The smartisation of pipe welding

Natalie Henley, Remote Medical International (RMI), Americas, outlines health and safety best practice at pipeline sites.

The impact of labour shortages is being felt in construction industries across the world. Business Insider recently reported that, according to figures from the US government, there are 100 000 fewer workers in the oil and gas industry than pre-pandemic. So, with over 19 000 miles of pipeline construction planned for 2022 in the US alone, it is now more critical than ever to ensure robust health and safety practices are in place to protect the health and wellbeing of the current workforce.

The challenge of labour shortages and rapid staff turnover often leads to a reliance on short-service, temporary or selfemployed workers, which can increase the risk of accidents and injuries on pipeline sites. The risks are increased by a number of factors, including limited experience and a lack of time to deliver consistent health and safety training. Additionally, towards the end of construction projects, when timelines are often pressured, workers face the risk of losing focus on essential daily safety measures, as well as neglecting their own health and basic hygiene, which can result in more safety hazards.

With this unique set of safety challenges, having specialist medics and Health and Safety Executive (HSE) consultants onsite can help workers manage the challenges of staying healthy and maintaining safety best practice on pipeline projects, improving both their health and job performance, as well as reducing unnecessary recordables. Remote Medical International (RMI) helps organisations to achieve this by providing highly-qualified staff to pipeline construction sites around the world. With over 20 years’ experience in the field, RMI’s safety and medical services champion best practice to ensure the health and safety of the workforce.

Building trust to protect the workforce The longer the project, the greater the risk that workers will become fatigued, and prone to injury and illness.

To tackle this, RMI’s medics take a proactive approach to overall long-term healthcare, creating the safest of working environments. One part of this strategy is achieved with the support of our mobile treatment centres (MTC); four-wheel drive clinics that are equipped to handle rough terrain, allowing medical providers to reach a worker who may need medical assistance. RMI MTCs also allow medics to patrol sites daily and stay in regular communication with the

workforce, enabling quick response to incidents and, crucially, preventing delays in treatment from exacerbating health issues and injuries. Having a medic as a constant presence on a site builds trust among workers, and encourages greater transparency, and a safe environment for workers to discuss their health issues. Medics can also provide support to workers struggling with common issues exacerbated by extreme weather, such as fatigue and dehydration which, if left unmanaged, can develop into serious issues which incapacitate workers.

By implementing preventative practices, RMI medics have been able to detect undiagnosed diabetes, hypertension and asthma within customer workforces, and provide support in the management of these conditions, creating an open dialogue which leads to workers feeling confident enough to seek out their onsite health provider without mandate or prompting. Creating a strong relationship between an onsite medic and the workforce enables delivery of preventative care and training, and ensures that health concerns are addressed quickly, avoiding risk of further injury and illness, and limiting the number of recordable incidents.

On one pipeline construction site, a worker injured his thumb on the job, and the RMI medic was able to quickly treat the injury, give the patient the appropriate medication, and educate them on prevention, all within 20 minutes. Without the MTC, it could have taken three hours to transport the patient to a clinic for treatment, creating a significant disruption to the team for the day, as well as a large and unnecessary bill.

This constant support on the ground relieves the pressure on project safety managers to ensure the safety of their teams. RMI medics work alongside the team, protecting workers and preventing as much risk to health as possible. Actions as simple as taking workers out of the rain to dry off, or putting them in the shade and in an air-conditioned truck to cool off when it’s hot, go a long way in preventing accidents and enabling teams to keep working. Continuity of care It is essential that all remote medical teams are supported by continuity of care services. When injuries or illnesses on the job require a higher level of care, RMI’s active case management team coordinates and monitors care of the patient throughout the process. By identifying the best local urgent care clinics and emergency departments, this ensures a seamless transition from the job site and back, including care quality screening. As a result, the employer benefits from reduced control costs and the employee receives the expediated medical care that they deserve.

Boosting employee morale Implementing initiatives that improve the overall wellbeing of workers is an effective way to reduce onsite injuries, maintain morale, protect productivity, and retain talent. When workers are alert, well hydrated, not overworked, and getting enough sleep, they are happier, have more energy and make smarter and safer decisions.

RMI assists pipeline construction organisations with quality health benefits and additional wellness programmes, such as fitness classes, nutrition guidance and health check-ups, that help to improve the health and safety of their workforce, reduce risk of injuries and illness, and ensure that workers feel valued.

Best practice for leading a healthy lifestyle onsite The presence of an RMI professional on pipeline construction sites is crucial for reinforcing healthy lifestyle best practice among workers, especially as they approach the end of a long project, which is usually the most dangerous phase.

