The Refinery Survey Starts Weeks Before Anyone Walks the Site

If you are the person signing off on a wireless project at a refinery, a terminal or a chemical plant, this is the part of the job that will surprise you. My work is wireless site surveys, walking a property with measuring instruments to find out where the radio signal actually reaches, where it drops out, and where new equipment needs to go. In an office or a warehouse, that is a person with a laptop and a bag. In a refinery, none of the normal habits survive the gate: not carrying your own phone, not walking where you like, not driving yourself in.

That matters to you for three reasons. It changes the lead time, because credentialing takes days to weeks and cannot be rushed on the morning of the visit. It changes the cost, because protective equipment and specialised clothing are real line items. And it changes your exposure, because a contractor who breaks a plant's safety protocol can create a problem for the plant, and a contractor who creates problems for the plant does not get invited back, which then becomes your scheduling problem, not just theirs.

The credential that decides whether someone babysits my visit

The first thing you have to do is get a TWIC card, which stands for Transportation Worker Identification Card. It is a federal identity credential, issued through the TSA, that says you have passed a background check and can be trusted on secure transportation and industrial property.

Enrolment runs in four steps: file the application online, book an appointment at a local enrolment centre (IdentoGO is the national brand), sit the background check where they ask their questions and take your thumbprints and fingerprints, and then a couple of days later the card arrives in the mail.

It is the same service as TSA PreCheck, the expedited airport screening programme, because it is part of TSA, but the relationship runs one direction only. If you get the TWIC, that qualifies you to do PreCheck. Being pre-checked does not qualify you for a TWIC. So nobody can substitute one for the other at the last minute.

Here is the operational consequence for your side of the table. The card proves I can get onto the property unescorted. If I do not have a TWIC card, I require an escort from the facility, which means somebody from the plant has to walk with me the entire time I am there. That is one of your people, pulled off their actual job, for the length of the survey.

What the protective equipment list actually costs you

Then there is PPE, personal protection and safety equipment, which a lot of people just call "safety." The kit is not negotiable:

• Steel toed boots.
• Eye protection, goggles or glasses. Sunglasses usually won't work, so you have to have the correct protective glasses.
• Hearing protection.
• A hard hat.
• A safety vest.

In some cases, if you are doing oil and gas, depending on the environment, you also need flame retardant clothing, fabric rated not to catch and sustain a flame, at either FR2 or FR3 level, which are the standard protection ratings. There are two ways to get there. You can dress up like a Ghostbuster, the way I did, in a jumpsuit that covers everything (those are coveralls), but they are kind of expensive. Or you can get flame retardant jeans, Wrangler makes some, and pair them with a flame retardant shirt.

Some places will inspect you for FR socks and even FR underwear. And if you are wearing an undershirt, it needs to be either 100% cotton or FR rated. The reason for that last one is worth saying plainly: if you are wearing a nylon or spandex shirt and you get involved in an accident, that fabric will melt into your skin, just from the heat. You definitely don't want that to happen, so a cotton undershirt goes a long way.

Check-in, and the training nobody mentions in the schedule

When I show up at the site, there is a security check-in where they ask for the TWIC card and for the PIN that comes with it, which I type into a keypad. They verify it and give me a pass to get on site.

Before I can go out on site, I sit down for a six to ten minute training video that welcomes you to the facility and gives you the information about it. There is no test at the end, at least not that I have seen, but you are expected to be aware of what is going on, and it teaches you the basics of what is happening around you.

Depending on the size of the site, it might be better to be in a vehicle than on foot, so the facility needs to have a vehicle arranged. You cannot just drive your own car in unless you get approval, and that approval can be pretty strict, although sometimes they will just wave you in depending on who the security officer is that day. If the site is large and no vehicle has been arranged in advance, that is dead time on a day you are paying for.

Why my phone is contraband until somebody signs for it

You also cannot simply walk out there and take pictures. Cameras are not allowed inside facilities like this for a number of reasons, mostly worker safety and distraction, but also electrical discharge, the risk that an electronic device could produce a spark in an atmosphere where that matters. And a camera phone is still a camera.

So if I am going to be taking pictures the way I would in a regular site survey, or using distance monitors, or carrying any other electronic device, I need written commitment from the safety officer that I am approved to bring it in. Otherwise they are not going to let me take my tools in at all. Even a spectrum analyzer, the instrument that shows what radio signals are present on which frequencies, which is the core measurement tool of the whole job, even something as simple as my phone, goes through safety first.

