Operational improvement consulting firm Partners in Performance (PIP) says that it notes a trend by South African mining companies to reassess their safety strategies and safety auditing procedures, as safety is increasingly approached not only as a legislative but also as a performance requirement.

PIP director Gareth Huckle says that the trend can mostly be attributed to a combination of worsening safety performance and various other factors that include increasingly stringent application of safety legislation, shareholder pressure, broader stakeholder concern and economic impact.

“More of our clients are telling us that their operations look good on paper, as they are performing well in various safety audits; how- ever, this is not translating into better safety performance on the ground.

“This is often because traditional safety audits are heavily biased in their design towards compliance and, while necessary, this is simply not sufficient to provide insight into the full gamut of factors that drive safe behaviour in mines. “Therefore, a more comprehensive and holistic approach to safety management is required,” he says.

To this end, PIP has developed a new concept, namely the Safety Wiring Pyramid, which enables miners to wire improvements so that new or different ways of operating become the norm, thus sustaining safety improvements.

The Safety Wiring Pyramid provides a structured and systematic way for PIP’s clients to assess their performance against seven common characteristics of safety leaders, as well as to identify opportunities to drive safer behaviour, Huckle elaborates.

The seven common characteristics are a genuine care for safety, demonstrated by leaders at all levels; operational excellence throughout the organisation; safety key performance indicators and performance targets set at a granular level; clear individual accountability to drive safety; behavioural safety that is embedded; the leveraging of safety information and in-house expertise; and a continuous improvement cycle to further eliminate risks.

Huckle explains that PIP recently conducted trials to ascertain the benefits of the Safety Wiring Pyramid.

The research involved a scan of more than 75 businesses to identify global safety leaders, after which it went on to conduct more detailed analysis of half of the 75 companies, followed by an in-depth analy- sis that involved a comprehensive literature review and multiple interviews.

“We saw a very high correlation between lost-time-injury frequency rates and the total score on these seven dimensions. “If you genuinely want to improve your safety performance, you have to perform well on all of them,” Huckle concludes.