is the lift plan itself. And, all heavy maritime lifting and transportation really does require having a lift plan. The lift plan, that are lot of people now call Method Statements, or Project Plans. They should cover all the aspects of lifting and transport these here. And engineering, the thing we’re talking about today, is just one of the many aspects were covered in the Lift Plan. So, I’m not going to go into all the things of the Lift Plan, I’m just going to say, there should be complete comprehends of Lift Plan, associated with this type of heavy movement of this equipment. And engineering just one of the pieces that follow and play. There’s a lot of good guidelines out there, that talk about lift planning for maritime work, and for intermodal transport on Noble Denton, if you’re not familiar with them, it’s a tech service provider to the oil and gas industry, and they have written a lot of really good standards out there from everything, from tie down considerations, on no motion barges, to watch them be involved in proper lift plan for heavy equipment. There’s also 2 other organizations out there, that also had similar guidelines, the international Maritime Organization and International Maritime Contract Association, also if you go online, and Google look at some information they got some really good guidelines that are out there as well, for developing Lift Plan.

So the first, I’m on a Lift Plan, I’m still talking about specifics. Let’s start looking at what our Ship Considerations are going to be, and the engineering associated with it. I want talked about four areas. We’re going to look at LHE associated with the ship. We’re going to look at the position of the ship associate with this position on the dock, and then we’re going to talk about the ship stability, and then we’re going to look at some of the strength requirements, associate with these big heavy transport ships. Someone would call low load ships, and we’re going to look at the ramps. So a lot of the ships that coming to port, like this in here are equipped with heavy lift cranes, and derricks, in order to do lot of self-load and offload. You see here, we’re off load a pretty big piece here. The Load Charts, on these ships, it’s really needed to be reviewed in relation to the lift. And the set radius of the loads here, you’re working with more than ensured that the lift is planned within the capacity of the cranes, on the boat or the ship. If the ship is not equipped with an adequate LHE, then a lot of times, you’ve got to find alternate means to make the lift. And off to the ship, on to some other conveyors. I’m maybe required going to a port, where there’s already heavy lift crane, available, like this one here, this is the port of Mobile this is our barge crane. Or you may find, like Houston has got one as well, or the maybe a big dock side, or floating crane, that’s actually being use to service heavy lift ships that come into these ports.

What’s really important on these LHE on the ship, is the, that you look at the inspection and maintenance records, associate with the gear, to make sure is ready for service, a lot of these ships travel all over the world, thee is subject to a lot of environmental degradation, and in order to be safe, we really want to make sure that these ships are ready to make the lifts. So, inspections records, and maintenance records, are good to look at. And sometimes you may want to do a load test, if you got high risk lift, or something, you pick as one of the kind, or is got like very long lead time to replace if something should happen, we’ve done actually test lifts with the ships gear, to make sure that you’re ready to go, when you’re off load, your prized possession on that dock. What you see here is, here’s an accident that happened a couple years ago, I believe that was in port of Los Angeles, where the LHE load cable actually separated and hit, it had not been properly cared for, it parted the lines, and one of the two cranes dropped its end of the ship at end of the this big vessel fell on the dock. So, it’s really important to make sure that these inspection records, and a maybe load test is done, and to again prevent this kind of accident from happening.

The dock position is another thing that we look at, besides the LHE on these ships. If ship position, to be really critical, and making sure you got good lift efficiency. If you arrived to make good lift on, your trailer, your rail, whatever it is, and ship is in wrong position you got to reposition it. It can mean that you may have it be delayed, it cost money, so, in proper lift position can also invalidate that whole Lift Plan you just put together. A lot of coordination has got too happened between where you want to put the ship, in order to make a proper offer. You see down here, where my mouse is going to circle around, here, this lower left hand picture, that’s Big John down at the port of Houston, and their lift 325 metric ton, so for the covering unit. And you can see, he’s offloaded from the ship, and now he’s bringing it through to a barge. And all that positions is really important to make sure that dock side LHE, or shifts gear, position becomes a really big deal for these guys, so, we want to make sure to communicate once we figure out what the capacity of the LHE is on the ship, to make sure we actually position the ship so you can use the LHE properly whether is barge crane, like Big John, or something off the dock, or the ship itself.

Ship stability is another major consideration you have got to look at. In the ship stability, and these are very big vessels, we’re talking about a thousand tons moving off of the ship like this. You can run the problems if you’re not paying attention to your stability during the lift. You’ve seen those two pictures; those are both vehicles lay over a million pounds. And so, you can imagine as taking out the hole of the ship, and then start to bring that to dock. They’ve really got to spend a lot of time making sure that balance is correct, and all those things. Ship stability has got to be maintained the whole time here; because heavy loads can quickly affect the ship stability, to stay upright, during its lift. Usually the ship crews are going to determine about balance to plan, that maintain stability, but this plan should be part of your Lift Plan. It should be proper threated to get to get to the lift team. Sometimes if you got complicated or high risk lift, it’s a good idea to get a naval architect or the marine engineer to validate those plans. Here is a couple pictures I want to show you about the stability failures of a ship can be disastrous. This was an accident that happened in Albany New York, in December 2003. This ship was loading heavy components, power plant component, going out of our country somewhere else, and they lost control of the ship stability as this power plant equipment was getting on board the ship. You can see what happened, the pieces in the whole looks like they shifted, and it cause the boat to become unstable. And she tipped over and the three men who were on the boat, making these lifts were all killed. Ship stability is a very critical factor with these heavy, heavy loads that we’re talking about.

Let’s talk about the ship strength. For the sake of our discussion, I’m really just going to talk about the ramps strength. The ship within this picture here, is what is called a RO/RO ship or roll on roll off ship, and what it does, it allows you to take heavy loads directly from the dock onto the ship itself. And, lot of times, it’s safe to assume the ship owners already accounted  for the structural strength to support the heavy load, on the boat, while its transporting. And, so what the heavy transporting companies got to do when they take possession of the load is to communicate the loads, and they’re going to put on the ships gear. And mostly that’s dependent upon the gear that you’re going to use.

So, like in this case, on picture right here, platform trailers are the thing that are typically used ,for doing these high heavy load transports, off of these RO/RO ships. And so, depending on the number of the lines you’ve got on these things, these platform trailers, the axle loads, have got to be taken into consideration to be sure that the ramp design, isn’t invalid. And so, there’s lot of things that you can use to fix that if you use too small of the, transporter, it might be good for the load, but not good for the ramp. So, you can maybe put more axle lines underneath it to spread the load out better. But again, it’s got to be communicated very clearly with the ship, and the dock, because there are reactions on the dock that you got to consider. We talked about that little bit later in detail, but in this case that ramp has got a design limit and we want to make sure that we don’t overload the ramp. Another thing to note in this picture right here, you see around circle those beams, that these things sitting on. This is really not an engineering consideration, as much as it is a coordination note. A lot of times in order to save money the shipper and transport company can save our customers a considerable matter cost, by coordinate their efforts. In this case, what they did on that ship was they had it up on beams and stands. And so that allows this transport to drive directly underneath it,  and pick it up without  having to jack the load up, or spend a lot of time with alternate lifting gear picking up some transporting that come underneath it. So, this is a way of save to be efficient, in our moving of these big boats.