A lot of people overlook that, because you take it for granted that you can just take your stuff with you everywhere you go. If that paperwork is not done before the visit, the survey does not happen. The person walks the site with nothing to measure with.

What will actually hurt somebody out there

Do not go off the beaten path ever under any circumstances. There are things there that won't just kill you. They'll make you really, really sick. If you get close to them and get exposed to some of the chemicals and toxins that are there, it can damage you.

Once you are on site, everything you see is there for your protection. If you see yellow bollards, the short posts that mark off protected areas, stay inside them. If you see yellow chains, you stay on the outside of them, unless you are specifically going in there, and you only go in there with an escort. Don't touch anything, don't touch any water, don't touch any liquids. Be prepared for places that get hot, because there is extreme heat when you walk by some of the units, and if it gets hot, try to stay away from it. If you see people working in those bright silver flame retardant suits, stay away from them as well.

If you see red and white tape, you need to get away from that as quickly as possible. H2S, hydrogen sulphide gas, is dangerous and it can cause you to stop breathing immediately. And you'll die. There's no warning for it. That's why you wear H2S monitors, small personal detectors that alarm when the gas is present.

They will usually lend you one at the facility. But if you don't turn it back in, they will charge you about three to five hundred dollars for it. That is enough of a risk that an H2S monitor is something you might want to consider carrying in your own safety kit.

Be aware, too, that usually once a week and sometimes twice a week, in the middle of the day, they run alarm drills or alarm testing. Even if you know it's coming, even if you're prepared for it, it will still freak you out a little bit.

Getting usable data out of all that

When you are surveying, it comes down to having the right tool set for whatever instrumentation you were approved to carry, and collecting the right data with it. If you are driving, maintain whatever the posted speed limits are and pay attention to all the traffic rules, the four-way stops included, because a lot of people take for granted that everyone else is paying attention. If somebody knows it is their turn to go and pulls out in front of you, you might be met with a large tanker truck, and that could cause some serious accidents.

Make sure the readings you are taking are appropriate to what you are being asked to solve. If you are in a vehicle taking readings for frequencies that don't permeate the windows or the structure of the vehicle, some radio frequencies simply do not pass through metal and glass, bring an adapter with external antennas so you can mount it on the outside. That matters especially if you are surveying for people who are going to be standing outside the vehicle. If you are serving outside, take the readings outside. If you are serving inside, take the readings inside. A measurement taken in the wrong place answers the wrong question.

People want immediate results here the same way they do on any other survey, so be prepared that at the end of the walk you can sit down, get your thoughts together and produce something quickly that they can look at to get an idea of what you are doing. It is always a good idea to debrief the customer who is there at the facility, so they know you went in, you saw everything they needed, and then you turned around and left.

Badge out, or you don't get asked back

That goes hand in hand with badging. When you get a temporary badge, badge into everything everybody else badges into, the facility, the gates, the buildings, and make sure you badge out as well. They run safety checks and security checks, and if they see that someone has badged in but not badged out, that can cause problems for the plant. Someone has to go looking for a person who may not be there.

If you cause problems for the plant, the likelihood of being invited back is very small. So if you want to keep a good relationship with your customer, you follow all of those protocols.

The thing I have learned doing these is that those safety protocols aren't just there for them and for their insurance purposes. They're there for you.

What to ask, and what to do

• Ask your vendor: does the person walking the site hold a current TWIC card, or will my facility have to supply an escort for the full duration?
• Ask the site's safety officer, in writing and before the visit date: which electronic devices are approved to come through the gate, including phones, cameras, distance monitors and spectrum analyzers?
• Ask whether the site requires FR2 or FR3 flame retardant clothing, and whether they inspect for FR socks, underwear and undershirts, so nobody is turned away at check-in.
• Arrange a site vehicle in advance if the property is large, and confirm whether personal vehicles need approval to enter.
• Confirm whether the facility lends H2S monitors and what the replacement charge is, roughly three to five hundred dollars if one is not returned.
• Build the mandatory six to ten minute orientation video, the check-in and the badging into the day's schedule rather than treating them as overhead.
• Ask whether the readings will be taken where the service is actually needed, inside or outside, and whether external antennas are being brought for any vehicle-based measurements.
• Agree up front on a same-day debrief, and confirm that everyone who badged in has badged out before the team leaves.

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