Workplace safety

The shock wave created by the construction boom in the Middle East has been felt worldwide. The growth has been tremendous. This part of the world has consumed anywhere from 50%-70% of the word’s drill rig manufacturer’s yearly capacity. Manufacturers could not keep up with the worldwide demand for drilling equipment, while contractors faced another challenge—that of finding and keeping qualified employees.

The first time I went to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it was via Australia, literally on my first trip completely around the world. I had flight connections in Bangkok, Thailand, and Chennai, India. I was shocked when no more than ten women got onto the Boeing 767 going from India to Dubai. The flight was full of men between the ages of 18 and 45 who were commuting to work. It was obvious to see why there was so much demand for so many workers once I arrived. I also had the opportunity to visit the Gold Souk. The gold was the least of what I was looking at—it was the people—and it was a melting pot. The image is what I would have expected to see in New York City maybe two hundred years ago. The Middle East is the new land of opportunity.

I understand that there is very little that can be done about the available work force. We have all received the e-mails with the title of “This Year’s Safety Award Winners,” and there is a slide show with an electrician fixing a light on a ladder inside a swimming pool, a second slide shows one forklift picking up another forklift to get the merchandise to the top floor, and a third slide of a man who does not have any safety glasses so he wraps a plastic bag around his eyes, etc. And these are the countries from where the workforce comes. But let’s face it; they’re willing to work very hard, and very inexpensively.

This is a major hurdle that Middle Eastern contractors are facing and will continue to face. Much of the work force that you have to choose from is uneducated in this kind of environment. Many have never driven cars let alone equipment that can easily cost over $1 million U.S. dollars and has enough power to rip steel apart. I will never forget the time when I was commissioning one of our machines in India. Every time the operator would get out of the cab, he would reengage the pilot safety lever. This is like getting out of your car and then putting it back into drive and walking away. Imagine the accidents that could happen from such a small, uneducated error.

I have already mentioned that there is little that can be done about the available workforce, so it is up to the contractor to look at some other factors to keep your jobsites running safely, efficiently, and profitably. If more qualified people cannot be sourced, then the equipment is the next place to look. There are four major points to focus on when looking at drilling equipment that is available to you. They are operation, quality, mobility, and safety.

Most surveys show that the actual price of equipment is not the first factor considered when buying equipment. Generally, the number one selling point is quality. While I understand and completely agree that quality is extremely important, I don’t think it is—or should be—the leading factor in a decision to buy equipment. If you are going to buy a car and it is hard to drive, do you still buy it because it has a high quality?  When I see some of the machines our competition is building, I am amazed by the quality but likewise amazed at what is required to operate the machine. Multiple joysticks, countless buttons, and touch screen computers. It seems like they could launch the Discovery space shuttle.

At Bay Shore Systems, we keep things very simple. We will configure the controls any way the customer wants them. Because all of our drills use an excavator as the base carrier, we can comfortably say that if your operator can operate an excavator, they can operate one of our drills.

We cannot overlook quality, but I don’t want to focus on the importance of workmanship or welds. All manufacturers build high-quality machines. If we didn’t, no one would buy our equipment. The quality of after-sales support is a much stronger topic. Every drill rig is going to break down. You are forcing steel into the earth, and eventually the earth is going to win. We had been working with a company in Qatar, and they had an engine fail on one of our competitor’s machines. The kelly bars were down the hole, and the machine was in the middle of the jobsite. It took the manufacturer over forty days to get someone to the site to fix the machine. Another company in Mexico had to wait 48 weeks to get a replacement slew bearing on a machine that was less than one year old. Is a new customer more important than taking care of an existing customer?  For the price of this equipment, the customer deserves better.

An important philosophy that we follow at Bay Shore is, “Fix first, invoice later.”  We have taken components off of new equipment two days away from being complete because a customer was broken down and needed the parts. When I describe this to potential customers, they say how upset they would be if that would have been their new piece of equipment now being late. It is very simple to ask them to reverse the role and imagine that they were the customer who was broken down.

