Human and Robot Hands

On our busy construction jobsites and within our large manufacturing facilities, keeping our team members safe is our number one core value at FTI. With more than 3,500 team members at sites and facilities across the country, we work diligently to provide the safety tools and processes needed to protect our teams. We’ve also developed a culture that ensures that each person knows they are valued on and off the job.

As our business grows and technology advances, how can we make sure we’re doing everything we can to keep our team members safe? A little robotic assistance doesn’t hurt.

Medium-voltage (MV) Safety

As an energy organization, FTI performs MV electrical work at various levels of scale. MV is generally classified as being between 1,000 and 35,000 volts and is used to provide power for large energy consumers such as data centers, hospitals, industrial and manufacturing facilities.

A critical piece of MV work is ensuring quality control at every step, from design through installation and commissioning. Ensuring proper lockout/tagout (LOTO) procedures are followed is also crucial. This includes a highly detailed way to terminate cables, and electricians must complete extensive training to be certified in MV work. Termination instructions must be followed exactly; the consequences of not doing so include arc flash, arc blast or explosions, all of which are as bad as they sound, with the risk of injury or loss of life, along with equipment destruction.

Enter Robotic Terminations

As a large energy contractor, FTI was approached by 3M, a global leader in science solutions. 3M developed a robotic tool, dubbed 3M Cable Quality Preparation System (QPS), that can perform MV terminations. This tool offers numerous advantages over manual terminations, including standardization and quality control, automating a repetitive task and helping us safeguard workers. With FTI’s work on large data center power within our Excellerate® manufacturing facilities, this provided a great opportunity to test the QPS.

Collaborating on Safety

Before you get the wrong idea, 3M’s Cable QPS isn’t a robot that moves around a facility on its own power, systematically performing MV terminations. Rather, it’s a tabletop unit that can be moved to where it’s needed in a facility or on a jobsite. The termination specifications are loaded into the unit, along with high-resolution images. The electricians who work with the unit are highly experienced in MV terminations, understanding the project scope and the exacting nature of the work. Terminations that would take 2-3 hours for an individual to complete are done in about 30 minutes, freeing up skilled workers to perform other necessary jobs. With the quality and specifications built into the system, FTI has used the 3M Cable QPS for thousands of MV terminations.

Continuing to Innovate

With safety as a core value, FTI undertook a big step several years ago and eliminated fixed-blade knives across our jobsites and facilities. Our safety incident data showed us that cuts from knives were a leading cause of safety incidents. The MV termination 3M Cable QPS takes this to the next step, enabling us to move past even the safer cutting techniques we had employed to eliminating cable termination by team members all together. While we are far from performing all MV terminations robotically, the 3M Cable QPS tool shows us great promise and proves what organizations can do when they work together to enhance team member safety.