BlueScope Steel are one of the world’s leading manufacturers of painted and coated steel products.  With more than 160 operations and sales offices across 16 countries, they employ over 15,000 people and serve thousands of customers every day.  BlueScope’s Port Kembla Steelworks is an integrated steelmaking operation with an annual production capacity of 2.6 million tonnes of crude steel.  

At BlueScope’s Port Kembla Steelworks, routine maintenance works can be difficult to perform safely due to the presence of asbestos.  Our trained technician’s role at the steelworks was to perform maintenance works where asbestos was present, using strict asbestos control measures.  This ensured that maintenance works could continue safely without risk of exposure to the usual BlueScope maintenance staff.     

We are also called upon to perform emergency “make safes” to control potential airborne asbestos fibres due to accidental damage or disturbance to asbestos materials.  Due to the age of the Steelworks, asbestos materials are still present in many forms including pipe lagging, insulation, and gaskets, so BlueScope’s maintenance staff can come across it quite often.  BlueScope’s diligent procedures around asbestos safety coupled with our fast reaction time and extensive asbestos experience means that accidental disturbances are made safe quickly and effectively, mitigating as much risk as possible. 

Since signing on at BlueScope in February 2021, we have performed many tasks including gasket removal, miscellaneous pipe fixes, expansion joint removal, general shutdown maintenance.