Civcon Project Stilfontein: 20 -24 July ‘09

Civcon Project Stilfontein: 20 -24 July ‘09

The cold eventually got to me and I became ill, missing Monday and Tuesday of this week. When I returned on Wednesday I fell straight into the rhythm again and went with the team to facilitate a PACT agreement with one of the Supervisors and his team. This was insightful but I think it might have a stronger impact if it was possible to make the PACT closer to the training. When I asked about it, Johan told me that it is usually done straight after training has finished but with the issues with Dokes’ health it was delayed a little. I found it is good to ask these types of questions to gain the knowledge on the BBS and ST&D process rollout. Wednesday also saw the Management team do their planned observations on site and this went fairly well. I feel like sticking my neck out and saying that spending time on a BBS or a ST&D process, without the full commitment of the site management, is a futile exercise. If there is even the slightest indication that the Site Management value production and deadlines more than the safety of the employees or even the ST&D process, the trust that the process tries to create between the management and the employees is broken before it even exists. In my opinion, there has to be immense focus on the management’s perception at the start of the process to ensure their buy-in and commitment towards safety as a whole. One other thing that I have realised is how big a deal the communication gap is in South Africa as a whole.
On Thursday we started with another PACT agreement for one of the teams on site. I also needed to perform some admin functions. I had to distribute the Supervisors Team PACT agreement among the Supervisors and on a windy and dusty day like Thursday I saw one or two papers fly like birds. Anyway, at least I got to all of the supervisors and they received their PACT agreement. I also had to see to it that the critical tools and equipment checklist was loaded into the software. Unfortunately there is a problem with keywords in the new software that means we cannot upload the critical tools and equipment checklists. The checklists will have to be uploaded once this problem has been sorted out. Needless to say, parallel to these functions we also had to continue with our observations and these were handed to the data capturer to enter into the software.On Friday, the routine tasks continued and we needed to gather the information for the Site Weekly reports. There are two reports as mentioned before but at this stage the “new” PowerPoint report is on hold as the content thereof has to be clarified. Some of the observations and daily reports needed were not yet captured by the site data capturer and as a result some statistics from the software that had to be added to the report could only be put in on Monday. We made two more team PACT agreements and these had to be compiled in PowerPoint which I did later in the day. So, to next week we go.

Civcon Project Stilfontein: 13 - 17 July ‘09

Civcon Project Stilfontein: 13 - 17 July ‘09

This week started slowly, with Dokes unfortunately still ill. Monday was a straight forward day but high paced. We did observations and coaching in the morning and the afternoon. In between we did the data capturing and daily reports. Not much to mention here although it is still insightful to see the process in action. Tuesday morning was also par for the course, with observations and coaching done on an extremely cold day. In the afternoon Patrick came by and looked at some of the things and also showed us a new weekly report presentation in PowerPoint that he wants BBS teams to use. This is basically to communicate at risk behaviours and site conditions to the site management, so that they can see what their most at risk occupations are and then focus their attention on that accordingly. Patrick spent most of the afternoon on this. On Wednesday it was business as usual with more site visits, observations and coaching. Needless to say, the data capturing followed… Apart from the usual suspects, Johan Deysel arrived on site. He is going to succeed Dokes here as the process champion. With Dokes being promoted to project manager, a new process champion had to be assigned and Johan transferred here after he finished a previous project.
Thursday saw Johan having to go to induction, and afterwards Leonard and I took him to site to get to know the lay of the land. At this stage, Dokes has been off site for two weeks and the updated Project Plan is with him. This is a bit of a headache because our work is being done kind of “blindly”. We are continuing with the necessities but certain things are lagging behind as a result. Things are just a little slow at this stage, but it will pick up just as soon as Dokes gets back to hand over to Johan. This will at least see Johan updated and then he can start leading and indicating the direction in which things have to progress.
On Friday, we got started with the planning for the Supervisors PACT agreements and we also worked on the two weekly reports that needed to be compiled. The new report posed some problems on a site as big as the one we are at. Once Johan has spoken to Patrick about it there will probably be some more clarity on what exactly has to be incorporated and what not. The project has now started moving into phase two and some of the structures that are finished already will be duplicated to enlarge the capacity of the processing plant. This can be a problem as the employees may become careless with the work that they have done successfully previously. As a team, the Safety department need to be vigilant with their approach to the work being done in phase two, to ensure the that all employees adhere to the PACT that they have made with their team. But for this week that is it.

