2008 National Minerals Industry Excellence Awards for Safety and Health

Dear minerals industry colleagues

The Minerals Council of Australia’s (MCA) is seeking nominations for the 2008 National Minerals Industry Excellence Awards for Safety and Health (MINEX).
MINEX is a key element of the MCA's safety and health leadership program which aims to eliminate industry fatalities, injuries and diseases. The MINEX Awards play an important part in this process by honouring excellence, identifying and sharing best practice and fostering continuous improvement.
The objectives of the Awards are to:

recognise best practice, excellence and/or improvement based on comparisons of performance and practices
provide peer assessment of safety and health management against the Awards assessment criteria
provide benchmark information for self-assessment of safety and health management by mining and minerals processing companies
promote the industry’s commitment to improved safety and health performance
encourage the industry to use the MINEX assessment criteria as a self-evaluation tool.

Since 1995, over 120 minerals industry operations have participated and a further 132 personnel have been involved as evaluators.

MINEX significantly changed in 2006 and the new improved MINEX was bedded down in 2007.

MINEX is now simpler to enter

Assessment criteria are aligned with Principles 4 and 5 of EV increasing the relevance of the Awards in the current operating environment.
A proforma submission template limits the size of the application, the costs of producing an application and removes the administrative burden on entrants
Sites complete a self assessment to identify areas for early action

The benefits of participating in the MINEX Awards process include:

efficient and effective evaluation of current safety and health
approaches against criteria based on EV with the ultimate aim of improving the industry’s OH&S performance
a positive style – a process to identify current strengths and improvement opportunities
Independent peer reviews of a site’s safety and health processes by experienced evaluation teams using recognised criteria
development of a long-term strategic program for the site rather than relying on ad-hoc issues management.

The MINEX process involves four stages:

nominating a site for inclusion in MINEX 2008 and nomination of evaluators for MINEX 2008
the preparation of a detailed submission by applicants using the MINEX criteria
a comprehensive desk-top and site assessment by MINEX evaluators, including on-site feedback session and preliminary evaluation report
the provision of a feedback evaluation report to applicants, detailing strengths and improvement opportunities before the Awards process

> Download a package of information on the MINEX 2008 Awards process, the timelines, and application forms for nominating entrants for MINEX 2008 and a form for participation of evaluators.

Nominations to enter MINEX 2008 must be submitted by 9 May 2008

The MINEX 2008 Awards will be presented at Gala industry dinner in early November.

2007 MINEX Safety and Health Excellence Awards

The Caterpillar MINEX 2007 Awards ceremony was held on 31st October 2007 in Cairns in conjunction with the MCA's Sustainable Development Conference.

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The Chairman of the MCA's Board of Directors, Mr Charlie Lenegan provided the keynote address.

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The Awards continue to be proudly sponsored by Caterpillar represented by Mr Glenn Morrison, Regional Marketing Manager Asia-Pacific.

The following awards were given on the evening.

MINEX 2007 Award - Worsley Alumina

Worsley Alumina impressed the evaluators and judges with their systematic approach and application of systems and procedures across three complex and discrete sites. There is an outstanding level of management commitment and health and safety is fully integrated into all operations with a high degree of participation by all.

The site has clear measures of competency and continuous improvement goal with management committed to long term objectives. Through their leadership, culture and stakeholder awareness, across all levels of the operation and community, they demonstrate their extraordinary maturity and passion for safety and health. Their business integrated approach with active and ongoing continuous improvement represents industry best practice

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Charlie Lenegan, Gerry Rayner (Worsley Alumina) and Glenn Morrison

Highly Commended – Mt Whaleback

BHP Billiton Iron Ore’s Mt Whaleback received this award. It is a site that has a very large number of strengths in safety and health management. The site is enormous in its scale and number of employees. The judges were extremely impressed with the strong leadership, commitment and the substantial amount of resources that are made available across the site in achieving continuous safety and health improvement. It’s risk management systems are strongly embedded and the focus on employee health and wellbeing is exemplary - translating to both families of employees and the wider community through significant mutual aid programs.

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Charlie Lenegan, Tim Dahlheimer (Mt Whaleback) and Glenn Morrison

Encouragement Award – Loy Yang

The Encouragement award went to a site that the judges felt that if the site follows through on the significant commitments it has made on the road to continuous improvement it will reach a level of maturity in its safety and health management that next year and the following years will be outstanding. Loy Yang Power's Loy Yang coal mine in Victoria's Latrobe Valley. It is hoped this site will enter next year so we can all share the learnings from the journey this site is on.

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Charlie Lenegan, Charlie Speirs (Loy Yang) and Glenn Morrison

A summary of all entrants will be posted soon.