The maintenance and management of a water treatment plant at Medupi Power Station is important for the operation of the power station as it processes harmful water produced during power generation –ensuring that it is reusable.

The water treatment plant is responsible for processing all of the processed water from Medupi Power Station. This includes all of the run-off water and the process water from the plant, which is then treated and subsequently pumped back into the system.

Skyriders marketing manager Mike Zinn reveals that the company was originally approached and tasked with maintenance on only half of the building, but was later commissioned to complete maintenance on the entire water treatment building.

“After two days of working on half of the water treatment building, we were on schedule and everything was going well. When the management at Medupi saw this they approached Skyriders about carrying out maintenance on the remainder of the building too,” he explains.

The concrete columns of the water treatment plant are approximately 6 m high, however, Zinn points out that the use of scaffolding for the maintenance work would have been a difficult and timely task.

“By using rope access, the maintenance team was able to get up to the top of the columns and carry out the necessary work quickly and easily.”

During the process inspections had to be carried out by Medupi management. Zinn notes that it was difficult for the inspectors to get to the various inspection points. To overcome this challenge, the Skyriders team took photographs of the inspection points, which were examined by inspectors. Once the inspection points were deemed acceptable photographs were then taken of the finished work to inspect the quality.