But another thing about the ship, we have got to consider a lot of environmental factors in our engineering considerations, and the thing we’re going to be looking at, are weather related environmental considerations, tidal/current affects, and  some environmental laws that are really impactful, in our operations.

So let’s look at the first environmental thing which is wind limits. Most LHE’s have got limits associate which where they can do conduct of operations. And that movable limit is based on particulars size and weight for a load. Lot of times it isn’t anywhere near the size, of like this vessel shown in this picture, when you’re talking about the very big vessel, with big sail areas. In that case, you may have to take special considerations. And this is where an engineering team can come in, and coordinate, and look at, the sail area, and the requirements of those side loads, that are big wind, when they cause those LHE’s, and make sure that the LHE’s have got a proper limit established for the lift to make sure that we don’t get into the trouble, with wind speeds.

You’ve also got wind limits you have got to consider when you’re doing environmental considerations for these heavy lifts. Wave height is definitely going to impact the ability of LHE to make the lift that the boat is moving around and in this case like this barge mounted crane here, they’re maybe some various limits given in the port for how high the waves are going to get. So, you have got to know those in advance, that’s a part of the Lift Plan, and   you want to be able to say: “Guys, here’s the limits of our wind, here’s the limits associated with wave actions that’s happening even inside the port for conductive of operations.”

Mike: Jim, we have a question from Jeff with ADP, on the experience exists for roll off barge unloading, on lake Michigan, and other great lakes, and this seems to be about the location where he might have some concerns of consideration, you might comment on that question, please.

Jim: Yes, that’s good point Mike. If I understand right, some of the considerations on the great lakes for, maybe roll off, or for unloading the ships and inner the great lakes there’s lots of thing you have to consider because even though this is lake it’s anything but a lake. If you guys been up in that area, and been on the great lakes, there are consider Open Ocean. And, so, everything from the tie down restrictions, which I’m going to talk about little later, to the transport engineering associated with deck strength and things, all has to be open ocean, so that’s one of the consideration you have got to have and the weather up there has really got to be look at in detail. Plus you also have other things around the great lakes to be considered like how to actually get into the great lakes, whether you coming into the St. Lawrence waterway which is big, or maybe you’re coming up to the Mississippi and you got bridge areas that have low hanging bridges, like Vermont bridge moving into the great lakes up into the Chicago area, and then you’ve got considerations associated with the beaches themselves. Some of them are very shallow; we had to consider moving a reactor out of big rock point above the thumb area Michigan. And you couldn’t get the barge in there, because the water was so shallow. So, great lakes do take a little bit more thought than just your basic roll off at the dock, because there are very many heavy off load areas in the great lakes, there are very few docks that were designed for doing heavy transport. And, so all these things that we’re talking about here have to come to very clean focus upon the great lakes areas. I hope that I answered your question.

Mike: Yes, thanks Jim.

Jim:  All right, other than wave restrictions, the other thing we got to look at from these one more coming into ports, or moving things up rivers and wherever we’re taking our piece off loaded, is tidal and current conditions. But timing of the lifting and transport operations can be critical in some of these areas, like we had a lift up in Maine, where the tide was swinging in a day it would move anywhere from 8 to 10 feet. With that type of tidal movement, you really have to consider things like your mooring, and your water depth becomes really critical; as well as station keeping, because with that kind of tidal swing, we also have some very strong currents going on. And so as you are trying to roll off, the last thing you want is to roll off the barge where the back end is moving around, and then you’ve got real disaster on your hands where you can actually drop the load. And, so, all these things really got to be considering, heavily in your engineering.

Okay, environmental restrictions also with local environmental laws is a big deal to look at. A lot of the ports in US now has rules associate with ballast discharge. We talked about, ports in US that have rules associate with ballast discharge. Engineers got to know these rules because a lot of times you got to consider the ballast position for these barges. So you are going to be dealing with water during roll off, or roll on, which becomes part of the barge considerations that we’re going to talk about later. So, knowing what the rules are in these local areas is important.

The things that are important to note about these rules is, sometimes you can take on water at one port and you can’t discharged it to another port which is a big deal. So, you want to make sure, and you know those rules, so when you get, like if you’re coming into the Port of Mobile, and you want going to go off load up in the great lakes, there is restriction associated with the water strengths, or moving those bodies water to another. So you have to do all you’re ballasting in Mobile and leave all the water in it. You want to make sure you’re ballasting for your load off before you get there.

Let’s talk about common LHE considerations. Now that we are done with our environmental let’s go to the LHE itself. These would be more, not the ships LHE’s, but things like our barge mounted cranes and things. Let’s talk about load charge and equipment configurations; pretty common to all LHE’s regardless for what you use it, when you’re looking on water and you may have a local requirement, or you may for sake of conservatism want to consider dynamic affects in your Lift Plan. And some of those can be pretty considerable, if you start looking at 10 percent dynamic impact factor on your load and the load is really big, you can push yourself away from one size of crane, into a whole other category, which might be considerable amount of cost to the end user, who’s actually paying for the services. And, so, also there may be some local restrictions, a lot of refineries nowadays, will limit how much of the chart they’re going to allow you to use, so you need to know those things, before you do your engineering plan. Now, let’s keep going, on the equipment configuration another thing to consider here, you’ve got the jibs, and counterweight, on the cranes are different. I am going to pick back up, and get into some of the Common Port LHE Considerations. I want to talk about load charts, we’ve already mentioned that we want to take any considerations things, like static, and dynamic effects, associated with our lift. Sometimes it has to be more conservative depending on where you are making your lift. It might also has the local restrictions on the charts capacities, a lot of refineries are now require of us to limit on how much we can bring our chart capacity up to. We may also considering things like equipment configurations; you might have a jibs or different counterweight configuration, you might multiple cranes making a lift, and then lastly you want to consider things like your clearance. Those would be things like the load itself, you may not have much clearance to swing, the LHE itself may have a swing clearance issues.

