Emergency cable pulling at an energy-from-waste plant

The job

A critical electrical cabling installation at a live energy-from-waste plant had stalled. Heavy high-voltage power cable had to be pulled, routed and secured across congested high-level steelwork and working plant, and the conventional ground access equipment couldn’t get through the inside of the building. Without the cable in, the plant faced an unplanned shutdown.

We were brought in at short notice to rig the route on rope and get the cable in, so the plant could keep running.

The challenge

• Time: plants like this run continuously, and stopping the turbines and waste processing is expensive and disruptive.
• The route: overhead pipe-racks, high-temperature conduits and heavy steel frames directly above live plant, where cranes, scissor lifts and scaffold couldn’t be positioned.
• The load: pulling heavy-gauge cable up, down and around changes in level creates a lot of friction, which needs properly engineered anchors and hauling systems to avoid damaging the cable sheath or overloading the steel.
• A working plant: heat, air-filtration systems and running machinery, under close coordination with the control room and the site permit-to-work system.

What we did

Mobilised within hours

• Put an IRATA Level 3-led rope access and rigging team on site within hours, working alongside the site electrical engineers, the control room and the principal high-voltage contractor.
• Wrote and agreed RAMS for hauling heavy loads directly above live plant.

Rigged the route

• Built temporary, non-destructive directional rigging from the overhead steelwork, using rigging plates, progress-capture pulleys and high-load rollers.
• Set up a series of deviations to steer the cable around hot plant and structural dead ends without going below its minimum bend radius.
• Hauled in a coordinated, steady pull to avoid snatch loads, protecting both the team and the cable.

Dressed and cleated

• Dressed the cable into the high-level cable ladder by hand.
• Cleated and torqued every bracket to the electrical engineer’s specification, leaving the run ready for termination and testing.

See our cable installation and emergency repairs services.

The result

• The full cable run went in on time, the turbines kept generating and the plant avoided an unplanned shutdown.
• No scaffold had to be built across the turbine hall, saving days of downtime and obstruction at ground level.
• Zero incidents across every heavy pull and rigging stage, under emergency conditions.