Miners awarded for innovation and excellence

The winners of the 2016 NSW Minerals Council Health, Safety, Environment and Community Conference Award have been announced.

Each award recipient was acknowledged for their innovation and excellence in the areas of workers’ health, mine safety, environmental sustainability and community engagement.

“As always, our awards entrants were all of a very high calibre, demonstrating mining’s commitment to innovative approaches to solving problems and the pursuit of excellence,” said NSW Minerals Council CEO Stephen Galilee.

“These awards are an important part of our industry’s continuous improvement and will deliver improved outcomes for our workforce and their local communities. Congratulations to all of our awards winners for 2016.”

The health excellence award was won by CMOC Northparkes Mines for its Heart at Work program. The program attempts to reduce modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease, and saw one participant lose 17.7 kg during a weight loss challenge.

Moolarben Coal Operations was the recipient of the safety excellence award. It engaged its employees in a consultative process to develop potential solutions for collision incidents between heavy mobile equipment in operational areas. All crews developed ideas and solutions and the most appropriate was deemed to be a signal light on the roof of tracked heavy equipment in operating areas. This entailed the operator initiating radio contact to dozer operators who then acknowledge through the signal light to establish positive communication between the operating equipment. The solution was risk assessed and trialled under a controlled environment for a period of time. MCO employees were again engaged at the end of the trial period to assess the outcomes and highlight any deficiencies and concerns. There was only positive feedback from employees and the system was implemented on all tracked equipment with an acceptable cost per unit. The safety light system that was ultimately implemented has resulted in no further instances of collisions between heavy mobile equipment in MCO’s operating areas.

The award for environmental excellence went to Ashton Coal Operations, for its ‘Recreating nature: Bowman Creek diversion’ initiative. The company was granted approval to redirect sections of the creek to allow for optimised coal mining at the site.

Cadia Valley Operations won the community excellence award for its project, which was designed to address concerns of nearby neighbours that their agricultural land was being devalued by the location of a major mining operation in their district.

Finally, the award for community excellence in Aboriginal employment and enterprise development was won by Whitehaven Coal. Its Maules Creek Mine Aboriginal employment strategy has committed to ensuring that at least 10% of its workforce will be composed of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Christian Uhrig