All right. Another thing to look at is the load support for mobile cranes. Let’s say you have got a ship that’s coming in and you are going to use a local mobile crane for doing your off load. You really need to look at the docks to make sure that they are going to be analyzed for their ability to support these high loads. Lot of times these docks have very restricted limits, maybe like to drive across them, when you bring in a big mobile crane, you can have more than 10 times the normal load that that dock has yet to see in a very concentrated area. And, so, this is something you got to analyze and look at. Sometimes the docks have got data provided for them, other times you have to go out and get a structural engineering firm to take a look at the dock itself, you have to make sure that you hit the strong points of docks, and don’t punch through it. Sometimes you may even have to have special load spreading means, design, like you can see on this crane over here; these got some load spreaders underneath. Although those are pretty small, if it was a really restrictive dock, you might have to have a very elaborate load spreading scheme associated with it. So punching failures like this one here, are common accidents for mobile cranes, because a lot of time we don’t consider, like in this case here, he’s fallen on through the deck of a parking garage, but if they don’t consider it properly, these big cranes put down a very high ground load, and they can punch right through the deck of a dock, pretty easily, so you have to be careful of that. That is one of those accidents that is preventable if you do proper engineering.

So on our LHE considerations, whether the LHE is part of a delivery ship, like in the upper left hand corner, or barge mounted crane, or a mobile crane, you can see that planning is really need to ensure that these lifts come off accident free.

Now we’re going to turn our attention to rigging considerations from maritime lifts. So, engineering may be required for non-routine lifting operations, and then lift or transports consider high risk. So we’re not talking about the normal operations here, we’re talking about the things that are much more elaborate. So we’re going to consider the rigging arrangement itself, the lift point, capacity on the thing you lifting, the center of gravity location, and have the effects on lift, and off course  then the dynamic effects ,also need to be consider when we’re looking at our rigging.

So, the rigging arrangement like the one shown on this drawing, on these two pictures right here. Some of our equipment that we picking up, this is a gate used down in New Orleans for flood control. And it has a very odd CG some very odd lifting arrangements, so you can see up in up in this right hand corner, you see that really interesting rigging arrangement, associated with it, it’s all designed to make sure that we get over the center of gravity, so, lot of times you’re going to require some advance rigging techniques, in order to perform this lift. And this is where engineers comes in to validate its safety.

The other thing we look at is the lift point capacity. Lot of times the loads ability to support its own weight, or in a special rigging scenario, may not been consider on the manufacture was make it like this real like here, those things are made and usually not lifted, so you have special lifting attachments and arrangements that have got to be made, to pick these big real up like this. This is where engineering comes in, and takes a look at the structure ability of the lift point and load, to adequately support those loads that are imposed by the rigging.

All right, you know other than the weight the CG location is the other most important thing that rigging has got to be considered. As you know, also besides big vessels coming into the US, lot of times people building their power plants, or their refineries, use modular construction. You can see that crane right there, it’s going to get ready to pick up the module that was built in Maine, and then transported down to Houston. And so, determining the center of gravity, and then picking the piece up with a single hook point, you can see how elaborate that rigging gets to make sure that your hooks stays over the center of gravity. So, off set CG locations make the rigging quite a challenge. This is again where engineering comes in, and develops these really elaborate rigging points, and rigging techniques. And a lot of times you’re going to spend an extra amount of cost associate with just determining the CG’s location, like in every case when they building these modules right here, shown on this picture, when that module gets built what they do is they come in and have a company like ours, and another company like ours come in and weight these modules and they will determine the location of the center of gravity in such that they can position these specialized rigging directly over it, so you make sure you’ve got a nice level pick. So you also have to consider, maybe it’s not just four or three lift points like in this case we see six lift points, and again, the rigging consideration becomes a really big deal. We talked a little bit about CG; the other thing you got to consider is the control of the center of gravity. I’m going to show you a film that shows a crew's failure to maintain the center of gravity control during a lift in the air; you’re going to see what happens, because of that problem here.

Video: “Wilmington, North Carolina, this southern port city founded in the 1839 was the stronghold for the confederate army during the civil war. Here the actors help to recreate the tourists. Today workers are in the process of replacing the civil war monument. Thing get off on the wrong foot, when the several thousand pound monument swings through some power lines .Fortunately no injuries or damage occur. Moments later, workers make a second attempt. But the grand slam seems to be too heavy for the crane. Workers scramble as the crane teeters on the verge of collapse. The crane crumbles over, dropping the monument onto a trailer. It rips through electrical lines and tears down power poles.  The collapse was caused by a failed support system. The legs, called out riggers were not fully secured to the ground. As the cranes cab recoils from the impact, the operator tumbles out through a broken window and walks away without the scratch.  But the crane, two power poles, a car, and a wall originally built in the 1840 aren't so lucky. The monument itself isn’t damage, and it is eventually put in place, after a new crane is brought it.”

Jim: And that’s a pretty horrific accident, you can see there, just not understanding how to control the load, now the reason that reporter gave was incorrect. They just got the center of gravity outside the stability of the crane and tipped it over. So, again, control with the rigging is a really, really important thing. You can see where that that one got away from them.

Other things we’re going to consider are dynamic effects on our rigging. We already talked a little bit about the dynamic effects associated with making lifts with LHE, now let’s talk a little bit about our rigging. Lot of times again like with our LHE, you’ve got to consider impact factors .When we start talking about impact factors on lift water, where lifts are on water, you’re basically  saying you’re going to factor up your rigging to account for that. You also may want  to consider  things like, as it is, on shore lift, sheltered waters, open ocean, again, just like the LHE you got to consider all those things as you make the determination or whether or not you’re going to apply these dynamic effects to your rigging scheme. And again, just like on the LHE’s, if you got multiple LHE’s involved in the rigging, you got additional risks that need to be consider in your engineering plan. And there is some good Noble Denton guidelines for these suggested dynamic impact factors on the rigging as well as the LHE. All right, now, we’ve been talking about rigging, and we also noted that how you control the piece with the range, is really important, so, one of the first courses I’ve took in a journeyman rigger classes, had to do with hitch selection, and making  sure that the hitches that you’ve chose, were proper for controlling load. So, now I need to, to make sure that you got good control of the center of gravity, but you got good control of load itself. Whenever your rigging below the center of gravity of a piece, you have special considerations that need to be made. And so, I got a film that I want to show you next, that shows what happens when your rigging considerations are not fully headed. And you have to look at all the things associated with it. I want to show you film that shows the crane that’s been lifted with a ship board LHE transport in a mobile crane, onto the ship itself. And one of the things that I want you to notice from the start, if you can follow my arrow here, all they’ve done here for rigging is they’ve taken the rigging down to the outriggers themselves, and they are going up through a shackle, underneath this spreader bar, and  it’s single continuous sling, on both ends of the piece. Now, we’ve got recognize the center of gravity of this crane is above those pick points.  And they didn’t select the rigging correctly, and so, now we’re going to watch what happens because of their poor selection.

(Video-Poor rigging practices can lead to accidents)

I don’t know if you can hear, but the guy walking by says: “Unbelievable!” And it really is, that they chose such poor rigging to make that lift, so, again rigging has got some really more important things, if you have got a really high value item, this is where the engineered lift plan, makes a big difference to make sure it’s fully headed before we go to the field, and end up with an accident like we just saw. Okay, we’ve considered the lift plan, we’ve consider the shift, we‘ve looked at the environmental things, we’ve looked at LHE, we’ve looked at the rigging, now we’re going to take a look at the transporter considerations.

