Alex Fournier on Blade Repair Safety and SPRAT Certification

Alex Fournier, Director of Composite Operations at Enertek,
discusses the importance and training of SPRAT certification for
wind turbine technicians. He details the certification levels,
recent changes in safety standards, and the significance of proper
protective gear and equipment maintenance in rope access and blade
repair. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update
on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored
by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather
Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the
show
on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and visit
Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes'
YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Allen Hall: With wind turbine scaling up and
rope access becoming more critical. Technicians need proper
training for safe and efficient blade repairs. This week we speak
with Alex Fournier director of Composite Operations at Enertek,
Alex brings insight on the spread certification process and how
recent changes are enhancing safety. Efficiency for technicians
working at Height. Speaker 2: Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining
Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress
powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Alex, welcome to the program. Alex
Fournier: Thank you guys for having me once again. Allen Hall:
Yeah, we're glad to have you back. There's been so much so many
changes that has happened since the last time you were here, but
today we want to talk about SPRAT training and. What this means for
the industry and what the latest and greatest is in terms of sprt.
And for those who don't know what SPRT is, it's actually an acronym
like most things in Wind, it's the Society of Professional Rope
Access Technicians, and they create [00:01:00] the standards
around. The knowledge you're supposed to have and the skills you're
supposed to have if you want to climb with rope access. Now. I,
Alex, I wanna start off first, like how big of a problem do we have
right now on the training on rope access technicians? I see a lot
of variation across the United States in particular. Are you seeing
the same thing, that they're just not so much a concrete standard
everybody's using? Alex Fournier: I think in Canada, like we don't
have that many schools that offer the course, first of all. So I
think we don't have much in the east Coast. We probably have what?
Three, four. In the west coast they have a little bit more. And
it's often like vendors that will offer it. So it's a mistress, for
example, offered a course. They do IDA and spread. I did my course
at Novel in Montreal, which is one of the best training center I've
seen in all my years of Rob Access. Celtic Falcon too in the East
coast. Really good training center. But I [00:02:00] think since we
don't have that many, everyone is kinda like on the same page, so
everyone talked to each other and the course is pretty well
structured, at least in Canada. Before when I started the course
was four days, and then you had one days for the exam. So it's a
lot to learn in four days, but now they changed it to five days of
course, and then one extra day for the exam. So that give you much
time to train and, if you don't understand something you can. You
can really take the time to really understand it. So you're ready
for the exam. Joel Saxum: Alex, let me ask you a question about
SPRAT and ia, right? 'cause Sprat is the North American version.
IRATA is usually the EU version or rest of the world version. They
are they're organizations that push this safety forward and
there's, this is how we should do things. And a lot of times a
company will adopt it, say, X, Y, Z operator says, if you're gonna
be on ropes on my site, you must be sprat level, this level, that
level, that, however. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but this is my
take on it. They're not actually like a [00:03:00] governmental
association. They're not an OSHA or something that mandates that
you must have. It's just these things are in our industry, sprat
best practices. This is what people live by. This is how we do it.
Okay. That's correct. Yeah. So can you walk us through the
different levels of spray? 'cause I know there's like a 1, 2, 3.
What do those all mean? Alex Fournier: Yeah. Level one basically
you're just a basic technician. You just learn how to move yourself
on the ropes basically. So you'll do basic like rope Totaro
transfer, or you're gonna pass deviation. All the basic maneuver
that you need to know on ropes. You're gonna learn it into your
level one which is great. Then to be a level one you just need to
be 18-year-old and you can sign up and do your level one. That's
the only requirement. Level two is after you did 600 hours on ropes
and six months of experience as a level one. Then you can do your
level two which you'll learn more. It will be more like rescue
scenario. So you'll do some basic [00:04:00] maneuver combined with
rescue, but yeah, so as a level two, you're gonna learn more as
taking some charge up and moving some charge up in the air. And
then to be a level three, it's kinda the same thing you do you're
level two, so then 600 hours as a level two, and then six months as
a level two, and then you can go to level three. And then level
three, you do every basic maneuver that I said in level one, but
it's rescue, so you're gonna do like a climbings rescue. You're
gonna do deviation rescue, ballet rescue just rope to rope transfer
with a victim on you. So it's every maneuver with a rescue because
when you're a level tree, normally you're in charge of the site or
you're gonna be in charge of. All the employees, not necessarily,
but normally that's all it is. So you wanna make sure that you're
able to rescue pretty much everyone in every Joel Saxum: scenario.
