5 Strategies To Achieve Safety On Your Mine Site
1. Strengthen the relationship between operators and contractors.
In some mining operations contractors are often used opposed to on-site personnel. This means that it is important to ensure that contractors’ safety management systems are on par with organisational safety standards as well as safety regulations. One way to achieve this is by conducting contractor compliance audits across a mine site. This means an organisation can review all contractor safety management systems, how they operate and their performance in the past, prior to tendering for a contract. So when trying to better safety on a mine site, it is important to consider what contractors are looking to do to enhance their own safety management system model and then incorporate that into your own safety management system. According to Martin Carr, Group Safety Manager at Harmony Gold, his organisation has seen results by initially doing a desktop audit of contractors and then ensuring whatever they plan will enhance safety on the mine site. “One of the key strategies for us is to make sure our contractors have comprehensive safety management systems in place prior to them working for Harmony and then ensuring those systems are workable on the ground when they come to work for us,” said Mr Carr.
2. Control/Mitigate Human Error
Hazard management is one of the key principles to ensuring a safe work site, so it is therefore important to ensure all staff on site – including contractors and visitors – have a clear understanding of hazard management and safety management systems on site. Martin Carr believes that hazard awareness on a mine site is the key to reducing the number of incidents involving workers. “We ensure that not only our facilities on site including all our plant and machinery have hazardous awareness, but also we ensure our systems and procedures are the industry best practice level and that we have a formal plan for emergency response in the case that something unlikely happens,” Mr Carr said. While ensuring risk management processes are formalised through all levels of management to achieve safety on a mine site, Goran Prulovic, Senior HSEQ Manager at Jemena Western Australia, believes that most risk management practices do not properly equip staff with the necessary tools to avoid or mitigate risks. “Vast majority of incidents and accidents are caused by humans but we are stopping too short of actually probing and identifying the real causes of why people are working unsafely,” said Mr Prulovic. Ways to mitigate and control human error on mine sites can be achieved focusing on the design of a safety plan or risk management strategy and to pay attention on the common factors that promote common human errors in certain operations and conditions and treat them accordingly. “It is the lack of focus and the lack of understanding of those mechanisms that are continuously causing fatalities and serious debilitating effects to various organisations,” Mr Prulovic said.
3. Establish a safety culture in your organisation.
Achieving and maintaining safety on a mine site is not always easy. It is therefore important to establish an awareness of safety procedures and practices across all departments of your organisation. This means that a safety culture should be embraced from the top of the organisation and filtered downwards, to encourage all employees to understand the culture and adhere with regulations and practices. According to Goran Prulovic, safety culture is “doing or acting, rather than just saying or talking about what you are going to do.” By enforcing this principle there is a larger chance of people focusing on safety more and working more safely than in the past.
4. Adherence to safety regulations
Ensuring compliance from a regulator’s perspective is a baseline that most organisations should be aiming for to ensure safety across mine operations. This can be achieved by having a well – run OHS management systems which will achieve good health and safety outcomes.
Ways to achieve this outcome include simple things like consultation planning which keeps everyone involved in an operation on the same page. It’s a good indicator and it encourages buy-in from all stakeholders and offers meaning into the identification of hazards and the control of risks involved in that particular project. Through risk management training, supervision and planning, a strong foundation is established to ensure that compliance is understood and adhered to because it’s a fundamental element to the development of a positive culture.
5. Ensure effective ‘return to work’ outcomes.
If a worker has been injured or taken time from a mine site due to injury or illness, the next step is to ensure a successful return to work to ensure the worker’s recover and also to manage the worker’s safety on the site once they return to work. According to research from WorkCover Queensland, injured workers who are offered suitable duties are twice as likely to return to work. The research also highlights that the longer an injured worker is off work the lower their chances are of returning to work. Jane Stevens, Customer Services Manager at WorkCover Queensland, believes that managing and maintaining safety on mine sites revolves around making return to work the focus of a claim and of optimising the worker’s recovery. “We tailor a return to work plan in conjunction with allied health professionals to individually map a return to work for that particular worker. It’s all about communication and setting expectations with our workers and employers to make sure that everyone is moving in the same direction,” Ms Stevens said.