And what I’m talking about is, the ship to the barge, the things you got to consider there, as you move from the ship itself, or might be ship directly to rail, or might be ship to trailer. In each one of those transfers has some unique things we have to look at before we do them. So the first one I’m going to talk about is the barge considerations; we’re going to look at the strength of the barge, its deck, also the global strength, and also going to look briefly at stability of the barge, then we got some considerations, if we’re going to do roll on, roll off, on the barge itself, the issues associated with position keeping, and then, of course load staging and transport securement, we’re going to briefly talk about each one of those.

So, let’s look at the barge deck considerations, first. Many of these barges are designed for various uses. You may have a barge one day hauling rock on its deck, and next day it’s got a transformer on it. Well, you know, they can’t anticipate every load, and so many of these barges have high deck strengths, some of them do not. And because of that you have to consider the deck strength when you are getting ready to load heavy piece on it. And, so, the barge has got to be strong enough to support the loading conditions for the operation which you’re getting ready to do. So, things like this load spreader that we show over here, this is designed to have a column from modules sitting right in the middle of it, and it’s the deck strength is not heavy enough to take that point load, so, what you do is you make these spreaders, that allows the column of the module to sit directly down on top of this, and not punch the deck out, of the bottom. You also, may need to consider the fact if you’re taking into open ocean, like you’re taking it from New York, to New Orleans, you’re going to go around Florida, now that’s open ocean tow, and so therefore you have to consider that you might even have uplifts associated with these high wave actions, and so, a lot of times the deck and the barge can take the download, but it cannot take the upload, in other words, you just spill the deck of the barge directly off of it. So, what we do, we use these spreaders to spread up that load, and make sure that barge deck doesn’t come unglued or come apart on you. Now, now you have to consider the deck strength, but you’ve also got to consider the global strengths of the barge. That’s a 800 ton [veddel] on a relatively small barge, and you may want to make sure that the load that you put on that barge including the ballast that you’re putting in the barge for transport, don’t create the situation where the global strengths of the barge is jeopardized, where you actually break your barge in half. There’s actually been scenarios where they’ve actually torn the barges up, because the load just put too much of a stress on the global part of the barges structure. By now we do considered the strength of the barge, globally and the deck, but we also want to look at the stability of the barge, and this is a very important factor for us. The stability analysis is required to show the barge is able to support the load, in the expected travel area. So, again, you got to consider where it’s going, is it going to be in inland tow, where you have very small transport forces, and small seas to deal with, or you going to take it around the Cape of Good Hope, where you had massive potential marine forces that are going to be imposed on your load. Open ocean tows obviously have to count for very large wave action, so stability is a major concern to prevent the loss of the barge and the piece. Of course your ballasting plan for loading and traveling is got to be developed as part of our lift plan.

This is where structure analyses by an engineer is going to keep you out of trouble. So, now let’s also consider roll on, roll off consideration with this barge. If I come up to, you know, I trans loaded the piece on the barge, and I’m taking a barge inland, in United States, like in this case, this is up in Memphis, and more often from Mississippi river directly to a refinery, there is a lot of things you got to consider .The barge has got to be able to support these ramp reactions. If you look right here, all the load of that transporter are half of it is been transferred directly into the feet that are sitting on the head log of the barge. You can see that is a big plate that has put down here, to help support that load a little bit better; and distributed more on the front part of the barge. But you got to do an analysis to make sure you don’t cave in your barge. You can imagine what happens if you’re doing a transport, and the barge caves in, matter a fact, I don’t have to imagine it, I’ve seen it.

And so, here’s the situation where the barge strength this left hand, lower left hand picture, you can see the barge ramps are actually place directly over a truss, this truss did not have adequate strength, you can see here  the column failures here in the truss, and you can see what ends up happening. You got a transformer in the water there.

All right, the structural adequacy for the roll off of the landing sides also got to be checked. Just because of barge will supported, what about where the barge is going to actually nose in, and do a roll off. You may have a very unimproved area where you are rolling off, like this transformers coming into a power plant, and they had long ago taken the dock out, and so when they replace this transformer we had to come in and do a lot of civil improvements, you have to build up these ramps to make sure that, these ramps right here, you can see all the civil work was done here to make it so the roll off site was adequate. You can see that the load spreading, steel plates, there is a lot of work that went into engineering this roll off site. Just like we had with our big ship positioning, we also want to consider, that the barge positioning is important. Not only we do have the situation where the tides may impact the ship, but you can imagine what the tide does to a barge, so you’ve got to consider the restraints to the tugs, to tying it off, to maybe dolphins in the river, but just making sure that barge isn’t moving around while you are both loading the vessel as well as unloading with the roll on and roll off type of operation. Another thing to look at is the staging of your loads. A lot of times you’re using, platform trailers to unload these big vessels, and so when you load them on the top of the deck of the barge, you’re going to have them elevated. You can see these two vehicles here on these barges are elevated, and then elevate it such that you can get a transporter underneath them for easy off load. And, so, a lot of times they stage them up high, like shown in these pictures here. And, so, the higher position means the tie down on these loads on these chains, and under the strengths are all going to be higher. And, so, the engineering has got to be done to calculate for higher loads as well as the stability, obviously the higher the heavy load on this  barge, the higher the center of gravity  is, which means the less stable that barge is going to be. Lot of times you got to make sure you’ve got good coordination again, between the fabricator, the ship, and the heavy hauler, to ensure that load is adequately supporting during the entire transport. So, sometimes, we’ve unloaded vessels where the original attempt was to have four saddles supporting the load, and then you find out that heavy hauler says, why, you know, I can always use two of them, I can’t use all four of them. And so, then you’ve got crisis right off the bat, where the saddles designed to handle the transport loads with two, were originally when it came over across on the ship it was supported by four. So, you got to make sure the entire transport is coordinated from the point where it leaves the factory all the way to point where you setting it on its anchor bolts. So, saddle design, and placement of those saddles, is crucial. Sometimes the loads are so large that elevated staging is not practical. So, what do you do then? Sometime you got to set up like on this large barge on this big generator, in order to get that very large transporter underneath it, they had to lift it up. So, the engineering got to be done to account for a means to lift that load on the deck of the barge. So, the deck strength again going to be another major consideration, and then as you lift the piece up on those gantries like in this scenario, you got to consider the barge stability as well.

Let’s talk about the transport securement too. Not only do we look at the strength of tied off loads, or the deck. But we also need to look at tie downs associate with transport. There are many standards that are out there that call for particular strengths, on the barge on the transporter, like in this case, this was a vessel, a thousand kip vessel, it was being transported through the Puget Sound, and we can see the chain requirements for the larger tutorial forces here, you can also see the chains on the side of transporter itself for the lateral strengths. All those things have got to be engineered to make sure that you can get the adequate strength keep that piece from moving on the barge, but also, make sure that barge itself can handle those strength forces. And whether it’s the open ocean or protected water has a lot to do with it how much of the restraint requirement you are going to have to impose.

