As our industry matures, H&S is becoming ever more important, which is why we decided to devote our entire roundtable to the sector in this issue. As always, we’ve brought together a roster of some of the finest minds in the industry, and pitched them a selection of challenging questions. Their answers are in equal parts engaging, illuminating, educating – and sometimes surprising.
Contributors
Laurent Schneitter
Head of ActSafe Representation, ActSafe
Christian Bo Sørensen
Product development manager, Falck Nutec Esbjerg A/S
Tapio Kallonen
Export Manager, Obelux Oy
Marian Georghiou
Health and Safety Officer, European Wind Energy Association
Dr Ralf Woestmann, Innovation Manager, Bremeninvest for the maritime industry (WFB Wirtschaftsförderung Bremen GmbH)
PES: Welcome to the magazine. Before we head into the main subject of the day, can you tell us a little about your company and how it serves the industry?
Laurent Schneitter: We are the ActSafe Representation in Beijing, China, and are also, under the name Vertical Consulting, an IRATA certified operator and training company.
We promote a safe method of work, mainly in the rope access segment, which means mainly for blade inspection and repair, but also for the tower.
We have developed a rope access using power ascenders, to reduce fatigue and also increase safety while working on ropes… Personally, I’m an IRATA assessor and auditor, environmental and HS engineer.
Christian Bo Sørensen: Falck Nutec has provided emergency preparedness and Health and Safety courses for oil and gas, shipping, renewable energy, military and aviation industries worldwide for over three decades.
We are present in five continents and offer a wide range of training solutions from our 26 purpose built training centres. Our team is made up of over 1,000 highly skilled and experienced personnel and last year over 240,000 delegates benefitted from our training.
Falck Nutec in Denmark has since 2002 customised training for the wind industry in close cooperation with both operators and manufactures. This training has evolved from STCW training and oil and gas courses which in the beginning were commonly used by the wind industry, to courses that later on was specifically designed to meet the needs of the wind industry. On-site training on Horns reef 1 and advanced first aid is some of the examples of this and it is this experience that in December 2010 gave us the opportunity to do the GWO test course which formed the platform for the new GWO standard.