In some mining operations contractors are often used opposed to on-site personnel. This means that it is important to ensure that contractors’ safety management systems are on par with organisational safety standards as well as safety regulations. One way to achieve this is by conducting contractor compliance audits across a mine site. This means an organisation can review all contractor safety management systems, how they operate and their performance in the past, prior to tendering for a contract. So when trying to better safety on a mine site, it is important to consider what contractors are looking to do to enhance their own safety management system model and then incorporate that into your own safety management system. According to Martin Carr, Group Safety Manager at Harmony Gold, his organisation has seen results by initially doing a desktop audit of contractors and then ensuring whatever they plan will enhance safety on the mine site. “One of the key strategies for us is to make sure our contractors have comprehensive safety management systems in place prior to them working for Harmony and then ensuring those systems are workable on the ground when they come to work for us,” said Mr Carr.
2. Control/Mitigate Human Error
Hazard management is one of the key principles to ensuring a safe work site, so it is therefore important to ensure all staff on site – including contractors and visitors – have a clear understanding of hazard management and safety management systems on site. Martin Carr believes that hazard awareness on a mine site is the key to reducing the number of incidents involving workers. “We ensure that not only our facilities on site including all our plant and machinery have hazardous awareness, but also we ensure our systems and procedures are the industry best practice level and that we have a formal plan for emergency response in the case that something unlikely happens,” Mr Carr said. While ensuring risk management processes are formalised through all levels of management to achieve safety on a mine site, Goran Prulovic, Senior HSEQ Manager at Jemena Western Australia, believes that most risk management practices do not properly equip staff with the necessary tools to avoid or mitigate risks. “Vast majority of incidents and accidents are caused by humans but we are stopping too short of actually probing and identifying the real causes of why people are working unsafely,” said Mr Prulovic. Ways to mitigate and control human error on mine sites can be achieved focusing on the design of a safety plan or risk management strategy and to pay attention on the common factors that promote common human errors in certain operations and conditions and treat them accordingly. “It is the lack of focus and the lack of understanding of those mechanisms that are continuously causing fatalities and serious debilitating effects to various organisations,” Mr Prulovic said.
3. Establish a safety culture in your organisation.
Achieving and maintaining safety on a mine site is not always easy. It is therefore important to establish an awareness of safety procedures and practices across all departments of your organisation. This means that a safety culture should be embraced from the top of the organisation and filtered downwards, to encourage all employees to understand the culture and adhere with regulations and practices. According to Goran Prulovic, safety culture is “doing or acting, rather than just saying or talking about what you are going to do.” By enforcing this principle there is a larger chance of people focusing on safety more and working more safely than in the past.
4. Adherence to safety regulations
Ensuring compliance from a regulator’s perspective is a baseline that most organisations should be aiming for to ensure safety across mine operations. This can be achieved by having a well – run OHS management systems which will achieve good health and safety outcomes.
Ways to achieve this outcome include simple things like consultation planning which keeps everyone involved in an operation on the same page. It’s a good indicator and it encourages buy-in from all stakeholders and offers meaning into the identification of hazards and the control of risks involved in that particular project. Through risk management training, supervision and planning, a strong foundation is established to ensure that compliance is understood and adhered to because it’s a fundamental element to the development of a positive culture.
5. Ensure effective ‘return to work’ outcomes.
If a worker has been injured or taken time from a mine site due to injury or illness, the next step is to ensure a successful return to work to ensure the worker’s recover and also to manage the worker’s safety on the site once they return to work. According to research from WorkCover Queensland, injured workers who are offered suitable duties are twice as likely to return to work. The research also highlights that the longer an injured worker is off work the lower their chances are of returning to work. Jane Stevens, Customer Services Manager at WorkCover Queensland, believes that managing and maintaining safety on mine sites revolves around making return to work the focus of a claim and of optimising the worker’s recovery. “We tailor a return to work plan in conjunction with allied health professionals to individually map a return to work for that particular worker. It’s all about communication and setting expectations with our workers and employers to make sure that everyone is moving in the same direction,” Ms Stevens said.
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