All right, sometimes you’re not going directly to a barge, let’s say in some cases, we’re going to off load directly to rail.  And we need to consider the load size, and tie down design here for rails. These could be very important to look at, you don’t want to be surprised by the railroads, and they will surprise you if you let them. So, load size is the first thing we want to look at, the piece may be so big and wide that it is not reasonable to transport by rail throughout our country. We have a very limited window to take heavy loads through the country. And so the surveying becomes really important part of our engineered lift plan for these big vehicles as we move them off of the docks and inland. And so, I really can’t over emphasize surveying if you’re going to go by rail. Because so often you can run into real severe problems, and remember the rails don’t share very well. You have rails in one point of the country owned by one company then you have rails, over here with another company, and so you got to face with all of the  rail companies if you’re going to use the rail to take it from a port inland, you got to have a lot of coordination, and you may have to change and go to different routes, and so, if you got a time critical evolution of getting your piece through  your job site, this is something that had better be consider really well, because these things don’t happen very often so the rail companies are not very accommodating for heavy loads. And so, it can become extremely expensive, time wise as well as just dedicated work you got to do to make sure this thing can go by rail. And so, size is a huge impact, and then the survey associated with size to make sure you don’t get stuck on the bridge, can’t get through basket good. And there are a lot of companies that specialized in doing nothing except rail transport work. Our company works with several those companies and we contract with them to help us, because this can be very time consuming effort to make sure that rail is probably surveying.

Mike: And Jim, this is Mike, we have a question from John Brownback, with PCO and I think you probably answered his questions. The PCO might be contacting you for more information about some of the surveyor groups that you guys use to help identify different rail outs, and some of the limitations there. I think you just cover everything that John was asking about. So, thank you.

Jim: No problem.  Another thing to consider is, not only the size of piece, but the rail companies have very restrictive limits on tie downs, and a lot of it doesn’t consider the fact that the load itself is so big. So, like in this case you see all this red steel here, this is designed to take a huge longitudinal force, on this vessel. And so, part of the problem is, most of the railroad's designs for restraints, had things that are smaller than rail car itself in mind. When you get things that are bigger than a rail car, like this big vessel here, those rules don’t really make much sense, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get an audience from the rail companies that says, it’s okay to use lesser restraint. You see here, we have full major columns here that are taking this load, into this rail car. Now, forget the fact that if you do have to stop, and that much force was imposing on a rail car, the rail car would leave the tracks. That doesn’t matter. You still got to consider this time on design, for making it through all the different rail requirements. So you got to keep that in mind, it’s a big deal, you don’t want to be surprised by it, and it could be very expensive, if you haven’t considered it.

 All right, so now we’ve talked about how to transport really by a barge, and the things we think about there, we talk about what to do, if you stick it on a rail. Now let’s talk about these platform trailers which has become, kind of choice for a lot of heavy transport work in our country, now you see these all over the major refineries , nuclear plants, heavy construction sites, a platform trailer is a great tool, but there are limitations you have to consider  with it as well. So, let’s talk about some of the consideration when we do our engineer plan here. And we’re going to look at staging of the piece for self-load and unload, we talked a little bit about it all ready, we’re going to talk about loading support on the dock, because remember these are very heavy transporters, they put heavy loads down on the dock, and then of course route survey, which is pretty similar with what’s going on with rail car. And now you’re looking at public streets instead and bridges are really major considerations. Let’s talk about those.

So, first thing is: Load Staging on a Barge or a Dock. In order for these transporters to work efficiently, lot of times what we do, is that load got to be staged so that transporter can get underneath it. Otherwise you go to get in there and have whole another lift gear. So lots of time we make transport, are taking off of the ships gear, and put it on the dock. We want to elevate it, like we got on this picture. You see here, this simple match, and beams, it’s nice and elevated, and then we can back up underneath this transformer, make it pick directly off of the barge, and then on load it, in a most efficient manner.

All right, the dock is something we have got to consider as well. These loaded transporters can pose and impart heavy loads to the dock. And, so, again like we said before, the structural adequacy of the dock has got to be verified. And if you look at all these lines, the trailer itself  may have the weight of a quarter of a million pounds, then you put big vessel like this on it, and the weight is another 500,000,you have got 750,000 pounds of very concentrated load on this dock. You got to make sure that the dock is structurally adequate for the trans-loader.

Route survey is extremely important with these big loads. This can be a very, very expensive endeavor to move power lines, to make sure that you’re not getting caught by bridges, so getting a really good route survey, and then adequate analyses of bridges in order to get the permit to take theses load on road.  You can see over here this bridge, they were going across, somebody had to analyze that bridge, and make sure that won’t get collapsing. Now has that happened before? Unfortunately it has.

This picture here is one, I believe this was in India, where a big transporter crossed a bridge, and collapsed the bridge. So, again engineer analyses on bridges should prevent those types of accidents there. But you can see, it just absolutely broke the center of the bridge, and dumped the load and transporter into the water.

The last topic I want to talk about, those are all the engineering considerations, is this thing known as Management of Change. There are lots of industries especially in high risk type of endeavors where you probably heard management of change being talked about. The nuclear industry has a very robust type of management of change process, refineries have it, and when you talk about heavy transport, and inner mobile type of heavy transport, and particularly because the water risks that go along with our work, management of change and our plan engineer got to be done as well. So, remember we do all this planning; we do all this engineering, to manage our risk to an acceptable level, in order to prevent those accidents. And so, when a change happens to that plan, we really have to have good process in place, to ensure that those changes to plans are properly analyzed. If you have got a great plan, and in the last minute somebody makes a change to it, and you don’t properly analyze it, you can find yourself in a very terrible situation. You may drop the load you may injure somebody, our company experienced an accident here recently, because of these varied issues of not properly analyze and management of change. The chief question of any change is:” How does it affect the plan, and affect the risk associated with that change?” So, again, we’re looking and say:” How does this change to our plan affect our risk, over operation?” What I would recommend here, this is outside of engineering, but is back into project management, is that all projects should have a management of change process built into the plan, and execution phase. And execution process and that process should be clearly communicated to the team, and then your team management should monitor that project plan, and execution to ensure you’re hearing to your management of change process. Every one of us has been on a job, if you been on construction, and you got a great plan, and you get to the construction site, and somebody says:” Well, we can’t do it that way because of...” whatever. Right then you have got a management of change decision to make. Does it affect my plan, and what’s the risk to it, and then what should I do in order to make sure that I done the same type of planning ,that made sure that my risk is going to be managed well, in the end. And so, if you don’t do that, you’re running to situation where all your best planning is throwing out in a very cavalier decision made in field. And you can end up with a disaster. So, we don’t want to let our good plan negated by improper management of change.

