Austmine 2021
Austmine 2021 celebrated the latest technologies and innovations.
Worker welfare a focus for mining leaders IN WHAT IS BELIEVED TO BE THE FIRST MAJOR MINING CONFERENCE SINCE THE BEGINNING OF COVID-19, THE AUSTMINE 2021 CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION HAS BROUGHT MINING AND INDUSTRY DELEGATES TOGETHER TO DISCUSS INNOVATION AND SAFETY.
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diverse workforce and industry collaboration are increasingly being emphasised by industry leaders as essential parts of improving safety in the mining and resources industry. This year’s Austmine 2021 Conference featured a focus on workforce safety and welfare, especially emphasising the importance of innovation to improve technology and improve safety on site. Whether it is a move towards autonomy to enable workers to work from home, or a focus on artificial intelligence (AI) to keep miners out of the line of fire, safety has become a major issue for companies involved in the mining
and resources sector. Workforce diversity, collaboration and technology advances have been identified as important steps in ensuring safety remains a key to the mining and resources industry. BHP group health safety and environment officer Rob Telford says the company has not had a fatality at its operations for more than two years. “That was a milestone that we didn’t meet with celebration but more with sombre reflection that we were doing something right,” Telford says. “Safety has been at the core of us for a very long time. We measure and monitor all incidents as they happen in real time and we use that data to assess how we
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can prevent any possible incidents.” BHP’s Western Australian iron ore South Flank maintenance manager Lorraine Sabbouh says the company has worked to get frontline information from its machines in the field. “We looked really hard to find something that could do that in the marketplace and we couldn’t find anything that would tick all the boxes,” she says. “So we went from a whiteboard to a red-box prototype in about six weeks. It then took us about eight weeks to get the red-box prototype onto our equipment at South Flank. “That allowed our workers to get that data into their hands remotely.