Civcon Project Stilfontein: 6 - 10 July ‘09

Civcon Project Stilfontein: 6 - 10 July ‘09

When we arrived on Monday we were once again greeted by cold, the sound of earth works machinery moving and the smell of diesel engines running all over the place. Dokes didn’t arrive and he let us know that he was admitted to hospital with some kind of sickness. But we didn’t let that stop us to get stuck in and finish up the last work that we didn’t finish on Friday. Through out the week we kept doing observations and processing them into the software. Both the old and new software has to be populated as we are basically the guinea pigs to test out the new software and report back to IT what is wrong and what needs to be changed. So from now on, I won’t be mentioning the observations and data capturing anymore as we do this daily on an ongoing basis. For the rest of Monday we did some filing and other admin functions to make the work a little more streamlined.
Tuesday was a great experience. The day started off slowly but just after lunch it gathered some speed and soon we were ankle deep in it… At about half past one an accident occurred at the south side of the site, at an area known as the process water dam. A 10 ton Tipper Truck was hauling a load of backfill over the dam wall and had to make a left turn off the wall and onto the access ramp to continue to the area where the backfill had to be offloaded. According to the evidence, the driver turned too sharply and when the spotter in that area indicated to him to stop, the momentum from the load coming to a sudden halt caused the truck to lose traction, leave the road on the access ramp and overturned one and a half times. The truck came to rest on its right hand side. The driver had his safety belt on at the time of the accident preventing serious injury. In the area where the truck ended up, there were some workers who were doing concrete work, but luckily none of them were struck by the rolling truck as it came to rest a few metres from them. When I arrived at the scene, I started taking photo’s as the driver had already been removed from the truck and placed in a recovery position. The scene of the accident had been barricaded, but the spectator value caused a lot of workers to down tools temporarily and as a result production also slowed to a crawl. For the rest of the week I was exposed to the principles that we learnt in Incident Investigation. The cost of loss (iceberg principle) was also clear in the process of clearing the scene, gathering evidence, medical costs, time spent on the investigation by a number of people, travel costs for the SHEQ Manager from Civcon, accommodation for him and another Safety officer from their operations elsewhere, etc, etc. The cost with just a relatively small incident like this is immense, and I’m glad that I was exposed to it and had the opportunity to experience it!
Wednesday morning was straight forward, as we were on site doing observations and coaching. In the afternoon Civcon’s SHEQ Manager, Hennie Mienie, arrived and asked Leonard and me to assist with the investigation. We accompanied him to the accident scene where we reviewed the physical evidence and the photos. Afterwards we went to the boardroom to review the paper evidence as well. This was a good experience and I am glad that I could assist with the investigation.
On Thursday the debriefing of the investigation took place and I was a part of that meeting too. It was good see how these types of things play out and how people handle the situation. In the afternoon we continued with observations and helped Jack Mthembu, Civcon Site Safety Officer, to compile the final report of the investigation. What is important is to plan well and do your tasks efficiently. If these two aspects are not part of your work ethic when on site, you will most certainly fall behind and have some serious catching up to do before you even realise that you’re behind…

