Ledcor Pipeline Wins IPLOCA Health & Safety Award

The International Pipeline and Offshore Contractors Association (IPLOCA), established in 1966, created a forum for contractors to share ideas, engage industry/stakeholders and promote the highest standards in the pipeline industry. The organization’s membership totals more than 250 pipeline contractors worldwide. During the annual IPLOCA convention, held in San Francisco, Sept 14 – 18, 2009, Ledcor Pipeline was awarded the prestigious IPLOCA Health & Safety Award for the design, engineering, manufacturing and testing of Roll Over Protection Structures (ROPS) installed and retrofitted on pipelayers.
  The award was presented by Becky Roberts, president of Chevron Pipe Line Co., who represented a selection committee of nine members, including representatives from both Chevron and Shell among other global industry leaders.
  Ledcor Pipeline’s ROPS is a reinforcement apparatus that can be installed on heavy equipment, such as a pipelayer or sideboom, to protect the operator in the event of a rollover accident.
  According to Ledcor, the use of ROPS has already saved many lives. The seat-belted equipment operator is provided with an adequate amount of survival space, reducing the risk of head, neck/spinal, and upper torso injuries, ultimately preventing death. ROPS generally limits a rollover to 90 degrees and provides an important safety/survival zone for the operator.
  On a broader scale, the ROPS retrofit program has the potential for wider safety applications, and a number of research papers have identified the adoption of ROPS as a technology that should be applied to vehicles like tractors and All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs).
  Based on the high level of risk, Ledcor Contractors Inc. President Tom Lassu coordinated an aggressive initiative to engineer, load test and install ROPS on over 15 different models of pipelayers originally designed without ROPS. Today, 100% of its own pipelayers have ROPS and have also been converted from live to hydraulic lift kits. Ledcor also canvassed other industry leaders and clients via a position paper to end the use of this unsafe equipment throughout the industry and to standardize “Operator Certification” criteria for pipelayers worldwide.