  In summary you can see there are lots of things that need to be considered to ensure safety and efficient heavy lift and transports, and engineering considerations as part of our Lift Plan, plays a major role especially in marine heavy transport and lift, in preventing those accidents ensuring with good professional efficient operation.

So, at this point, I’m going to ask Mike to join me, and assist me in answering any questions, that you guys may have.

Mike: All right, thanks Jim, Zack, if you could maybe give my, put my screen up on the presentation format, it might help for a moment, and, we’ve got some questions here, Jim, first question was from Bill Hanes with Hanes Supply, any comment you might have on labor challenges in today’s market. I think particularly probably get  down to qualified persons ,that help with heavy lift LHE work, and lifting, and handling and transporting, and what challenges Barnhart faces in that, or other contractors, and what you do about it?

Jim: Yes, it’s a great question Mike, I’m glad it was asked. If you’re guys are like me, and  you’re in your 50’s,you’re starting to see that our aging workforce has got a little problem, and the fact is, lot of us  are retiring, and you’re left, with workforce that is not trained. This issues of qualifying person has become a really big deal, regulators are now, stepping in now and saying you must have qualifications, and so, companies like ours, and of course ITI, offer training, to folks to help them get qualified, it becomes a really big deal to make sure we are trained, and so, when I look at a typical labeled pool, especially when it relates to very specific equipment like platform trailers, gantries, heavy lift cranes, all those things are not still to craft. It’s not something that a guy learns as a journeyman; apprentice it somewhere, or becomes an apprentice to journeyman. He doesn’t learn that stuff. And, so, what we found is, if we don’t label market, let’s say we work union job, it is coming upon us now, to do lot of in-house training, and to take guys into qualified journeyman, and give them specific training on a particular type of gear. And, so as, lot of folks on this webinar, are folks that hire companies like ours, so, a follow up question is: How do I make sure that these guys are qualified?  And so, now you start get into situations where is important that end user is now verifying the qualifications of the trained work force. And that’s everything from, you know maybe you can get somebody to go and do third party testing, operators are now required to take a third party test in order to get a certification, so that becomes a really big deal. And then for companies like mine, where none of the rules really apply because it’s specialty equipment, you would ask a company like ours to say, “Well provide me with your training records and qualification standards associated with that equipment. And for those people who are going to operate it”. Those are prudent things to do, in the labor market that we’re dealing with today. You can no longer assume that the guy you’re bringing out of the hole, has got a lot of training, or that the equipment that he’s working with is so general, that just anybody with general training can use it. Really important part to making sure that we’ve got safe plan, is making sure we got qualified guys doing work.

Mike: That’s a good response, Jim thanks. And Pam Dickens from Kimberly Clark has a similar question, and it was concerning how to test for the competency of contractors coming in from the outside. So I’ll toss in a comment here, that we’re often tasked to provide competency testing, for employers for their contractors, and it may be that they funnel through a one or two day competency evaluation on wither rigging methods, crane operations, load handling techniques, and things like that, so those services are available, lot of times the site location doesn’t have that ASME subject matter expert on hand, but they’re hire an organization like ours or someone’s to help provide that qualification for them. And it really gets down to reviewing the job task analyses that’s going to be that’s been developed to identifying what the task would be, and then verifying competency to that level. And nothing go beyond, but to actually meet the requirements that would be imposed and used for that activity. Those services are available, and it can be done so well, I know folks like Shell, and other folks in Canada and the US do a lot of this competency verification, and then it’s really important, because they need to operate by the same rules, that the site employees would be working by. You can’t say that to have two classifications, or groups of employees, operating in the same environment by a different set of rule books. So, they need to be competent to understand, and to be able to perform their work, using the same type equipment, under the same policy using guidelines, OSHA ,ASME, or corporate requirement, so, I hope that answers Pam’s question; any other comment about that Jim?

Jim: No, I think that’s a great answer Mike, and we’re starting to see employers do that more, and more, the people that they’re working for are not only are they requiring that we show our competency through our own training, but they are starting to do competency testing, and I think that’s a great way to make sure that those guys are going to be safe, and everybody is playing by the same rules, like you said. And it ensure that you got a good safe lift and nobody’s going to get hurt.

Mike: Okay, I got another question Jim, on lifting lugs, and that was from Tim Hogue with [Harborow] Engineering, lifting lug mating with shackles, and shackle pins, so you might have a comment about that Jim?

Jim: Yes, let me addressed lug itself first, you know sound  like you have had an experience like we have, when you show up in the field, and someone’s been very conservative in their designing of their lifting log, and now suddenly your shackle either doesn’t fit over the top of it, or the whole is so far away from the top meet, of the lug, that when you do pinned off, you have no room any more for the rigging that’s supposed  to come out of the belt of  the shackle. Let’s talk about that. Depending on what you’re picking up, there may be design requirements, or designed standard associated with those lugs. If it’s an ASME qualified vessel, there is some things there that have some requirements for designing them. If it’s going to be used in a below the hook lifting device, you might have the B3020 series as well as the BTH1 which is the co-document to the B3020 doc, so, lot of things got to be considered in that lug, but, certainly this shackle mating is a big deal. You can end up with the shackle is design great, or lug designed great for the shackle to fit in it. And that’s really disappointment. It could be show stopper in the field, so it’s really important to coordinate these things, on the front end of understanding how you’re going to make your lift. And so, my “rule of thumb” is design to the proper design standard, and don’t overdesign the lug. Because if you do, you may end up with scenario when your lug is so wide that the shackle of appropriate size won’t fit in. Or it’s so wide that when you do get one fix in it, the pin is too big. And, so, there is a lot to be considered there, and again this where that coordination becomes a big deal. And so knowing that kind of the stuff can prevent those “Fido” moments like I talked about earlier. But there are some good standards out there, and then absence of those standards, of course the steel construction manual has some pretty good information in there, just about general steel design, that is also worth looking at how much weld is required, but again, you have got to look at what you designed standard is. If it’s a vessel there will be specific things, lifting devices, there will be a specific designed standard for lugs and then you got interface it with the shackle itself. And Mike, I think you know some information about how the manufactures of shackles have specs of how much space is required to put rigging and those kinds of things in there as well.

