International Mining Safety Hub

Mining industry leaders have joined forces and partnered with visual health and safety communication specialists, Jincom, to create and share visual safety tools with the goal of reducing fatalities and serious incidents in the industry.

The result of the collaboration by founding partners AngloAmerican, AngloGold Ashanti, Harmony, Teck Resources, The Minerals Council of South Africa and Jincom is the International Mining Safety (IMS) Hub - an online library of industry-endorsed visual tools associated with a wide range of fatal hazard themes.

Effective communication with frontline workers in the mining industry can be challenging. Teams are often made up of multilingual and multicultural workers who face communication barriers, while other workers can have low literacy levels. The Hub’s simplified and visualised tools aim to break through language and literacy barriers to ensure workers understand the safety controls to follow before they begin working on site.

Michael Parker, Head of Group Safety, Operational Risk & Assurance at Anglo American explained how the Hub’s content can benefit the entire mining industry. 

‍“The content we are developing with Jincom and contributing to the Hub will no doubt add massive amounts of value to the greater industry and make a substantial impact in reducing industry fatalities across the world.”

The new approach sees large mining companies pool their resources to create content for the greater good of the industry. By sharing tools and investing in visualised content developed from mining best practices, companies can improve efficiencies and provide greater value for partners.

 “This is a collaboration by industry, for industry.”

Introducing the initiative, IMS Hub co-founder Stephen Eichstadt said, “This is a collaboration by industry, for industry. For too long have I witnessed the industry working in silos, individually investing substantial effort and resources in essentially just duplicating work already developed by their peers. The IMS Hub will change that.”

It’s clear the collaborative approach will not only help to save lives but also improve efficiencies across the industry by sharing resources and learnings from incidents.

HOW THE HUB WORKS

Each founding partner selects two of 14 fatal hazard themes critical to their own operations, for example, underground fires, energy isolation etc.

For each theme selected, Jincom transforms the technical standards into a suite of simplified and visualised tools comprising Visual Standards, Critical Controls, Audit Checklist, Toolbox Talk, LFI report and 3D Incident recreation. 

These visual tools are then uploaded to the IMS Hub and the generic versions are accessible to all partners in print and digital formats. They can choose to use the unbranded version or have the tools adapted for their organisation.

Click here to learn more about the IMS Hub.

‍BENEFITS FOR PARTNERS

Endorsed: Standards and controls are endorsed by global industry leaders and designed to meet legislative requirements.

Comprehensive: Extensive range of resources based on fatal hazard themes are developed into visual communication suites comprising over 80 tools. 

Learning: Founding partners can learn from each other’s incidents and standardised tools can be adapted for scenario-based training. 

Value: Costs are shared and each partner contributes to and benefits from access to all of the content.

Accessible: The Hub is user-friendly and accessible from anywhere and on any device. 

Adaptable: Partners can download and adapt the visual tools for the specific needs of their organization. 

In summary, Harmony Gold, safety and technology executive, Thomas van den Berg explains how the IMS Hub will benefit the mining industry: “We have gained great value by utilising tools developed by our peers, we can have world class content at a fraction of the time and cost of having to develop it all ourselves.” 

To find out how you can join the global collaboration to lead the elimination of fatalities, email hello@imshub.net.