While new challenges arise every year, the mining industry is seeing a seismic shift toward achieving zero harm. This is evidenced by the improving safety performance statistics reported at the recent sixth National Day of Health and Safety in Mining, hosted by the Minerals Council of South Africa in August 2023.
The modernisation of processes has gone a long way toward making mining safer and more productive, according to the councilās media statement of 17 August, titled: “Mining stakeholders recommit to health and safety interventions and practices to achieve zero harm”.
Zero harm can be tracked through a percentage compliance. A compliant company is a safe company, especially when it comes to the compliance of people and equipment. Like all industries, mining has shifted its business model to embrace digital technology in several ways to ensure the safety of employees. One of the companies leading the charge in digital transformation is Saryx Engineering Group, through its flagship digital health and safety document compliance solution, HSEC OnlineĀ®.
āIf youāre the leader of an organisation aiming for zero harm, youāve got to change the way you do things. With HSEC OnlineĀ®, there is never a valid reason to have expired or invalid documents within a digital system. This digital solution reduces workloads by up to 90% and reminds you of things to come, and actions to take. It is proactive rather than reactive and is easy to manage,” says Ingrid Osborne, CEO at the Saryx Engineering Group.
“It boils down to the simple fact that it is incredibly powerful for an organisation to have real-time, line-of-sight compliance for every company and person they oversee, thereby ensuring a zero-harm approach in the workplace.ā
This proactive approach means systems and processes must be reviewed to ensure the risks of human error and oversight, inherent in outdated manual systems, are removed from the equation.
HSEC OnlineĀ® is an award-winning digital compliance management platform currently used by more than 6 000 clients, the bulk of which are in the mining sector where compliance is a critical business requirement. It allows companies and their contractors to securely capture, store, distribute, share and manage health and safety and other regulatory compliance documents online and in real time. It further provides functionality to track and manage assets and inventory in real time.Ā
The digital solution has already been adopted by major mining companies, namely Glencore, South32 Mining Group, DRD Gold and Seriti, to name a few.
Zero harm also relates to optimising administrative processes and implementing solutions that cause minimal impact on people and the environment. The most obvious saving in implementing a sustainable and paperless digitised solution is all the paper saved which helps minimise the impact on the environment.
With HSEC OnlineĀ®, the quantifiable return on your investment is immense: Not only does it eliminate human error often encountered with managing a manual safety file, it also reduces the risk of penalties and loss by accurately tracking important actions and expiry dates.
To look at one case study, HSEC OnlineĀ® enabled Discovery Mining Contractorsā record-breaking production and zero-harm record after the company rolled out the HSEC OnlineĀ® Electronic Management System. This in an effort to achieve real-time accurate and validated measures on all KPI records and documents. āI believe our record-breaking production and zero-harm record are the direct result of this beneficial information management process,” says Werner Vorster, SHEQ manager at Discovery Mining Contractors. “The system timely flags both contractor and client to ensure all required company, employee and equipment records are uploaded and approved. HSEC OnlineĀ® also serves as a guaranteed back-up to prevent loss of critical documented information.ā
HSEC OnlineĀ® is highly customisable and can work in any industry or organisation. To learn more about how HSEC OnlineĀ® could enable your business operations to achieve zero harm, visit its website.
