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Anglo American workers collaborate to reimagine safety

Anglo American has collaborated with frontline workers to develop a new fatal risk management (FRM) program, one free of ‘another added layer of red tape’.

Taking a bottom-up approach, Anglo consulted with a mix of operators, coordinators, supervisors, superintendents and contractors across its Bowen Basin operations.

The result was a program that saw workers involved in designing risk management tools to avoid a tick and flick approach.

The new program includes a job risk assessment with critical control hold points to ensure controls are operating as intended, prestart boards that require collaboration from the team each and every shift and fatal risk performance dashboards showing fatal control performance and compliance that will be informed by in-field engagement and verification to help leaders drive action.

Anglo American Australia chief executive officer Dan van der Westhuizen said embedding frontline workers in the project team was crucial in designing the simplified and standardised tools as they understood the risks better than anyone else.

“Fatal Risk is not a new concept for the mining industry and learnings from our people, peers and industry experts have informed our approach,” he said.

“Our point of difference has been cultivating FRM from the operator level to leverage the insights and experiences of our frontline workers to ensure we have the best chance of getting it right.”

The new FRM program includes 14 fatal risks and 50 crucial fatal controls to prevent them.

“These 14 Fatal Risks are sobering because they represent circumstances where a teammate in our business or industry has lost their life or been seriously injured on the job,” van der Westhuizen said.

“It’s not often you get a chance to stop, take a step back and create a new way of working but we knew we had to make a change. Everyone deserves to go home to their families, friends and loved ones at the end of every shift.

“We know change is not easy and a culture doesn’t change overnight, but we know we are moving in the right direction.”

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