The New South Wales mining industry held its annual safety conference, entitled Safe Mining Healthy Business, from July 30 to August 1. Jointly hosted by NSW Minerals Council and NSW Department of Mineral Resources, the conference was opened by mineral resources minister Eddie Obeid. Over 330 delegates attended the conference with representatives from CEOs to operators.
The NSW Minerals Council OHS Innovation Awards were awarded during the conference dinner. According to organisers, these awards aim to recognise creative and practical solutions to health and safety problems, and promote their application across the NSW minerals industry.
Judging criteria include application of risk management principles, originality, transferability across the industry, health and safety benefits and outcomes, and cost effectiveness. There were 18 entries in this year’s OHS Innovation Awards.
In presenting the awards, OHS professional Susan Fields commented: "The judging panel was delighted with the consistently high standard of the entries. I was also pleased to see so many entrants almost casually saying 'we undertook a risk assessment'.
“In less than five years we have come from a situation where risk assessments were rarely used or understood outside the ranks of consultants, to a situation today where personnel at all levels of the industry confidently undertake risk assessments as part and parcel of their everyday work. It's a fantastic achievement."
The winner of the judges’ award and the popular industry vote was the Strut Tensioning Adaptor Tool developed by Neville West of Camberwell Coal. Judges said this simple but effective tool was designed and manufactured to reduce risk associated with the routine maintenance process of tensioning the front strut restraining bolts on Caterpillar 789 trucks. There are almost 700 similar Caterpillar off-highway trucks used in Australia on which the tool could be used.
The judges also highly commended entries from BHP Elouera/Sthn Mines Rescue for their mine evacuation and escape strategies training course; Warkworth Mining for its tool for safe installation of screen panels in the CHPP; and Coal & Allied for its conveyor system bottom track roller change-out tool.
The following were key presentations made during the conference which attracted positive feedback from delegates, as well as addressing emerging/controversial issues.
Susan Johnston - mine safety consultant and leader of NSW Mine Safety Review (1997) - presented an analysis of Australian mining company public reporting of safety performance. She found little or no meaningful reporting of safety and health performance in either Annual Reports or dedicated HSE or community & social impact reports.
Most reports only used LTIFR - a traditional safety performance indicator, but one with generally acknowledged limitations. The paper discussed the implications of the poor quality of corporate safety reporting on community understanding of the industry's commitment to improving safety and on company personnel's understanding of their board's expectations about safety performance. A framework for improved corporate reporting was proposed.
Safemap managing director Corrie Pitzer discussed the need to move away from traditional notions of safety management and being driven by documented systems and procedures to a new paradigm - "risk competence" - which emphasised the need to be aware of and responsive to the risks arising from work processes.
Julianne McLeod presented on the successful program to improve literacy levels at Powercoal. This program addressed both improving worker literacy so that safety procedures and signs could be readily understood, and also redesigning and redrafting safety procedures in plain English to reduce jargon and improve clarity.
Kathryn Heiler - ACIRRT - presented on ACIRRT survey of Australian Mining Industry roster/shift arrangements. Her work has found dramatic differences between states and between sectors (coal v. non-coal). Her findings are that there is little formal assessment of OHS, productivity, lifestyle impacts of new roster designs were conducted before they were introduced.
Heiler also reported on the development of practical risk assessment with nine NSW mine sites which encompasses both the responsibility of the employer (roster and job design for example), and worker (lifestyle factors). Her proposed framework takes a more balanced approach which is potentially more realistic and more useful than the "fitness for duty" approach which emphasises worker factors only and does not address employer's duty of care obligations.
