Making sure you meet your legislative requirements and that your workforce is qualified is important—especially when you deploy workers to remote sites.
The Australian mining industry is made up of large numbers of fly in, fly out (FIFO) or drive in, drive out (DIDO) workers due to the geographical location of their sites.
Managing your workforce data across several platforms presents the very real risk that something will be missed —from lapsed insurance, to missing medicals—which can lead to lost time, money, and the risk of fines.
From our origins in the Hunter Valley mining industry, Pegasus understands the unique challenges facing the industry. We partner with some of the world’s largest mine companies – including BHP, Glencore, Yancoal, and Peabody – to qualify and manage safety on their sites.
We know that in a high-risk working environment like mining, the stakes are high. A mistake can be deadly. But a remote mine site requires a different approach, something our clients often enlist our help with.
McArthur River Mine in the Northern Territory is one of Glencore’s most remote Australian operations. Located 970 kilometres south-east of Darwin, staffing a mine site so remote presents its own unique challenges, and around half of the fifteen hundred-strong workforce are contractors.
Glencore was using several systems to capture all the information they needed to staff their mine and manage their safety requirements. But having data spread across multiple platforms was both inefficient and risky. What they needed was a robust contractor management system—one where they could identify contractors, ensure they had the right skills and training, and then deploy them to McArthur River Mine’s remote site.
It’s a similar story for Pegasus clients Peabody, with remote sites across Queensland and New South Wales, and Yancoal, who operates five producing mines, manages two mines, and has interests in another two joint venture mines across Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia. Each hosts an array of workers and contractors, all of whom need clearances, inductions, training, and certifications to be able to do their jobs safely.
Creating a solution to do that effectively is the challenge.
It is not worth the risk to have workers arrive to your remote mine site only to find out their insurances have expired, or they have missed crucial training due to policy changes.
This results in:
So how do you avoid this? By leveraging technology.
It’s important to have certainty when it comes to your workforce. To know they have the appropriate licences, insurances, safety documents, and qualifications to work for you. Rather than having this information scattered across several static spreadsheets, it’s crucial to collect this information and hold it in one platform.
Yancoal has utilised our workforce management software to verify their contracting companies and workers before they are deployed to their mine sites.
“We now have business rules in the system that say, in essence, if certain people don’t have certain qualifications, they can swipe their card as many times as they want at the gateway but they won’t get in,” said Craig Hagan, Yancoal’s Training and Development Specialist.
Worker information being stored in an online, accessible, platform, empowers you to link their profile to site access. With only competent workers allowed on site, you’ll be able make sure every worker you fly in is compliant before they hop on the plane. Not only does it save you money, it gives your business confidence that no time is being wasted.
“Thanks to Pegasus, Peabody is more effective at making sure the people coming to site have met the training and competency requirements, this gives our Senior Management a lot more comfort that we are legally compliant,” said Shane Apps, Peabody Australia’s Senior Manager – Health, Safety and Training.
Getting your workforce compliant is one thing, but they must stay compliant. Whenever a licence, insurance, qualification, or induction is reaching expiry, our platform sends an automatic reminder to update the document or training. These notifications also work for changed site requirements.
This way, you reduce the risk – and time – of a worker being turned away at site.
Remote mine sites have the additional challenge of needing to manage travel and accommodation for your FIFO/DIDO workforce. Responding to this need and integrating multiple systems has become a Pegasus specialty. Our software development team can integrate systems—like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)s—using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
“The greatest benefit of working with Pegasus has been the high level of innovation and features available in their packages that aren’t available in other products we have investigated,” said Laurentiu Aldea, BHP Mt Arthur Coal’s Superintendent Site Systems.
With data talking between the systems, you have only the most up-to-date and accurate information to plan and scale.
You’re days away from sending your worker to site when a procedure change occurs. Before they’re granted access to site, they need to complete training.
This is when you make the most of their time in transit. Workers on the way to site simply login to the Pegasus Learning Management System to complete their training. Now, on arrival, they’re up to date with new requirements.
“The system is allowing us to perform more efficiently by providing clear reporting on contractor management, training and attendance. We are able to more effectively manage competency, online learning and attendance while our contractors have gained a better understanding of their obligations,” said Talan Breaden, Aeris Resource’s Manager of People & Safety at their Tritton Operations.
Finding the right technology to manage the complexity of your remote workforce will streamline your processes, increase productivity, and save time. It ensures your risk is managed.
Talk to the experts at Pegasus today.
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Host: John Furner, Pegasus Head of Mining Services
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