Custom Engineering
An accommodation ladder lives outdoors at sea. Its tubular members and handrails take salt spray, rain and constant foot traffic, and once the coating is broken, corrosion works inward from the break into the wall of the tube. Touching up the paint addresses only the surface; once a load-bearing member has lost section, the affected part has to be cut out and the structure made good again.
These ladders are generally welded tubular trusses that cannot be lifted away to the workshop as a unit, so the work is carried out where the ladder stands. The scope covers survey and assessment of the affected extent, cutting out of members, rejoining and treatment of the welds, and corrosion protection of the cut surfaces. How much is cut and where the joints fall are decided from the load paths through the truss, so that several members are not weakened across the same section at once.