ST&D CivCon: 29 – 30 June ‘09

Civcon Project – Stilfontein: 29 – 30 June ‘09

To start with: A quick glance at last week when we arrived at the Civcon Site. On Wednesday we arrived and things looked pretty busy already. We went for induction at the client’s offices (Chemwes, which was recently renamed Mine Waste Solutions or MWS for short) and afterwards we had the site specific induction with Civcon’s Chief Safety Officer, Jack Mthembu. After this was finished Dokes, Leonard and Thapelo took us on a tour of the site, to show us the layout and what areas and tasks are critical. This took a while because it is quite the large site. Afterwards we started to help Thapelo to populate the new BBS Software. This was nice because we are now part of only a handful of people who have had exposure to the new software. There are still a few things that need sorting out but it looks like the new software will be nice programme to work with once it is finished. The Civcon site is also the first site where the new ST&D (Stop – Think and Decide Process) is being rolled out. This is great as well because we are being exposed to some of IRCA’s new products early on. We arrived on site only a day before Civcon’s payday. This meant that the site closed at twelve o’clock on Thursday and would only reopen on Monday. And Monday was the start of the new week.
So on Monday we arrived at site and attended the weekly Site Safety Meeting and we were introduced to the entire Civcon workforce. This makes things a little easier when we are on site doing observations and the people know who we are. So on Monday we accompanied Leonard on site while he did his site visits and observations. It was a kind of coaching/mentoring on how to approach the employees and how to do the observations. All in all it basically included hands on training on the techniques to apply when you visit site and when the visit was finished, how to capture the information on the checklists and then do the data capturing into the software. On Tuesday we basically spent the whole day on site doing observations and coaching with the supervision of Dokes and we filled out the checklists ourselves. Tuesday was an eventful day with few non conformances and some intensive corrective coaching taking place. Wednesday was mostly used to do administrative duties and Patrick Ngonyama was on site with us as well. He came through to audit the ST&D process that we are rolling out on the Civcon site. The audit pointed out some areas in the process that needed work and updating and this is what the most of Thursday was dedicated to.
Although we worked furiously on the things that we needed to fix for the audit, we still needed to do the usual daily tasks like go out to site and do observations, capture the data and update the new software’s data, as this forms part of the Project Plan. The thing that was valuable to learn from this was that it is better to try and stay up to date with all the deliverables in the Project plan rather than to play catch-up once you realise that you have fallen behind a bit. It is also critical to communicate with all the parties involved in the project once there is a problem.
There were a few things that needed rectifying after the audit such as,
· updating the project plan and indicating which deliverables where behind schedule and which were finished,
· adding checklists for the participation standards of
Ø site management,
Ø the safety officer,
Ø coaches,
Ø the process champion and
Ø the data capturer.
· Scheduling the times on the Project plan for
Ø Establishment of the Operational teams,
Ø Their pact agreements as well as,
Ø The employees’ PACT agreements.
· Compiling and capturing of the site’s critical tools and equipment checklists.
The above mentioned points kept us quite busy and we left at about quarter past five on Thursday. We still weren’t finished as the usual daily tasks took up some of our time as well. We would continue with the updating of the aspects above on Friday and as with Thursday it kept us pretty busy. What was nice about these hectic two days was the fact that we were able to be exposed to a lot of the Project’s working parts. Gomotso and I were able to work on MS Project and gain a little bit of familiarity with the programme. What is nice about this is you can actually see yourself going forward and learning what the BIT Department is about as well as what the conditions are like “at the coal face.”
The only thing that was left to do on Monday was the Critical tools and equipment checklists, but we felt that we made good progress with all the changes thus far. All in all, a good week and things have been moving along briskly.

ST&D CivCon - Stilfontein

We have transferred into the BIT Department of IRCA and it has certainly been interesting since this move. I have been looking forward to this experience and so far not much has dissapointed.

We arrived on site in Stilfontein on 24 June and we started off pretty slowly but things quickly gathered speed on the following Monday.

This post will mostly be introductory and I will post my "weekly reports" that have been done as time went by just after this.

The management at CivCon opted to implement the Stop, Think and Decide (ST&D) methodology rather than the BBS Methodology, as do quite a lot of work for Anglo and they want their systems to correspond to that which Anglo implements themselve. It does not differ much from that of the BBS methodology, although some concepts are clearly not the same.

All in all the people here have been pretty good to Gomotso and I and have been willing to share their experience with us whether they are with CivCon or IRCA. This is paramount to the proper development of our skills and for this I am greatful.

So, my following post will include the info from each of the weeks that we have spent here thus far.

Stay Classy

Rayno