Techint Engineering & Construction held the first plant shutdown at the Ternium Industrial Center in Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro. The project lasted 168 labor hours and involved over 2,500 professionals from different companies.

In March 2023, Techint E&C signed a new contract with Ternium, the largest steel company in Latin America, to carry out electromechanical assembly services at the Ternium Industrial Center. Located in Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, the LTA–Ternium project is today employing over 250 people who took part in the plant shutdown, held with great success over a period of 168 hours.

The first shutdown

The first shutdown took place between August 14 and 21, and involved a series of scheduled periodic stoppages where the steel mill halted production in whole or in part according to the instance, to allow preventive and corrective maintenance activities to take place as well as those aimed at optimizing processes.

The plan involved two work shifts of 12 hours each, requiring logistics to be adapted so that the entire activity could conform to these new schedules, including the organization of transport, food and supervision.

In order to protect people’s safety, the program included several workshops and alignment meetings involving the entire team. These identified critical points and mapped the work to be carried out, determining which areas should be isolated and which points required the most monitoring. Safe hours were also held during this period by the Safety and Management teams, which are coordinated meetings designed to identify risks.

For Maximiliano Santos, Project Manager, this activity consolidated the company’s ability to carry out extremely complex work while maintaining high standards of productivity. All the tasks were completed in a shorter timeframe than planned. “The experience was key for us to gain experience in this type of action, in addition to interacting with other companies. For this shutdown, we had over 2,500 professionals taking part from various organizations, in addition to 250 Techint employees.”

Rewarding safe practices

On July 28 Ternium held a ceremony to award the Good Practices Prizes at the project. The event took place during the Daily Dialogue on Prevention and Safety, the daily safety meeting held at the beginning of each shift that covers issues related to accident prevention at work. This was an opportunity to recognize the efforts made by employees who had made a significant contribution to continuous improvement in internal safety processes.

In total, six employees were honored with the awards, according to Marcella Gomes, from the QHSE team and the person responsible for coordinating the award ceremony, who explained that, "We decided to implement initiatives that directly benefit employees involved in operational activities.” The winner was Sidney Oliveira da Costa, the installation mechanic for the project, who was selected thanks to her commitment to safety and support for risk prevention.