Zenith’s World Class Innovative Distillation Tower Access

Zenith constantly brings innovative access and repair solutions for the world’s leading blue-chip companies in the oil, gas and petrochemical industry.

A long-term client faced a particular issue regarding access to a distillation tower at their refinery. Traditionally, the full scaffolding approach incurs an excessive time and labour element at both the erection and dismantling stages.

With the client having total confidence in our reputation for excellence, Zenith designed and installed a safe innovative solution to facilitate access throughout the full height of a 60m x 5.5m distillation tower. The full scaffold option involves an initial erection period of between 3 to 4 months with another 2 to 3 months to dismantle the scaffold and would require an on-site workforce of between 10 to 20 operatives.

The traditional scaffold method also requires an extremely large footprint at the base of the tower which often incurs serious access issues to adjacent plant and equipment.

Zenith’s in-house world class team of engineers initially provided a concept design and once agreed by the client, a full design to provide a safe access solution significantly reducing the footprint around the base of the tower yet also allowing full circumference access throughout its full height. The innovative scheme utilized a combination of ‘a bespoke hybrid solution’ followed by traditional scaffolding to the upper 10m of the tower. For the erection element of the project, Zenith’s on-site personnel comprised a team of 6 erection specialists with an additional 2 operatives at ground level for a period of 45 days.