Site emergency response training with AMC Engineers By Andrew Perks

It ’ s not often we get the call from a consulting engineering company asking if we can assist them in training their staff . This is possibly only the second time .

Images supplied by Andrew Perks

Andrew Perks is a subject expert in ammonia refrigeration . Since undertaking his apprenticeship in Glasgow in the 1960s he has held positions of contracts engineer , project engineer , refrigeration design engineer , company director for a refrigeration contracting company and eventually owning his own contracting company and low temperature cold store . He is now involved in adding skills to the ammonia industry , is merSETA accredited and has written a variety of unit standards for SAQA that define the levels to be achieved in training in our industry .

The eager learners from AMC Engineers – a young , growing engineering consultancy .

For those that don ’ t know AMC Engineers , they are a young , growing engineering consultancy based in Cape Town . While they might be classed as new guys on the block , they have a wealth of experience and have been involved in several prestigious projects around the country with clients such as Pick n Pay , Eskort and Frey ’ s Meats – to name a few .

What impressed us most was the request to train their staff on how to respond to an incident on site . You might well ask : Surely , they are consultants , they don ’ t do any actual work on site , they are not contractors , so why would they need this training ?

If you know your OHS Act you would know that it is incumbent on an employer to inform , instruct and train their staff on any medium they could come into contact

with during their working day . Part of this would be if while walking around the site they become involved in an ammonia incident , they must know how to react and what to do .

As associates of ASTI , the Ammonia Safety Training Institute in California , we have set up training programmes and site emergency plans to cover such an event . There is one particular session where we

look at a real live incident where a person was engulfed in an ammonia cloud . He was in the wrong place at the wrong time , but due to his training and quickness of mind he managed to escape from what in most cases would have been a fatal encounter . He still struggles with his consequential injuries , but he is still around to talk about it .

This is what A Perks Enterprises is all about : making our industry safer through

Cold Link Africa March | April 2024 | Page 27

It ’ s not often we get the call from a consulting engineering company asking if we can assist them in training their staff . This is possibly only the second time .

Site emergency response training with AMC Engineers By Andrew Perks

It ’ s not often we get the call from a consulting engineering company asking if we can assist them in training their staff . This is possibly only the second time .

COLD LINK AFRICA • March / April 2024 www . coldlinkafrica . co . za 27