Temporary Power in Hostile Environments

Temporary power providers are familiar with working in hostile environments despite the trials that such locations present. They accept the challenge of operating in countries where the political, economic, social and security systems are fragile. 

The temporary power industry is no stranger to hostile environments. Lack of infrastructure drives the demand for temporary power.  Operating in such hostile environments increases the temporary power provider’s duty of care. A hostile environment is generally defined as an unstable and insecure environment, where periods of unrest are caused by uncontrolled elements making the host country or the settlement an environment of conflict and unsafe operation. In such environments, workers may encounter risks, such as the presence of organized crime, theft, assault and hostage taking. When deploying professionals in such a context, it is essential for companies to provide safety alerts and travel tips, hostile environment training, country specific briefing and familiarization prior to travel, and a face-to-face consultation to clarify questions that employees may have in relation to the assignment.

Mitigating the risks 
The hazards of any particular project should be identified at the outset, prior to bidding and through a comprehensive risk assessment.  This may involve hiring local or internationally recognized security agencies and conducting site-specific risk assessment to identify the particular security requirements of the project site. The findings from the assessment will determine the extent of the security measures required to keep employees safe and the power plant generating the required power. When the risk level has been determined, safety and security control measures are put in place. The security measures may include using armoured vehicles along with close protection officers to transport employees. A detailed emergency evacuation plan should be drawn up and tested to ensure operational suitability. With security situations volatile, all personnel should be provided with daily security briefings. In worst-case scenarios, companies should be prepared with life, kidnap and ransom insurance policies.

Business continuity can be supported by engaging the services of locals where possible. In addition to supporting the company’s in-house staff members and ensuring that HSE standards are maintained throughout the project, local work force professionals provide specific operational knowledge and experience that are invaluable to the safe and peaceful completion of projects in hostile locations.

Benefits of duty of care towards workforce and subcontractors
Staff deployed to hostile environments are the backbone of the project; without them, the project cannot be delivered. Having a robust safety and security plan in place will provide the employees with the confidence to perform their jobs.

Staff should be provided with country-specific information and security briefings before travel to help reduce tension. After all the relevant information and situational assessment have been laid out, the choice of either accepting or declining the project should be freely given to those nominated for the project.

It is the aim of a temporary power service provider to offer uninterrupted and dependable service even in times of natural calamities, and political and security uncertainty. Business continuity planning considers the security of direct employees and subcontractors.

On hostility and safety
In many situations, accepting a project in a hostile environment is a necessary premise of providing emergency electricity services. These challenges provide opportunities to temporary power providers. Having a robust HSE plan that provides the necessary security to the people who operate and maintain the plant allows these companies to mitigate their risk to some extent. When employee safety takes precedence over equipment, it becomes easy to consider and to give staff security higher priority than profit generation. With business continuity plans in place, working in hostile environments can be made less daunting. The safety of our industry professionals should not be sacrificed, and formulating an HSE initiative should not be an after-thought. As companies, and their employees work in hostile environments, the duty of care through providing appropriate training and physical security becomes an integral part of the business operation.

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*The foregoing article was based on what was originally published in the December issue of Energize magazine, EE Publishers, South Africa.*


Postscriptum

Altaaqa Global's initiative, titled "Providing Adequate Security in Hostile Environments" has been recognized as the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Initiative of the Year at the MEP Middle East Awards 2014, and has been named among the finalists at the Middle East Electricity (MEE) Awards 2015.

Majid Zahid, Strategic Accounts Director of Altaaqa Global, and Meghana Millin, the company's HSE Officer,
receives the award for HSE Initiative of the Year.

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Robert Bagatsing
Altaaqa Global
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rbagatsing@altaaqaglobal.com

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The 10 Industries Most Affected by a Power Outage

With news of power interruptions abound, your industry may not want to be part of this countdown.

In an era when almost all the sectors of the economy need electrical power to run, even a short outage in power may lead to unspeakable economic, financial and operational consequences. The degree of the impact brought about by load shedding to an individual entity varies by industry and the nature of applications. It can range from being operationally disruptive to terminal or life threatening. 
Here’s a run-down of industries and business functions that are severely hampered by power failures:

1. Manufacturing Industries 
Power interruptions can bring production lines to a full, abrupt stop. This may result in malfunction of machinery, and loss of material and of productive time. This may also lead to supply chains to shutting down altogether.  

2. Financial Corporations
The stock market can be thrown into chaos by a power outage. In an industry where a second can be the difference between making millions of dollars and losing them, power outages can render financial corporations unable to carry out vital transactions on time. 

3. Consulting and Information Technology (IT) Services
In this day and age where IT operations are an institution’s window to the rest of the world, power outages can result in crashed computer systems, lost data and sudden termination of transactions with clients. What is worse is that, even after the power is restored, these companies often need several weeks to recover hundreds of man-hours of work. 

4. Data Centers
Data centers are vital for the operations of several organizations, such as financial services firms, insurance companies, and IT services firms, to name a few. Load shedding here can cause massive and irreparable loss of thousands of records stored over time and can disrupt ongoing transactions, as well.

5. Perishable Items
Pharmaceutical, petrochemical and food processing industries heavily rely on a dependable supply of power for storage and preservation of perishables that have critically limited life spans. Power interruptions can cause the spoilage, contamination and eventual discarding of in-process products worth several millions of dollars.

6. Control Centers
Traffic signal operations, public transport systems, air traffic management centers, telecommunications and utilities – All of these operations largely rely on continuous power supply for efficient functioning. Disturbance in such critical operations can endanger the safety and security of millions of consumers in an instant.

7. Medical Facilities
In healthcare facilities, the patients’ lives are essentially supported by health monitoring systems. Any discontinuity in the normal functioning of medical systems can directly cause the loss of many lives.

8. Military Operations
Blackouts expose valuable equipment, weaponry and even personnel to the risk of attack.

9. Entertainment Venues
Cancellation of events even for brief periods of time can lead to huge losses of profit for entertainment venues. More than resulting in forced losses of revenues, unexpected termination of routine operations can also prove to be risky to visitors and operating personnel.

10. Safety and Security
Power outages have the potential to endanger the safety of the common citizens. For instance, power interruptions can prove to be hazardous for people trapped in or out of facilities with automated access control systems, passengers of elevators that come to a sudden stop, or residents of buildings with fire alarms and water sprinklers that cease to function.

In the next part of this article, we will explore the industry solutions available today, which are capable of mitigating the effects of load shedding and blackouts, not only on the above-listed industries, but on other residential, commercial and industrial operations as well. 

*Thanks to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) for providing key insights to the article.

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PRESS INQUIRIES
Robert Bagatsing
Altaaqa Global
Tel: +971 56 1749505

rbagatsing@altaaqaglobal.com