Driving to stay safe on the highway!

Yadgiri to Warangal Road project –
A 99-km EHS challenge

As part of the plan of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to enhance connectivity in the young state of Telangana, L&T has been contracted to convert a 99 km 2-lane stretch from Yadgiri to Warangal on NH 163 running across two districts into a modern 4-lane highway to meet the growing demand for the movement of people and goods. The challenge facing Project Head, V B S P K Chakravarthy, EHS Head, M Pedda Minnella and team is to evolve plans to keep men, material and machinery safe next to a buzzing highway. That they have clocked 12.36 safe million man hours since the inception of the project till date, have no recorded LTI or fatalities at site and have won a special mention at the Annual Safety Awards of L&T Construction reflect their rousing success.

The project is already in an advanced stage of completion with the team having executed several challenging tasks like 34 km of flexible and 133 km of rigid pavements, two Rail Over Bridges, a flyover, three OHE lines of 132 & 220 kV, 10 RE walls and a toll plaza and a lot of our success as Chakravarthy shares, “is thanks to our strategy of dividing our safety initiatives into various buckets for flawless implementation and regular monitoring like roadside works, structures, P&M, administration and housekeeping.”

Diverting ‘live’ traffic to work safely

Roadside works are undoubtedly the most critical as one hazard all road projects face is to remain safe while working next to heavy, ‘live’ traffic. “Our well-planned and carefully implemented traffic diversions are as per IRC SP55 to prevent work zone incidents,” elaborates Minnella, joining the discussion and mentioning that the VECT initiative, that has been introduced in TI IC, has been successfully implemented as per IMS, again to prevent traffic accidents. A frequent incident that occurs at road projects is of rollers toppling over, “so we constructed high embankments,” he explains, “and procured permits for RE wall edge compaction that has prevented even a single incident from happening.” Minnella’s smile says a lot. Whenever work is carried out close to ‘live’ OHE lines, clear goal posts and barricades pre-empt incidents.

RCC girder erection

Following safety norms in construction

RE panels at site are always lifted with double wire rope slings, chemical anchor fasteners used as end girder lateral supports in consultation with EDRC & Hilti teams while strengthened spreader beams are used to lift and erect girders. Wheel choke blocks, delay & safe starters have been employed in rollers & graders and stoppers for wheel loader buckets during maintenance. Regular sprinkling of water has kept the dust down at the crusher plant while all the blasting at site has been well controlled to prevent noise pollution and keep the work zone safe. “It was observed that drivers of transit mixers were working continuously for 12 hours which was hazardous,” mentions Minnella, “hence a second shift was introduced to ensure that accidents did not happen due to driver fatigue.”

Administrative control

Workmen camps organized close to the work locations have significantly minimised the stress of transporting workmen to and from the site every day. Apart from rest sheds at work locations provided with drinking water, first aid facilities are readily available at site and weekly health checkup camps are conducted by the Government’s ESI Department.

Traffic diversion

Digital initiatives

Digital initiatives like VR training have gone a long way to keep EHS standards high. “While VR training has simulated real life situations for the workmen to understand better, the Safety RtR app has been a huge success,” says Minnella. “In fact, in October 2019 alone we had 224 RtRs raised and approved by ESHO.” ETICS is another digital initiative that has gained traction with the project team.

“A good indication of a sound safe work culture at site is near miss reporting,” shares Subhamoy Maitra, EHS – Head, RREC SBG, “and the fact that there have been as many as 46 reported near misses at the Yadgiri-Warangal site is encouraging because for me, these were 46 potentially dangerous situations that were addressed because they were timely reported by site personnel.” There have also been 4850 EHS Observations which is a mere 0.4% of the safe million safe hours clocked by the site.

For Chakravarthy, Minnella and team, although the absence of LTI and fatalities have obviously been highpoints in their EHS performance, client appreciation has been even sweeter, especially the two awards that they won from NHAI for completing 6 million and 10 million safe man hours respectively. “We have also implemented 72% of the Golden Rules,” adds Chakravarthy, with satisfaction.

Steel girder erection