If you are in the business of container terminal operations or stevedoring you will probably have had experience of containers knocked from a stack by a crane spreader or by a container under the spreader. If you haven’t you either employ stack profiling or you are lucky.
If the latter, beware luck is not sound risk management. TT Club has had 267 insurance claims over the last five years from this type of incident. Generally, they result in damage to equipment and cargo, but in more serious cases sadly there have been fatalities. The good news is that such incidents can easily be prevented by deploying new technologies.
At the berth this sort of incident may occur when a quay crane knocks a container overboard from the ship’s stack, perhaps into the water or on to the quay apron. In the yard, which can happen at inland depots as well as port terminals, a similar occurrence is possible whether you are using rubber-tyred gantry (RTG) or rail-mounted gantry (RMG) cranes. Needless to say, damage to equipment and cargo as well as bodily injury to yard workers must be avoided, but additional consequences such as disruption of operations, delays in ship turnarounds and damage to the professional reputation of the terminal can also be very costly.
Analysis of TT Club’s claims records reveals that for quay cranes, 12% of the cost and 23% of the number of insurance claims are caused by stack collisions. For yard cranes (RTGs and RMGs), 70% of the cost and 69% of the number of insurance claims are the result of the same cause.
As in many cases of terminal safety, technology provides an answer. It is possible for yard cranes to have sensors and software that log where all containers are in the various stacks throughout the yard. This identifies the height of each stack (the top most containers usually being the ones at risk) as well as the length and, where applicable, width of stacks. Such technology, generally called ‘stack profiling’, seeks to ensure the cranes and/or their spreaders do not hit anything.
This technology is, inevitably, at the core of automated or remote controlled equipment, but can be implemented to support manual operations, including retro-fitting to existing equipment. As a result, the solution doesn’t entail investing in a completely new automated yard. The technology is well established now and available to eliminate the human element in operations.
Part of TT Club’s risk management services is to highlight to its membership and the industry at large proven technologies that can assist in loss prevention and combat operational risk. Stack profiling on quay cranes and yard cranes has become an important tool to manage risks for terminal operators that can save lives and money.
Most crane manufacturers, as well as other specialist sensor providers can now supply stack profiling technology; the latter include, but are not limited to, TMIEC, ABB, Siemens and Lase. The price is about $30,000 to $50,000 per crane. While this may seem a significant investment, future savings can easily outweigh the initial purchase price and in truth, the avoidance of serious injuries or death is beyond value.
TT Club would recommend that all new cranes be specified and supplied with stack profiling, and existing cranes retro-fitted, especially at terminals where this type of accident has become a particularly common occurrence.
