Working on an oil rig is a job that constantly places your wellbeing in danger. Fires happen often and people tend to get injured. Accidents happen all the time and they can result in the loss of a limb or even death. Safety is obviously a priority but it’s hard to ramp up safety efforts more than they already are.
One thing that hasn’t been accounted for is the weight of the crew. Since the 1980s, workers on oil rigs have increased 19{ed34752d3d9237811f2899a265685e36705e4e86722207f201c96dd1cfc4a167} in weight from 11 stone to 14 stone. This puts evacuation strategies at risk. Everything from gear, to life rafts, to how much weight helicopters can hold are on the line here.
That’s why 3D scanning is so essential to safety improvements. It makes it possible to collect data about employees on offshore oil rigs. This way, new emergency procedures and regulations can be put into place to meet these new specifications. The changes made will compensate for the fact that people weigh more now than they used to.
This information is very important, as you can imagine, when attempting to evacuate an oil rig in an emergency. It’s vital that companies know how much people weigh. How many will fit on a helicopter? In a lifeboat? On the rig itself? Will the safety gear fit everybody? You need the answers to these questions.
In an effort to streamline these processes, two scanners are used to capture data about every worker. The 3D scanning will be performed by a Hamamatsu Body Line Scanner. The people involved in the study are called it the TARDIS, after the flying phone box from Doctor Who.
The data collected as a part of this study will be used to figure out the average size of workers on oil rigs and potentially stop accidents from happening. The data promises to be the most accurate available and will make for the usage of only the most effective safety gear and apparatuses.
This is something that people don’t think about. So many people associate 3D scanning with just some technological fad. However, it has real-life, real-world uses that are both practical and important. I mean, what could be more important than managing the safety of workers on oil rigs? If their safety is assured, they are likely to do better work since they feel comfortable in the gear they have in case of an emergency. It just makes good sense.
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