Any company should take great pride in their customer service and quality. We are so proud that we would like to share some facts about this with you.

• The average machine produced by Bay Shore Systems consumes $4530 U.S. in yearly spare parts.
  - From 2006 through 2008, the yearly average went up less than $7 U.S. per machine.
  - One important factor that should also be known is that we list all of the part numbers from the OEMs that we use from local suppliers. This means that you can buy the same parts from local suppliers that we use.
• The average warranty cost that Bay Shore absorbs per machine is $5012 U.S.
  - From 2006 through 2008, this amount dropped from $6561 U.S. per machine to $4010 U.S. per machine.
• Our information shows that 73% of Bay Shore customers still own the original equipment they purchased from us.
• The average machine that Bay Shore has in operation is 10 years old.
• In 2008, we shipped 95.6% of spare parts shipments on time or early.

Mobility is another factor that is often overlooked. Getting from one hole to the next is very important, but what about getting from one jobsite to the next?  Many drill rigs are required to be partially disassembled to be transported. Let’s assume that the average machine
requires one day of disassembly and one day of assembly per mobilization. If you move to eight jobs per year, you have wasted sixteen days. That’s over three working weeks of lost production. The average contractor loses $10000 U.S. of profit per day when a machine is not turning to the right.

Bay Shore Systems builds very small drills and very large drills for vertical holes and for anchors. Everything we build is engineered to have a transport height not to exceed 3.5 meters; therefore, if you have a trailer that can support the weight and length of the equipment, you don’t need to disassemble anything. Even our machine with 203 kN-m of torque can be transported without disassembling anything. Forget the three weeks of nonproduction, imagine the three weeks of extra production by just not having to take your machine apart and putting it back together again, and again, and again.

While production is important, so is safety. I am glad to see that hard hats, gloves, safety glasses, appropriate footwear, etc. are becoming more enforced on jobsites. Construction is dangerous work. While equipment cannot be made foolproof, it can be made to keep the operator and other workers as safe as possible and still be productive. Anchor machines are very dangerous machines. Most of these machines only have crowd strokes of 3-4 meters, while most anchors need to go 12-20 meters into the ground. This means that drill steel needs to be spliced 4-5 times. This is a very dangerous process. The drill steel is heavy, the jobsites are muddy (even in the Middle East), and there are high-powered hydraulic clamps and other moving parts all in the proximity of where one to three people need to work.

Bay Shore builds machines that have up to 21 meters of single-pass crowd stroke. We also put all of the controls into easy-to-use multi-function joysticks inside the cab of an excavator. This can reduce or eliminate the need to splice drill steel. Also, keeping the operator in an enclosed cab keeps them out of the dust and debris as well as keeping them out of the heat. We all know that a happy operator is an efficient operator, and an efficient operator is a profitable operator.

The only time in life you start at the top is when you are drilling a hole. This is a philosophy the drilling industry has created, and it can be applied to many aspects of life in general. The only way to stay on top in this industry is to stay safe and be efficient. You should evaluate your equipment on a regular basis and identify the shortcomings. Is your tooling sufficient in quality and production?  How much do you spend in spare parts per year in both time and money?  How long does it take to mobilize from one jobsite to another?  When a machine breaks down, how long does it take to get it repaired?  Simple things like this can make a huge difference to your bottom line.

Bay Shore Systems is committed to making our customers successful. There is a lot of equipment, different processes, and different methods that are available, and some of them you may not know about. Does Bay Shore offer a solution to every problem?  No, but we can help lead you in the direction of solving almost any problem. We don’t pretend to know what the customer wants. They talk, and we listen. We have created a product line that offers reliable equipment. Equipment that is easy to operate, easy and inexpensive to maintain, easy to transport, and easy to make just the way you want it.

Contatc details:
Adam Minatre, Vice President
T: +1 208 687 3311
E: adam@bayshoresystems.com
www.bayshoresystems.com