Tag Archives: Trevor Schultz

Murray & Roberts Cementation safety

Murray & Roberts Cementation stresses importance of culture in achieving safety milestones

Environmental, Mining safety, Mining services, , , , ,

In the mining sector’s ongoing quest for zero harm, Murray & Roberts Cementation has shown that a culture of safety is critical to meeting this target – over and above the progress made in safety systems and technologies.

In its own safety journey, the company has made great strides, according to Trevor Schultz, Risk Executive at Murray & Roberts Cementation. Among the key indicators of its success is that it has been fatality-free for almost a decade, a real accolade in the traditionally high-risk field of shaft sinking and mine development.

“It has been a journey that started long before 2015, when we reviewed the systems and processes, customising them to suit our business needs,” Schultz says. “Working closely with our Training Academy at Bentley Park, we also developed a new approach that would foster a culture of safety among our people – from their very first days in training.”

The Training Academy prepares employees to perform their work in the most efficient and safe manner, he says, including tailormade programmes for mining and engineering supervisors.

“We believe that to create the right business culture, we need to give employees the means and ability to do their work – and after that you can hold them accountable to do the work right,” he explains. “Our programs include License to Supervise, as well as Risk Management, to ensure alignment of our safety principles across the business.”

This approach has also achieved a steady decrease in the company’s Lost Time Injury rate. Graham Chamberlain, Murray & Roberts Cementation’s New Business Executive, concurs that the safety culture has been critical to these gains.

“An important shift in the mining sector has been to appreciate employees not only for their hands (to work) and their ears (to listen), but for their minds and hearts – which really drive safe behaviour,” Chamberlain says. “Systems and rules are important, but they don’t provide the vocabulary to show that management really cares about the safety of every employee.”

A caring culture is reinforced every day by the interaction between management and staff, he argues. This forms part of the company’s Visible Felt Leadership initiative, which ensures managers engage with their teams on a regular basis.

Underpinning the safety culture are the standards and systems, which remain an important foundation for safety at Murray & Roberts Cementation, according to Schultz.

“We have a robust health, safety and environment framework which covers key points such as systems, standards and internal and external audits,” he says. “We also have formalised strategies to learn from incidents on site – both within the company and externally – and we share best practice and learning across our regions.”

Comprehensive checks and balances are in place, including self-assessments for supervisors and managers, which help to determine the effectiveness of training in the workplace. Benchmarking against the highest standards, Murray & Roberts Cementation is certified in terms of ISO 9000, ISO 14000 and ISO 45000 in its internal systems and corporate governance.

Technology also has a role to play in supporting the safety culture, explains Chamberlain, especially in removing people from the ‘contact area’ where most safety hazards are found.

“We work to engineer the risk out of every working situation, which usually involves the use of equipment instead of manual labour,” he explains. “Equally, the solution may be to revise the methodology or the working cycle – as this affects the way the employee behaves.”

He notes that operating under excessive pressure, or experiencing undue frustration in their work, will have an impact on an individual’s safety performance. Part of the safety effort, therefore, is to alleviate these factors and improve the working environment – which in turn leads to the right behaviours.

Schultz points to a range of engineering technologies that Murray & Roberts Cementation has adapted and applied to improve safety. Lasers have been employed to continuously monitor clearances in some vertical shaft projects, so that winder speeds can be reduced where the clearance reaches limitations.

“We have extended the pre-sink automated tipping hook and kibble auto alignment to the main sink which removes the human interaction during tipping,” he continues. “The monitoring of our stage zone kibble winder slack rope has also been updated, by allowing continued monitoring during crosshead arresting. Electrical actuators are now being used where possible, instead of the noisier air and hydraulic system.”

Murray & Roberts Cementation is also an early adopter of technology that can improve safety, such as Proximity Detection Systems (PDS). In the early 2000s, the company saw the value of this emerging field of electronics, and was one of the first local companies to trial it on its trackless mining machinery.

“We were able to prove the efficacy of this technology, and quickly progressed to standardise PDS as a minimum requirement on our machines,” Schultz says. “This was years before it was made mandatory, which required all qualifying mines to install this equipment.”

The safety approach has even affected the kinds of projects and tasks that Murray & Roberts Cementation will take on, he explains.

“By reviewing our projects’ safety performance, we identified certain categories of work as being very high-risk,” Schultz says. “The decision was made that if the risk of harm cannot be reduced to an acceptable level – through mechanising, automation or safer methods – then we would simply not undertake such work.”

