E.S.M. was engaged to provide specialist Safety in Design (SiD) services across a program to design and construct solar farm (photovoltaic) installations totalling over 200 GWh at over 30 sites, including over 30 MWh of battery energy storage.
E.S.M. worked with Client engineering management to create a Safety in Design Plan and support delivery against that plan.
The Plan prescribed the activities and documents to be delivered across the program. The Plan established roles and responsibilities for the execution of SiD activities and leveraged on commonalities between projects, while still addressing integration and specific issues for individual sites.
E.S.M. assisted with the identification and management of hazards that were typical across projects and various sites, through the establishment of a program-wide hazard register.
E.S.M. facilitated several SiD Review Workshops to identify, at a program level, hazards associated with the typical solar generation components, design configurations and construction and operational practices. The hazards identified were then controlled across all sites in a uniform manner, reducing SiD efforts for individual sites and creating consistency in safety controls.
In addition to developing the program-wide SiD approach, E.S.M. supported each site by facilitating SiD Review Workshops with the Client and site operators to identify hazards specific to that site. E.S.M. SiD workshop facilitators planned the scope of these workshops to systematically identify what was different to the typical program installation by examining the technical design as well as the unique human, asset and environmental interfaces presented by the site.
E.S.M. further assisted the Client by verifying safety-related actions at program and site levels, working directly with project and discipline engineers to confirm that control measures had been actioned and included in design documentation.
E.S.M. worked with Client engineering management to establish a template SiD Report for use across the program and reviewed the SiD Reports produced for individual project sites.