Mike: Sometimes, really checking with folks like Crosby, who can provide information about the recommendations for bearing surface. They have value sometimes between 50 percent, and up to 85 percent of coverage over the pin width, for the contact surface, for that shackle pin that may be required, and maybe by tonnage it may start, and the hundred ton range, and go up to the two, three or 400 ton type shackles, certainly wide by the shackles. It’s the coverage of the pin to provide that load surface area, and then the tolerance for the whole, generally it’s pretty tight. Their recommendation a lot of times is in the neighborhood of eight inch, to sometimes not exceed quarter of inch, bigger than the pin. So, they want that surface contact to be as much as possible in its width, and then the diameter to be fairly well seated, so that they are spreading that load out, and of course to the designer of the lug, that meet, that’s above that hole up to the top of the pat eye,  is certainly important as well as the weld are down across the bottom, and Jim, I would really want to encourage people to think about as well , some really important elements, is orientation of the lug. Maybe you could comment about that. Sometimes you get a structure like this, that’s placed, and for some reason the pat eyes, you know our plate pat eyes, is sort of  attached to the sides, in an inline access, orientation to the surface, when in reality the loading is going to be towards the hook, and we got some side loadings, and bending  potential to those lugs, and so, if the engineer is really taking a look at that lug, he may want to really reorient, or re-determine the positioning of that lug, on top of the other parameters for fitness and hole dynamiter.

Jim: That’s a great point, and you can get yourself into a lot of trouble not understand the design basis of a lug. Because you may design it, Mike, to use spreader bars.

Mike:  Right, yes.

Jim: In that case that’s how you get that vertical load back to that lug and then let the compression be taken of the bars, so again it’s understanding what the design of the lifting attachment is, such that you can make the proper rigging selection, to make sure you don’t overload those lugs. You just can’t assume something, and go with that, that’s when you can get yourself into trouble.

Mike: And Jim, there is another point, if somebody switches out from not having spreader bars to going to a common hook point, at the crane hook, it changes that orientation immediately, doesn’t it?

Jim: Absolutely.

Mike: We have another question here from, Barry Tightens with Mid-America Technology, on national 3rd party certification, or registry for critical lift engineers, and so I’m going to jump in just for a minute. There are organizations that are starting to develop and deliver in next 12 months Lift Director Certification and I serve on one of those groups, but it’s not restricted to engineers. And so, you want to make sure that, the Lift Director Certification, that’s nice, it’s good, it’s got a great multiple legs to support that both from LHE qualification, rigging qualification, and process, procedures, and sequence, and personnel assignments. So there are number of elements that are going to come under Lift Director Certification set. But what Barry Tightens is really asking, you don’t want the market to be confused, and if you take a look at lift engineers as group, I think you get test every day Jim with your organization is that, when the customer, and then user comes out and looks at the market place, for lift engineering, there really is a difference between that and lift director.  And lift engineering is really an entire service, and it provides a huge background, and I think that the key is to look at, I would call them references, but also look at their previous history, and their job activity as relates to the work at hand, so Jim, you might comment about the contractors in the marketplace, and the ones that can really provide this lift engineering consultation as needed.

Jim: Yes, yes, it’s good point Mike. There are not only consultants that do just the engineering, but there is also companies like ours to have engineers on staff to do the lift planning, and the lift engineering. And there are other companies, some fine companies like [inaudible] and some of these other big companies that are out there that, that have engineers on their staff, that they are all very competent, and have lots of experience in doing these things. I think you’re point is right Mike, look at the references, look at the previous work they’ve done. Call people that they’ve done work for, and check them out. And also, you get kind of a flavor for the work that they do, just by the reputations. But there is also good 3rd party consulting engineers that are out there as well, guys like [inaudible] all exceptional rigging engineers that work directly for the clients, and that can be a third party representative to the client, for companies like our just to do a double check, to make sure everything is going where they want to. All these questions are great because really what it is pointing to, is the industry is understanding that  the lift planning and lift engineering are really important, and to make sure that these big heavy lifts are planned and engineered well.

Mike: Right, okay, and thanks for that Jim. I have one more question, well actually couple more lined up here, John Normand with NCC, Lavaland, and his question really is about barge owners and operators, and where does all the responsibility begin and end, in assisting with this heavy lift work, the idea really is, how much responsibility do they have in participating in the lift planning and load handling process, or will they kind of turn information and sort of be a subcontractor, you might say too, in organization like Barnhart? I think there is a bit of concern in liability. Where does that start and stop with standard barge owner/operator?

Jim: Yes, it’s a great question, and as we start talking about liability, this becomes a really significant thing. Now, you can certainly set up contracts any way you want to transfer the risk, and the liabilities associated with the contractor. In general though the barge owners really don’t take any responsibility. Essentially what you do, when you hire a barge, it becomes yours. And that means all the risk associated with its use, and then returning it safely back to the owner, is all on you.  And so, whoever your subcontractor is, or whoever you’re going to use to set up your, work and your contract associated with that work, you got to understand what the liabilities moving. And in most cases it is not going to stay with the barge owner, it’s going to go whoever hired the barge. They have the responsibility of the barge. If you guys have ever shipped anything by barge; there is no ownership at all of the people that touch that barge. Like, if you transport something from the port of New Orleans to Chicago, and its sinks along the way, the guy who may have shoved it into the side of the bridge, and broke a hole in it is responsible for nothing. The guy who rented the barge, and sign the agreement, he is the one that is responsible for everything, including the barge. It’s a peculiarity in barge transport. You can certainly set up the contract like I said, but in most cases it is, the guy who rented the barge, he takes on full responsibility, including the structure adequacy of the barge, including the liability as the barge is being transported up the river, all those things it got to be make sure in contract, that that the risk of transfer is done correctly by the contract and that there is adequate insurance of the piece during the entire move. And so, these are things that the contract folks are really got a good handle of, we’re obviously moving away from engineering here, but this is something that I also get into, looking at risk. And this is commercial risk we talking about, but in general, the barge company really is just saying: “Here’s my barge”, and they give us the [inaudible] drawings, which are the structural drawings of the barge, they would provide the certificate that tells you whether the barge is in its “as built” condition, or it’s “not as built”. Let me address that quickly, and what that means. When you rent a barge, there are designations of the barge that are certificates that certify that barge for its use in particular areas. So, if you’re going offshore, you want barge that is in like new condition, or it’s limited in the wastage with the barge. Those cost a lot more money. You may get the barge that, heck yesterday was being use to travel gravel up and down in Mississippi, and it’s not in as new condition, and the wastage may be so high on that barge that it’s really not good for use any more,  it might been as brand new, but it isn’t now. Those are things you’ve got to specify to the barge manufacture to say, I want a particular low line certifications, there’s different names for them, and you will ask the barge company, for a particular classification of barge, and  then make sure that that classification meets the needs of  what you’re going to do with the barge. And then they provide you with the drawings, and  it usual go in companies like ours, or marine surveyor, well marine architect, to help you determine that barge’s adequacy for what you’re doing with it. I’m hoping that answers these questions, there is a lot of stuff associated with barges, it’s got to be understood, and if you just dabbling in it you probably want to hire somebody who’s got experience with barges to make sure that you’ve got the right insurance, and risk of transfer. By the way, speaking the insurances, some risk of loss insurances will exclude barge transportation, or water transportation. And there is some really weird rules Mike, associated with water, and transporting on the water, that you really got to look at, in particular areas that remain like a hundred years ago. And sometimes those transfer rules can be really weird. And this is where you insurance companies can come along, and help you with it. And make sure that they understand the risk.

