A large share of our industrial work happens inside facilities that cannot stop producing. There is a live plant on one side of the barricade and structural erection on the other. Safety on those sites is not a matter of adding more signage — it is a matter of planning the work so the two activities never occupy the same space at the same time.
Sequence around the plant, not against it
The first conversation is always with the client’s operations team, not the projects team. Which lines run which shifts, when are the shutdown windows, which routes must stay clear for material movement. The construction programme is then built around those answers.
Hard barricading and single controlled access
Soft barriers get moved. We use hard barricading with one controlled entry point to the work zone, so anyone inside the zone has been briefed and anyone outside it is genuinely outside it.
Lift planning is not optional
Every crane lift in a live facility gets a written lift plan — load, radius, configuration, exclusion zone, appointed person. If the exclusion zone touches an operating area, the lift is scheduled for a window when it does not.
Hot work with a permit and a watcher
Welding and cutting near process equipment runs on a permit system with fire watch during the work and for the period after it. This is the point where discipline slips on most sites, and it is the point where incidents happen.
None of this is exotic. It is ordinary construction safety applied with the seriousness that a live plant deserves. It also happens to be why our industrial clients keep giving us the brownfield work.