Together the panel held 150 years of combined mining experience, made up of Mandalong shearer driver Brendan Boss; US safety expert and author Bob Veazie from SPS Consulting; Mine Safety Advisory Council chairman Norman Jennings; Joy Mining Machinery’s Brad Neilson; and Metropolitan general manager Neville McAllery. The discussion was facilitated by JK Group’s Jim Knowles.

The safety panel was open to questions from the floor – and there were plenty covering training, safety culture and fatigue.

Upon being asked to list the most important longwall safety innovations over the past 20 years, McAllery cited automation, polyurethane, risk management tools and equipment design. But he said the greatest safety jump was the way that management now engaged people.

“If you have a problem, get the operators in and you will get to the real issue, and more often than not the solution to the problem will come from that room,” he said.

When questioned on his perception of whether his training on the job was adequate, Mandalong’s Brendan Boss replied that he had received extensive training but he said all mines should be mindful to do follow-up training to re-instil what employees have already learnt.

Joy’s Brad Neilson added there was also a place for simulators in training. He said simulators should be set up to graphically show different scenarios when “things go wrong”, to give operators the training they cannot get on a mini-wall or the face.

Several members of the audience agreed that one solution to training would be to permanently set up equipment to train on, including a base armoured face conveyor, shields and shearer at a central location.

Addressing fatigue, a member of the audience quizzed the panel on how the industry could stop fatalities happening on roads as workers travelled to and from a minesite.

Jennings, who helped put together the mine safety research document Digging Deeper, said part of the solution to fixing the fatigue issue in the workplace was creating a change in culture towards overtime.

“People don’t want to admit they are tired and they don’t take any breaks in their shift. The macho culture in the mining industry is alive and well,” Jennings said.

“The average age in the industry is around the 50s. And we believe we can work as hard as we did when we were in our 20s.

“It is only a matter of time before processes are put in place to provide guidance to recognise fatigue and act appropriately to address it.”

While a coal company needs to tackle fatigue, McAllery said the onus of recognising and addressing fatigue was very much on the individual.

“The individual needs to think about his own fitness and what he is about to do over the next 24 hours for the sake of his own family,” McAllery said, giving the example of recently seeing miners going out for several drinks the night before starting their day shift and then travelling several hours home once the shift had ended.

Veazie said he had witnessed safety treated as a one-off event across US and Australian companies, including those outside mining.

“Safety isn’t about two interventions [meetings] per month. It is not about processes. It is about culture. Education should be a process and not an event. It all comes down to taking care of each other,” he said.