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.