So what is, okay, so we have level ones, level twos, level threes.
What is a normal, and we're talking blade repair here, [00:05:00]
right? This is the Uptime podcast. So what is a normal blade
repair, sprat rope access crew look like? Alex Fournier: So I know
a lot of people will be, mad, that's what I'm gonna say. But
normally when you work, we call it when the rope access world, the
wind turbine industry is the easiest rope access world. Because
you're only doing you're only going down. You're only going up.
There's not much to it. You're not gonna do crazy deviation or
you're not gonna do crazy, like zip line and all that stuff. If you
do oil and gas, it's much bigger. But in rope access, in the wind
industry, normally a level one and level two. It's pretty much that
a level three might be overkill sometimes. On big job you probably
want to have one just 'cause you probably have more knowledge and
project management. But normally just a regular team, it's Joel
Saxum: gonna be a level two and a level one. Yeah. And from my
experience, basically everybody's dropping down two, two people on
the blade. You don't go by yourself. So there's always gonna be two
[00:06:00] technicians on that blade. And that makes sense. What
you're saying is and while people may not like this of rope access,
what it looks and that is a little bit easier because for the most
part, you're going up and down and. Two dimensions, right? It's
just up down on that one thing. Whereas in, I've been on, I've been
offshore on oil and gas crews where you see people in three
dimensions, guys going across tanks and all kinds of crazy stuff in
between. Pylons, like that's pretty, that's some pretty advanced
stuff. And when you watch those guys work, it is really impressive.
Sometimes the really experienced ones, I'm sure they are level
threes or whatever, how they can zip around. It's the same thing on
a wind turbine though. When you're, if you've never seen that and
you watch these people, Alex Fournier: it's Joel Saxum: mind
blowing. Alex Fournier: It's really the industrial athletes, that's
how we call it normally. Joel Saxum: But it's really impressive.
The seasonality of wind makes that kind of stuff difficult because
what happens is from a lot of times, okay, we'll take North America
for example, because of our blade repair season. You may be, if
you're a rope person, you may be out on ropes from April till
September, [00:07:00] October, depending on how far north you are.
And then you got three, four months off. So coming back around to
April again, much. A little bit tough, isn't it, when you're coming
off the couch. Alex Fournier: Yeah. And I gotta see a lot of people
they take it off in the winter and I don't blame them 'cause it's
really cold when you do ropes. But when you come back, you in that
if you are of bench board in six months, you shall do a day at a
training center to just put you back in your element. So yeah, you
shall still practice a little bit. But yeah, coming back after two
months of holidays or three months of. Vacation. It can be hard.
Yeah, you're gonna be sore. Definitely. The first you're gonna be
sore. Allen Hall: Let me ask the obvious question, because a lot of
guys that do wind turbine work in the summertime do something else
in, in the fall and the winter, but they want to stay on ropes. So
is then the sprat carries over. So even if you're just doing spprt
work for a wind turbine, you can get over into oil and gas and do
some rope work there, or. Wherever the place is. So it's so itpr as
a [00:08:00] universal training system in a sense. It's not just
wind specific. Alex Fournier: Yeah. It's basically, it's kinda like
a driver license. And the wind turbine industry is kinda like the
car. So let's say you go to oil and gas you have your driver
license, your rope access guy. But the car is, let's say like the
oil and gas industry, like myself, I started in 2015 as a ax
technician. I started doing window cleaning in Montreal.