- Safety Performance
- Health Performance
- Communications
- Leadership
- Contractor Management
- Safety and Health Risk Management
- Emergency Response
- Safety Management System
- Health and Wellbeing
Safety Performance
During 2008, OZ Minerals suffered three tragic safety incidents. Two of our people died at work and one person sustained serious head injuries.
The electrical superintendent at Sepon was killed as a result of a lightning strike during preparatory works associated with installation of new radio transmission equipment.
A supervisor for the EPCM contractor managing construction at Prominent Hill was killed when the light vehicle in which he was the driver and sole occupant rolled on an unsealed road between the bore field and the mine site.
A boilermaker employed by a drilling contractor at Century sustained serious injuries to his head, upper body and hand when struck by a falling object while undertaking maintenance on a drill rig.
OZ Minerals has provided support and assistance to the families impacted by these tragedies.
Thorough investigations using the Incident Cause Analysis Method (ICAM) have been conducted by OZ Minerals into all of these incidents to identify opportunities to improve our management systems and practices across the company. OZ Minerals cooperated fully with the relevant mine safety regulators while they conducted independent investigations into these events. Learnings from these incidents have been distributed throughout the company.
For further information regarding our management of fatal risks see Fatal Risk Management.
At OZ Minerals, Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR) is the primary measure for safety performance. TRIFR is the total number of recordable injuries per million working hours. “Days lost” are measured using rostered days, not calendar days. Recordable injuries include fatality, lost time, restricted work and medical treatment injuries.
The TRIFR at the end of December 2008 was 7.3 (Figure 1.). This represents a 3 per cent improvement in performance since the formation of OZ Minerals in July 2008.
There were no fatalities at Zinifex operations during the six months July to December 2007, and a TRIFR of 8.7 was reported for December 2007.
Significant safety incidents
OZ Minerals operations reported a total of 143 Significant Safety Incidents (SSIs) across our operations, projects and exploration activities during 2008. A breakdown of SSIs by operation is provided below.
At OZ Minerals a SSI is defined as an incident that has an actual or potential consequence rating of Level 4 or above. This rating is determined using OZ Minerals risk matrices, with the highest consequence ranking available being Level 5.
SSIs must be reported to the Group Office within 24 hours of occurrence and require a thorough investigation be performed using the ICAM process. Significant Incident Alerts are later developed and shared with all OZ Minerals operations to ensure we learn from these events and where necessary implement additional control measures.
During the development of the Five Key Safety Actions Plan, an analysis of SSIs for the second half of 2008 demonstrated that vehicle and mobile equipment related incidents made up the highest percentage of all significant incidents occurring within the company (Figure 2).
As a result vehicles and mobile equipment will be one of the priorities of the extreme safety focus program when this commences in 2009. The extreme safety focus will be supported by the roll out of the new vehicle and traffic management standard which will be implemented at all operating sites during 2009.
