News & Media

April 2008

CONCOR MINING ACHIEVES ZERO FATALITIES AND LOST TIME INJURY

As a result of commitment from Concor Mining’s management and workforce this opencast mining contracting company has achieved a FIFR (fatality injury frequency rate) of zero and a LTIFR (lost time injury frequency rate) of 0.02 over the last five years.

“These statistics makes us a leader in our field,” Mike du Plessis, SHERQ manager for Concor Mining, says. “We consider this an exceptional achievement and it is perfectly in line with our operating philosophy of Permanent Zero Harm. We achieved this by securing full commitment from our management and workforce to follow the principles in the ‘Zero Harm’ policy.

“Our Zero Harm programme was formalised after a number of management interventions and was rolled out in 2001 to all project sites,” du Plessis says. “A training needs analysis was undertaken to uplift the awareness and skills of all personnel, including supervisory and operational levels. Over a period of time we embarked on a major training programme to, firstly, create awareness and then dispense the necessary knowledge in a manner suited to actual operating circumstances.”

Du Plessis says “We hold regular management seminars where the safety statistics as well as the strategy on the way forward is discussed.

“Initially targets were set to achieve incremental decreases in injury rates until such time as ‘Zero’ was achieved five years ago. We now maintain safety awareness and culture through regular interactions with the work force from managerial level right down to the entire workforce,” du Plessis adds.

The legal requirement for safety representatives was used as the baseline for Concor Mining. Such is the company’s commitment to Zero Harm that additional safety representatives were empowered and put into place.

A number of incentive schemes were also introduced in order to keep safety top of mind in the staff. Du Plessis explains that in order to gain widespread acceptance of the process, it was essential to keep it simple enough for all people to easily understand. “’Back to basics’ was the underlying principle with the implementation of the system.

“Something we strongly believe when it comes to enhancing safety is for all workers to undergo periodical medicals. In addition, the environment is regularly monitored for dust emissions, exhaust emissions and general noise pollution. In line with emission control we schedule regular maintenance on all our machines. We also have both an AIDS awareness campaign with AIDS counsellors in place to assist employees, and a programme to assist those employees with TB,” du Plessis says.

“Our commitment to appropriate environmental management is in line with that of our clients and we comply with their ISO 14001 accreditations. We recognise that we need to blast within close proximity to structures without causing damage. Compliance with legislation is a given and is only the baseline when it comes to safety,” du Plessis says.

“Underpinning our other safety achievements, we have also won a number of safety awards from the major mining houses. This indicates to us that all the work and effort put in by our entire team in bringing us in line with the highest levels of safety conformance, is paying dividends,” du Plessis concludes.