A mining industry initiative is striving to improve the safety of mining equipment by ensuring original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and operators are on the same page.
The Earth Moving Equipment Safety Roundtable (EMESRT) works with OEMs to develop effective designs that are safe for workers and maintenance staff, closing the gap between the performance expectations of earth moving equipment users and designers.
Made up of members of the mining industry and key member organisations, Alcoa, Anglo American, BHP, Glencore, Rio Tinto and Teck, EMESRT has developed a strategic plan for reducing injuries and fatalities stemming from equipment.
This includes a focus on four industry projects:
Vehicle interaction control improvement: systematically and reliably improving controls for managing mobile equipment operation.
Tyres and rims management: reducing any harm related to tyre and rim events as much as possible, including design that considers foreseeable human error.
Mobile equipment fires management: providing mobile equipment designers and users with structured information that enables the prevention of mobile equipment fires and the mitigation of ensuing consequences.
Human factors design diversity: currently in the development and scoping phase.
The EMERST maintains its focus of fostering transparent industry-level collaboration, open sharing of non-commercial information and active stakeholder engagement.
“EMESRT operates as a high-influence global organisation,” the EMERST said in its 2021 activity report. “Its effectiveness in delivering industry-level change rests on its membership credibility, trust with OEMs and active industry stakeholder engagement.
“Therefore, a key part of a consistent and reliable solution to mining health and safety is to focus on the design stage. This is where health and safety solutions can be incorporated into the standard factory design by OEMs, thus fully integrated for the users.
“Ultimately the key to improvement is recognising that OEMs know how to design and EMESRT knows how to operate, therefore collaboration to develop effective designs is essential.”