All access – even to wine tanks

The thought of confined spaces can drive some people up the walls, whereas these guys climb down walls to get into confined spaces.

The team at NZ Access are fast becoming the go-to guys for repairs and inspections in those hard to reach places.

NZ Access, based in Blenheim, was set up in February this year and director Adam Goble says they’ve been busy with winery work. As such, the guys have been running through training exercises to rescue each other from inside wine tanks in case one of them should get stuck.

An exercise a couple of months ago ran through a gas leak scenario at a Spring Creek winery.

‘‘We carried out vertical rescue to retrieve our team member,’’ Goble says. ‘

‘There are situations where there might not be access to the bottom hatch, so we try and train for every possible situation, if and when we can.

‘‘The rescue scenario was we had a gas detection alarm go off and our team member was not responding. So we were able to safely retrieve him in under five minutes. It’s just something we have to train for in our line of work.’’

Goble says the team, technically a group of trained ‘industrial abseiling technicians’, can carry out a wide variety of confined space work, including inspections, engineering, repairs, gas detection, welding, and rescue.

‘‘I hope we can offer something different to the region ... A lot of people say, ‘Wow, that sounds dangerous’ but it’s really not for us guys. We’ve doing it for years and we try and plan for any possible scenario, like this one.’’

Climbing and overcoming hazards is something that the 30-year-old has been doing since he was a youngster growing up in New Plymouth.

‘‘Well it really started back when I was 11-years-old. After a visit to a rock climbing wall, I was pretty much hooked. Climbing and abseiling soon became a fulltime passion thanks to my trusting parents, and with Mt Taranaki being on my back door step.’’

After six years in the oil and gas industry on various platforms and drill rigs, Noble made the move to Melbourne to work in specialist operations. Now he’s back and settled in sunny Marlborough, where he says he saw a need for his line of work.

‘‘I’ve gathered a team of guys at NZ Access who can basically crawl into any space and do repairs, or do inspections, or come to someone’s aid if needed. We hope this will catch on, and people will see this is an innovative way of getting the job done.’’

DAVID JAMES/STUFF NZ Access technician Tim Newton lowers himself into a wine tank during a training exercise.