One of the most important habits that our medics work to advocate on hot construction sites is staying hydrated. Pipeline construction is a physically demanding job, where workers are on projects for long hours and frequently in hot weather. Often pipeline workers do not drink enough water to stay hydrated and maintain their health while working outside in the heat all day, and dehydration can lead to low productivity. Maintaining basic personal hygiene is often a challenge that comes with a transient lifestyle, and is one of the important points our HSE professionals regularly reinforce with staff on pipeline construction sites. 80% of infectious diseases are transmitted through touch; when performing physically demanding task, combined with long hours in the sun, workers should wash their hands frequently to help prevent diseases and illnesses from developing, and stops them from spreading in situations where workers are often living together in basic accommodation. Due to the remote nature of pipeline construction projects, access to nutritious food can be difficult, and in many cases, workers choose unhealthy options from nearby service stations. Workers need reminding that pipeline construction is physically demanding, and that their bodies need quality calories to keep up with the physical demands of their job and keep them safe. Caffeinated energy drinks are very popular among construction workers due to the long hours of work and the energy they need for the job, however, caffeinated drinks

Figure 1. RMI medic in action.

can lead to dehydration and cause a ‘crash’ in energy. This can be very dangerous when operating vehicles or heavy machinery on worksites, and can potentially put a worker’s life at risk. Instead of relying on caffeinated beverages to cope with the long working days, our medics often recommend that workers should aim for at least eight hours of sleep each night, stay hydrated and take regular breaks to help them stay alert.

Summary Although health and safety best practice procedures can take time to introduce, develop and implement, organisations should prioritise considering all of these to improve and maintain the wellbeing of their most important asset, the workforce. The expertise of RMI health and safety professionals means that they know how best to address this in the most robust way. Intervening and adjusting habits on the worksite will help avoid injuries, increase productivity, and lower costs for any pipeline construction project.

Figure 2. Pipeline being lifted on a construction site.

Mahyar Asadi, VP Innovations, Novarc Technologies, Canada, highlights the importance of automated welding technology in manufacturing operations, particularly when used in conjunction with human operators.

Welding automation is being adopted rapidly throughout a variety of industries such as energy, oil and gas, and offshore construction, and it is increasingly becoming standard welding practice. Not only does automation mitigate the dangers of high-risk welding jobs, but it also significantly increases productivity and weld quality, allowing customers to become more competitive when bidding on jobs, and increasing margins on contracts they’ve already won.

Novarc has been at the forefront of automation, as the company was one of the first to introduce advanced welding technology in 2016 with its Spool Welding Robot (SWR), essentially the world’s first collaborative pipe welding robot, or in short, cobot.

Novarc’s collaborative SWR helps to minimise the manufacturing bottleneck caused by the dwindling supply of qualified labour being experienced in a number of traditional industries, by enabling welders working with the cobot to be significantly more productive and efficient.

With Novarc’s SWR, pipe fabrication shops and offshore platform construction projects that involve welding stainless steel and carbon steel pipes also experience significant gains

in weld quality, payback and support while typically seeing a 300 - 500% increase in productivity.

However, Novarc’s welding automation technology does not abandon the human operator, but works alongside the welder, helping junior welders complete challenging welds which previously could only be performed by senior welders.

Novarc’s SWR works with an operator, who is not required to learn a special programming language, nor have multiple years of robotic experience. The cobot can also be positioned anywhere in the shop, requiring only a 4 x 4 ft footprint, as the built-in safety system effectively eliminates the need for fencing. The cobot can integrate with two to five positioners for maximum arc-on time, and is fast and easy to set up. A number of additional features allow the SWR to pivot and address the everyday variability associated with pipe welding and fabrication.

Welding technology has continued to evolve and the mechatronic-based advancement is now maturing. Today, innovation is trending to integrating artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as machine learning and smart vision systems. Using AI to fully automate the pipe welding process NovEye™ is a vision-based weld monitoring and control software that can analyse the weld pool and make adjustments in real-time, just as a human operator would use their eyes and biological neural nets to move their hands. NovEye increases the autonomy of the cobot, and allows the operator to work on more sophisticated tasks. NovEye monitors and makes real-time corrections to the welding operation, based on years of data collection and machine learning.

Being able to produce an AI system that can control a weld pool with the required latency and weld quality performance that’s required is a significant task, and a challenge that is not immediately realised. AI systems are no longer explicitly programmed to deliver a perfect task; instead, these smart systems are designed to learn and improve over time. In other words, they can start with the current state of your welding process and self-direct through the machine learning to a better state. For example, initially NovEye had to be implemented in a low-level code so it could run efficiently on the robot. It took a number of years to develop as it required a considerable amount of effort to examine the weld data, and create high-quality and reliable code at low levels. Today, the technology can record certain features in the weld dimension in exactly the same way welders would be looking at the weld pool (how it’s wetting on the sides, the position of the torch, etc.) and decide the next move, whether it’s increasing or decreasing weld parameters, wire feed speed or travel speed. Neural networks and AI allow the cobot to follow the same procedures as the human operator, assessing those features as it’s been trained to command the control system to make the necessary corrections – in real-time – during the weld. NovEye is now operating as a sophisticated piece of software that ties into the control system of the robot, and in that way, the robots – the actuators – can control the weld puddle in the same way a human welder would. This is revolutionary for many industries, as they need to evolve their capabilities to remain competitive.

Currently, there are many market demands for smart welding systems, including: ) Adaptive seam tracking and control of misalignments in the welding preparations.

) Maintaining the stability of the welding process through noises, fluctuations, and external instablers to retain a uniform quality along the weld.

) Auto-learning from good and bad weld practice over time to avoid repetitive mistakes, constantly exploring opportunities for a better weld.

Existing Industry 4.0 platforms spread out the learning domain to incorporate information from other welding machines. These platforms enrich the

Figure 1. NovEyeTM is a vision-based weld monitoring and control software that can analyse the weld pool and make adjustments in realtime, just like a human operator.

Figure 2. Novarc’s welding automation technology does not abandon the human operator, but works alongside the welder.