In the quest for Zero Harm, AfriSam maintains high levels of health and safety standards across its quarry operations. For two years running – 2022 and 2023 – the company was named the Top Corporate Performer in the annual ASPASA ISHE Awards, highlighting a strong commitment to the implementation, promotion and maintenance of the highest level of health and safety in the workplace.
In addition, October 2024 marked a four-year Lost Time Injury (LTI)-free milestone for AfriSam’s Construction Materials division. Brown says reaching the four-year mark without an LTI is a major highlight in the company’s safety journey and is in line with the vision of zero injuries for every task or action. It is also testament to the commitment and dedication of everyone involved in maintaining a safe and healthy working environment at AfriSam.
“Within our Construction Materials business, and the AfriSam organisation at large, there is an understanding that improving health and safety performance is a long-term goal that requires sustained effort, resources and commitment,” says Brown. “What sets us apart is an executive leadership that shows a genuine and visible commitment to the achievement of a safety culture, treating health and safety as a line management responsibility.”
For AfriSam, adds Brown, compliance to health and safety is part of the company’s licence to operate. Lack of compliance with the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources’ guidelines can be detrimental to operations through the issuance of Section 54 mine stoppage instructions, for example.
“It is therefore important that we put compliance with health and safety at the core of our operations,” he says. “For us, health and safety compliance is never a box-ticking exercise; it is about making sure that every employee goes back to their families unharmed every day.”
High safety standards
Central to the maintenance of high safety standards across AfriSam quarry sites is a deep understanding among every member of the team that they play a big part in the safety performance of the company. According to Brown, when employees understand the hazards associated with their tasks and are equipped with the right knowledge and skills to mitigate those risks, they are less likely to be involved in accidents.
“Management commitment is another important cornerstone for our health and safety performance. Through our Visible Field Felt Leadership programme, the executive management team regularly tours operations to see what is happening on the ground. We also conduct regular internal and external reviews to ensure continuous improvement. Our external reviews come in the form of ASPASA annual audits, which provide an opportunity to reflect on our safety performance and receive guidance on where we need to improve,” says Brown.
As an industry body, ASPASA promotes information-sharing among its members to ensure industry-wide success when it comes to health and safety performance. Sharing information and knowledge with other organisations operating in the same sector allows AfriSam to keep abreast of new developments in the safety sphere. Brown says collaboration and information-sharing are key for the industry to change the course of its safety performance, highlighting that safety is an area where the industry must collaborate.
Key initiatives
Commenting on some of the key initiatives that have contributed to the company’s exceptional safety record, Brown makes special mention of the inter-plant safety competition. The main aim of this initiative is to “change hearts and minds of employees” when it comes to safety. The inter-plant competition focuses on four key areas.
“The first area is statistics, because we need to compare and understand where we are in terms of operations. The second area we look at is audits – both internal and external. For us, audits are not just about the scores, but more about the findings, which give us an opportunity to address any shortcomings that might have been pinpointed by the auditor,” says Brown.
The third area of consideration is housekeeping which, according to Brown, is one of the basic pillars of successful health and safety practices. Good housekeeping can help prevent accidents, such as slips, trips and falls, which are common in quarries and mines.
The fourth area of attention is safety leadership at operations level. Quarry managers are empowered to take initiative in developing their site-level safety interventions. These initiatives are inclusive and speak directly to the people at these operations. As part of the safety leadership approach, AfriSam also cultivates a culture of understanding each individual’s responsibility and proactiveness in achieving positive safety outcomes.
“We also look at safety as a continuous improvement aspect. Consequently, there are continuous management interventions at operations, making sure that we have controls and mitigations in place to deal with risks. Continuous improvement is important for safety because it helps us keep up with new challenges, comply with regulations and reduce risks to employees. Continuous improvement also helps us ensure that our safety strategy is up-to-date and complies with the latest legislation and guidelines,” says Brown.
Training
Education and training are the foundations for enabling improvement in health and safety. According to Brown, sound basic education for work, refresher training and company-specific training are crucial for the implementation of effective health and safety hazard prevention programmes.
In line with this approach, AfriSam has a competency-based safety (CBS) programme, a behavioural safety programme aimed at achieving organisation-wide occupational health and safety awareness. One of the key benefits of this programme is that it ensures that employees have the skills they need to perform their tasks safely. It also helps AfriSam to identify skills gaps through assessments and performance reviews.
Tech to the fore
Technology, says Brown, has dramatically changed the way businesses operate, and its impact on workplace safety is no exception. Over the years, AfriSam has leveraged technological advancements to create a safer work environment.
“The first focus area is blasting operations, where we have adopted technologies such as vibration and noise monitors. These allow us to ensure that all our operations are in line with the ground vibration and airblast limits recommended by the regulator to ensure both the safety of employees and the protection of surrounding communities,” says Brown.
In addition, AfriSam makes use of weather alert apps to ensure that blasting occurs during favourable weather patterns. For example, blasting should be avoided when there is heavy cloud cover or a temperature inversion, as these conditions can increase airblast overpressure.
The use of blast design programmes also allows AfriSam to simulate blasts before they take place. This offers the blasting engineer even more control over the blast, not only ensuring efficiency, but also better safety outcomes.
The second area where AfriSam has prioritised technology adoption is in trackless mobile machinery. Here, the focus is to eliminate vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-people interactions. Following a detailed risk assessment exercise in line with the Mining Industry Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH) guidelines, the company has done its comprehensive traffic management plans for its various quarry sites.
“As part of our risk assessment exercise, we have identified areas with significant risk, which led to the adoption of proximity detection systems (PDS) and collision prevention systems (CPS). We have currently done a full installation at our Verulam Quarry in KwaZulu-Natal. Elsewhere, we have done trials at our Rheebok Quarry in the Western Cape and we are also busy with trials at our Jukskei operation in Gauteng,” says Brown.
Brown is encouraged by the developments in PDS technology in recent years. Now using AI, the technology can distinguish between pedestrians and machinery while providing adequate warning to machine operators in the event that people are in close proximity to the machine or in its blind spots. This eliminates the need for conventional tags for each person on site.
While the prohibitive cost of the PCS/CPS technology was initially a major hurdle for opencast operations, particularly cost-sensitive quarries and other small-scale operations, Brown points out that the cost of the PDS/CPS technology has in recent years come in line with the expectations of the industry.
Safety goals
Commenting on the company’s safety goals for the next three to five years, Brown says, in line with its vision for “zero injuries for every task and every action”, AfriSam will continue to place value on continuous improvement.
“We need to benchmark our own safety performance against our industry peers to have a grasp of where the industry is in terms of best practices. We also need to learn from industry incident trends so that we can prevent similar issues from happening at our own operations. Continuous safety leadership remains another key focus area to foster a culture of safety across all our operations,” concludes Brown.
