Safety Netting & Walkway
Installation at Oldhall ERF
- Project Type: Safety Netting, Edge Protection and Access Walkway Installation
- Location: Oldhall Energy Recovery Facility, Irvine, North Ayrshire
- Client: Principal construction contractor
- Duration: May 2025 to July 2026, 31 site visits across three work packages
- Team Deployment: IRATA qualified rope access crews of 3 to 4
Overview
Think Access delivered a series of safety critical work packages during the construction of the Oldhall Energy Recovery Facility in Irvine, North Ayrshire, one of Scotland’s newest Energy from Waste projects. Across three engagements our Scotland team installed FASET safety netting and Combisafe edge protection site wide, managed netting through the construction sequence, and installed a permanent steel access walkway inside the waste bunker.
The works ran from May 2025 through to July 2026, tracking the plant’s construction programme from structural steel through to fit out.
The Challenge
An Energy from Waste plant under construction is a constantly changing environment. Fall protection has to go in as structures rise, move as work fronts shift and come out cleanly once permanent floors and cladding make it redundant. The tipping hall, FGT area, admin building and waste bunker each needed collective protection at different stages, installed and removed without holding up the trades relying on it.
The waste bunker walkway brought a different problem. Steel beams and grated flooring had to be installed at height inside a confined concrete bunker, with components craned in through a live construction site and landed precisely between existing cast in features.
The Solution
Rope access let our teams put protection exactly where the programme needed it without scaffolding out each area.
Across the three packages our teams delivered:
- FASET safety netting installed site wide, including the tipping hall, FGT roof areas and waste bunker roof
- Combisafe edge protection to leading edges and upright steel across the site
- Progressive removal and re-installation of nets as work fronts moved, with nets rolled, bundled and cleared from site once areas were complete
- Installation of the waste bunker access walkway, working alongside the site crane to land steel beams, fit grated flooring and complete handrails
- Rigging of chain blocks and beam clamps to position steelwork precisely where crane access was restricted
Every shift ran under the site’s permit regime with task sheets and POWRAs completed before work began, and lifting operations were coordinated daily with the principal contractor’s crane team.
Results
The netting and edge protection packages protected the workforce through the main construction phase and were removed cleanly as the building envelope completed, leaving no redundant equipment on site. The waste bunker now has a permanent, compliant access walkway for the operational phase.
Alongside our work at Levenseat and the Kelvin and Protos projects south of the border, Oldhall extends Think Access’s track record on Energy from Waste construction, providing fall protection, access steelwork and rope access support from first steel to handover.
Safety Netting and Edge Protection for Construction Projects
Think Access installs FASET safety netting, edge protection and permanent access steelwork on industrial and energy projects across Scotland and the UK. See also our Grangemouth netting and edge protection case study. If your project needs collective fall protection, contact Think Access to discuss your programme.