Another fatality-free landmark for Murray & Roberts Cementation

Environmental, Mine shafts and equipment, Mining safety, , , ,

A hard-won culture of safety has earned Murray & Roberts Cementation the accolade of seven million fatality free shifts from the Association of Mine Managers of South Africa (AMMSA).

The award was made to Kethu Mokgatlha, Project Executive at Murray & Roberts Cementation (left), by AMMSA President, Mosala Letebele (right), at a ceremony in Johannesburg in June to recognise the company’s achievement. The seven million shifts were undertaken over a period of almost nine years, and spanned five different shaft sinking projects in South Africa. The work undertaken also covers specialist interventions such as ore pass rehabilitation, grout sealing and underground support systems.

According to Trevor Schultz, Risk Executive at Murray & Roberts Cementation, the award is particularly heartening in a working environment that carries a range of technical risk factors. Schultz points to the culture of safety, developed over decades of intense focus and commitment, as the foundation for this safety landmark.

“It also requires that everyone in the business – from those at the rockface right through to the executive management – is focused on the same goal,” he says. “It starts with carefully structured training at entry level, and a continuous emphasis on our corporate values which prioritise safe working practices and a constructive mindset that must be developed over time.”

He highlights that the company’s safety systems and protocols have always been in place to support and complement this culture. Its successful Major Accident Prevention Programme, for instance, has evolved into a Critical Controls Management process to continue raising the safety bar. These frameworks align with the requirements of customers in the mining sector, serving to enhance and reinforce both parties’ safety efforts.

“Working safely is also a highly collaborative effort that extends beyond our company and our customers,” Schultz says. “It includes the constructive involvement of local communities and suppliers – for example, we employ most of our general workers from the areas around our project sites which makes it vital that even our novice training is highly impactful and safety focused.”

All training is carried out to the highest standards at the Murray & Roberts Training Academy near Carletonville, in South Africa. Schultz paid tribute to the late Tony Pretorius, the company’s Education and Training Executive, for formulating innovative training modules to foster its safety culture.

Murray & Roberts Cementation’s safety performance heralded

Mine shafts and equipment, Mining industry recognition, Mining safety, Mining services, , , , , , ,

South Africa-based Murray & Roberts Cementation says it has just achieved six million fatality-free shifts, while also picking up a raft of awards at the recent Murray & Roberts Group CE Safety Recognition Awards.

These acknowledgements are especially significant for a mining-related business, Trevor Schultz, Risk Executive at Murray & Roberts Cementation, says. Schultz highlights that the Murray & Roberts mining group had reduced its lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) from 1.25 to 0.93 – taking it below the challenging score of 1.

Last month, the Association of Mine Managers of South Africa (AMMSA) recognised Murray & Roberts Cementation for reaching six million shifts without a fatality. The certificate was handed over to Managing Director, Mike Wells, and Project Executive Kethu Mokgatlha at an AMMSA meeting in Rustenburg.

At the Murray & Roberts in-house safety awards for the global group, Murray & Roberts Cementation received three prizes in the Zero Harm Projects category. The first was for outstanding safety performance at its Northam Grout Plant Project in North West province, after 18 injury-free years. The other two projects recognised were its Khutala Colliery Project in Mpumalanga, and the Murray & Roberts Training Academy in Gauteng.

In the same ceremony, the company also received a Special Recognition award for individuals, teams or companies with outstanding contributions to safety performance.

Schultz says a key aspect of the company’s safety success has been its consistency and ongoing effort.

“It is important that we focus on applying and adapting our plans – and sticking with the agreed framework,” he says. “There are obviously realignments, when necessary, but we follow the plan and build momentum that way.”

He emphasises that Murray & Roberts Cementation accepts mining is a hazardous environment, but that safety is a managed outcome and all injuries are preventable. In the company’s view, Zero Harm is not a slogan but a value.

“Safety management is about empowering people to manage risk,” Schultz says. “Within the group’s safety framework, we have developed an integrated management system to drive safety.”

Among the ways the business continuously improves its safety impact is to record and classify incidents and ‘near misses’ in terms of their potential severity. These are presented at group level in a constructive engagement that highlights the lessons learnt. Such lessons are fed back into the group to inform strategies where working conditions may be similar.

“The lessons we draw from incidents really take our safety awareness to the next level,” Schultz says. “We also tap into the Minerals Council South Africa, to learn from incidents reported and analysed by our peers in the sector.”

(Pictured from left, Murray & Roberts Cementation Project Executive, Kethu Mokgatlha, and Managing Director, Mike Wells, receiving the certificate of recognition from AMMSA for reaching six million fatality free shifts)