Machinery and plant cleaning

What this is

Plant does not usually fail because it looks dirty. It fails because something inside it has been filling up for a year, and the only way to know is to open it.

This is the work that happens on shutdown windows and annual service intervals. Exhaust runs, enclosures, extraction, guarding, motors and the high-level services around them.

A job we did

An exhaust run on a tyre press at Bandag, Wacol

Nothing was wrong. That is the point of it. The machine’s operating procedure requires an annual shutdown, an exhaust clean and a flow test, and it comes round whether anything has gone wrong or not.

The machine is a CT press printing truck tyres. Its exhaust runs the entire length of it, roughly 10 to 12 metres, about 800 mm round, with hatches along the top.

Shut down and decommissioned first. Entry through the top hatches in gear and masks, with headlights, and the grease and oil scraped out along the length of the pipe. A sticky residue is left behind on purpose: the client does not need that removed, and the job is the bulk grease and oil, so that is what gets charged for.

Photographs before and after. The pipe flow-tested before and after, so the result is a measurement, not an opinion.

4 to 6 hours, inside a fixed shutdown window at a plant that cannot simply run late. The job sat in the $10,000 to $20,000 band.

What gets cleaned

In place, or opened up

How it is done

Isolation first, method second

Nothing is opened until the machine is shut down and decommissioned by your people, and that is your process, not ours to sign off.

Where the work means entering an exhaust, an enclosure or a vessel, it is handled as confined space work, in gear and masks with lighting, and the entry arranged before a hatch comes off.

The method is chosen for the product running underneath. On a food line, a paint line or a fibreglassing plant, what you clean with matters as much as what you clean off.

Where a before-and-after measurement is worth having, a flow test or a photograph set, we can provide it for your own maintenance file.

Isolation

Isolation comes before cleaning

Queensland’s Managing risks of plant in the workplace Code of Practice 2021 says plant should usually be isolated before maintenance or cleaning starts, and that where it cannot be isolated, methods to prevent accidental operation should be put in place. It names lock-out and tag-out systems, and it says all guarding must be replaced after maintenance or cleaning, before the plant is used.

Those are your procedures on your plant. The useful questions for a shutdown are who isolates, who confirms it, who removes and refits guarding, and who is told when the machine is safe to run.

Planning

Preparing a shutdown clean with your maintenance team

A short list makes the first conversation faster. Bring whichever of these you have.

• The shutdown dates and the length of the window
• A list of the machines, enclosures and exhaust runs you want on the cleaning list
• Which of them your permit system treats as a confined space
• Photographs, or the last service record for each machine

Part 4.3 of the Work Health and Safety Regulation covers entry into confined spaces: a written risk assessment by a competent person, an entry permit, signs at each entry point, continuous communication with a standby person, and first aid and rescue arrangements set up before entry. The exhaust run in the Wacol job is that kind of work.

Related work

Where machinery cleaning fits with the rest of the work

Most industrial buildings need more than one of these, and it is usually cheaper to do them on the same visit while the access equipment is already on site.

• Combustible dust removal

• Industrial surface and plant cleaning