Mike: That’s excellent advisement, if the assumption is its covered just because we’re using three different methods of transfer, that barge, if it’s not covered in the policy, it could be the death note for a successful operation, especially if there is a some incident along the way. All of the sudden the fees and the cost may be in millions for recovery, and it certainly can put some people out of business without doing their homework. Again, another question, I think I’m going to work on answering this, there is a question from Rick Kimberley with SOS Brothers, and , Rick you have a question about OSHA, as regarding shipyards, and I think that, you’re want to be looking for shipyard advisement from OSHA, in 1915; there are some requirements for shipyards and ship repair requirements. They’re fairly light, and quite frankly compared, especially to the newer than 1926, 1400, which is the new crane rule, published a couple of years ago, they’re fairly light in their guidance, there is not a lot of detail in some cases, and, but in the 1915 through 1919 requirements, you’ll find the shipyard and terminals long shoring off course, and the rigging equipment associated with that, but I’d suggest a quick Google search for the 1915 requirement. We’ve got another question here from, Richard Kramandam, he’s a heavy lift specialist, he’s really kind of the friend of the industry and friend of family, and he is putting on some outstanding programs worldwide. And Richard, thanks for your comment, the question really is: Shouldn’t there be a worldwide certified test to check competence of workforce? There is, that’s a great question, and a worldwide competency would be an awesome effort to step forward. We’re just not able to get all the players involved. We have got Singapore, we’ve got Korea, China, Sweden, Japan, we’ve got so many countries worldwide to get them through on an ISO, and I think that’s where we have to start likely, in an ISO organization. We use an ISO in the tag, technical advisory many 96 for cranes worldwide, and each country has got vote. And most likely would need to come through and ISO type organization to help establish or develop the competency for employees, such as riggers, signal persons, crane operators, and so on. Right now each country seems to be working on their own agenda, and there may be some things coming through, also what we might want to do is investigate the opportunities through LEEA, the Lift Equipment Engineers Associations out of the UK, they do a lot of worldwide activity in crane and rigging work, as well as, they probably have 530 members right now. That might be forum for which to pose that question Richard, and I would strongly support and be side by side with you, and if we could ever establish a worldwide competency for the folks involved in cranes and rigging. I don’t know Jim if you have any comments on that, we will move on to the next question, if not.

Jim: No, I’m good, I think you answer it well Mike.

Mike: All right, let see, we have a question from Danielle Yates, and let me get this up on the screen here. Best ways to properly communication between transport contractors, and owners of equipment to reduce risk of high risk transport. And I think that question really gets down to communication between contractors and the owners of the equipment, I need to kind of get a clarification ,if it’s the communication and Jim, we’ll take the big picture the 30,000 foot view is; a lot of this Jim, is if it’s about the  preplanning phase, and  laying all the cards on the table as what the activity is going to be, but in the secondary element is, who’s in charge, and then establishing from that, that person is actively on the site, and communication with all parties and has the authority to oversee, and to make the calls as needed on the site. It’s kind of a two-step phase here, preplanning and who’s in charge.

Jim: Yes, and let me try to address this really quick, from a macro level, from the very inception of project, establishing a plan that puts together a way to purposely communicate the plan that you’re putting together is really important. If you ever worked in the nuclear industry, they are some best at planning in their work, and then communicating that plan, it may be everything from here’s all the engineering variables, here’s the method statement, here’s the procedures  that we’re going to present, and then all those things come together get reviewed , get re reviewed, get commented  back, and the plan’s finalize, and then before they go to the field, they might have the time where everybody gets together, and now the team that put the plan together, now presents the plan, to the other teams that are affected by what’s going on. Lot of times with these big vessels, you are going to shut down the job site, when you make your lift. So they need to know when you’re making the lift, how it’s going to be effective, how far they can work, what interferences  they have got to remove? So, there’s a lot of coordination that goes on, so the more you formally and purposely communicate your plan once it is developed, in a global project sense, the better off you’re going to be. Now, that gets everybody to understand what’s going on.  And the best way to communicate that is the detailed schedule, once your plans put together you integrate all your schedule steps, into a project plan schedule that everybody’s looking at. Now, once that’s all done, that schedule kind of tells everybody what the major things are going on and the individual steps that everybody has got to coordinate. A good integrated schedule helps communicate the plan and the next thing what happens is you want to communicate the plan specifically, like you said, to from the team leader, down to the person in charge, lift director, the operators and those happen in a series of meetings that are boots on the ground kind of meetings, they are the JJ meetings or tail board meetings, I have heard call them all sorts of things but that’s where you eyeball to eyeball with the guy pulling the levers and you are saying: “Look, here’s what we are going to do, here’s the sequence, here’s your job, this is your part in this, here’s what Joes job is going to be.” and then they get a chance to ask those questions and then you make your lift and it comes off right and you even have things with contingencies you talk about in your risk plan. So those are the two things I think from the pre planning development of your schedule to the execution in the field, that’s the best way to do all that communication. So there’s nobody surprised by what about to happen, both from commercial efficiency standpoint as well as the safety stand point on the lift itself.

Mike: Ok, we are about out of time here and I would like to offer a close out thru Zack, thru Jim and I but we have a couple of other questions that we are going to deal with offline and we really appreciate everybody that submitted questions today, we are just running up against a time window and we have lost a little bit of communication time there but this has been an awesome presentational and very helpful and eye opening in a number of various of categories and Jim I sincerely appreciate your time today, I would like to give you opportunity of closeout and then we will turn it out to Zack, but we do sincerely thank everyone for participating today. Jim go ahead.

Jim: Thanks Mike and I really do appreciate the opportunity to come and share some of the experience that Barnhart and myself is gathered over the years and I am encouraged to see so many people who are interested in what we are doing, from an industry standpoint, how to get better, how to make it safe, I mean every time we have an accident it effects everybody and so the more that we could work together and to take care of what we already know that some of our problems in developing qualified people to do this work the safer everybody is going to be, the more efficient our industry is going to be, the more professional we are going to be. SO I am pretty excited about seeing all the folks that want to participate in it, and are here today. So again Mike I appreciate you putting on this presentation for everybody and invite me to come speak to it, so thanks again.

Zack: Alright and thank you Jim. Everybody the presentation that Jim just went over will be available to download from our website, you will be getting the e-mail after this presentation and we really thank Jim for making it available as he worked pretty hard to put that together and the recording will also be available. Thanks for hanging in with us, we had some technical trouble but it happens sometimes, we really appreciate you staying with us and getting thru this and I, we really thank Barnhart and Jim Yates for presentation. So thanks everybody and have a great day.