Weaving electronics into oilfield apparel looks to boost worker health and safety
In the 1980s comedy/drama The Greatest American Hero, special education teacher Ralph Hinkley meets aliens who give him a suit with super powers like exceptional strength and the ability to fly. This enables him to fight crime--and land in a comically crumpled heap in every episode.
In the near future an electronically-empowered FRC jumpsuit may track an employee’s exposure to dangerous gases, hearing-loss-inducing loud noises and even allow or deny access to secured areas.
Mark Bernstein is CEO of British-based startup Wearable Technologies, LTD, and he’s very excited about how this technology can improve life on a rig, a platform or even a producing well site.
While they are not currently producing wearable technology clothing for the oil patch, the company has had some success across the Atlantic already, with a basic safety design.
“We learned how to put washable electronics into consumer cycle garments to make people more visible,” he said. The company’s first actual garment is called VisiJax, a garment with sewn-in lights that activate when a bicyclist lifts an arm as a turn signal. These garments can also connect with a cellphone to allow hands-free calling. They can also include what the company calls “SOS/man-down environmental sensors.”
It was a meeting with an oil patch major that triggered Bernstein to connect his firm’s wearables with oilfield safety. “I went to a chemical refinery and saw that the workers wore standard gas sensors” that would set of an alert at the presence of dangerous levels of poisons. “But it would only tell the worker” of the issue.
In that he detected an irony. “You go into one of their control-room bunkers and see a bank of people and screens, and they are monitoring the physical assets—the pipes—and if there’s a problem, some sort of alert comes up on a screen to say there’s a problem with a pipe. But the people (in the control room) have no visibility of where the people—the workforce—is.”
“A bit antiquated” was his thought. “Surely, nowadays you would want to know where your workers were, and you’d want to be monitoring them in real time,” he said.
The possibilities are literally endless, but here is a scenario Bernstein put forth.
Let’s say a worker on a rig is walking across the pad and accidentally steps in front of an in-motion piece of equipment. If he is wearing an FRC equipped with washable sensors, he’ll receive an alert, hopefully giving him time to dodge the machinery.
And there’s another level. If the machinery/pickup truck is synched with the same system, the driver will also get an alert and both parties can take evasive action, hopefully preventing the pedestrian from being seriously injured.
But there’s more and here’s where the industrial internet of things (IIoT) comes in.
The producer or service company could collect all this data and learn more about preventing accidents, such as:
Does the worker on foot regularly step in front of machinery, meaning he needs training—or maybe hearing aids?
Does the equipment operator often come close to running over people, so he needs safety training?
Do more accidents occur at well site ABC, meaning there are visual obstructions, and something needs to be rearranged at the site?
Is there a time of day that these accidents increase, meaning a short work break is in order?
And on and on.
H2S monitors, which are already required in most places, could be interfaced with the site’s monitoring system. That would alert the control room as well as the worker, which could give the control room the opportunity to shut a valve or other equipment, reducing the risk across the site, not just for the worker in question.
Because each suit would have a unique ID and be assigned to a certain individual, it could be programmed to allow or deny access to restricted areas, or to at least report access by and unauthorized person.
And while the benefits are many, Bernstein admits that this could sound Big Brother-ish and that it will be awhile before employees and companies get comfortable with the idea of wearing clothing with such trackability.
Bernstein spoke at a recent Houston technology conference hosted by the Energy Conference Network. ECN is hosting a similar conference, focusing on cutting edge technology for the oil field, Tuesday, November 14 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Midland. To register, go to: https://www.gamechangers-midland17.com/page/1305125/registration
