Health and safety

Our health and safety management system establishes a clear set of values and objectives to reduce the likelihood and severity of incidents and ensure MinRes complies with company and regulatory requirements for managing workplace health and safety.

Supported by a dedicated team of health and safety professionals, our system includes policies, standards and procedures tailored to meet specific business needs, assisting our business units and operations to effectively manage health and safety risks.

The health and safety management system is also continuously reviewed in line with internal performance data, internal and external feedback, and legislative updates – ensuring information remains accurate and relevant to the safety of our people, contractor partners and visitors.

All sites, projects and departments have a dedicated safety representative who actively engages in health and safety matters at a site-level, including reported hazards, near misses and safety performance.

A weekly safety and training notification is sent to all operational teams with internal safety alerts and other health, safety and training notifications.

This includes toolbox topic documents for discussion at pre-start and toolbox meetings for the following week.

Toolbox topics have included identifying, assessing and controlling risks, electrical awareness, road safety, noise-induced hearing loss, tyre fires and explosions, isolation and tagging, and sustaining nightshift and fatigue.

Worker health and safety meetings at project sites are also held each month, with strong safety performances recognised through safety achievement certificates and individual or team awards.

To ensure effective communication and consultation on relevant health and safety matters, our operations will look to:

• provide all relevant information as early as practicable to all stakeholders and to management teams with responsibility for health and safety to ensure they have sufficient information to make well-informed decisions
• consider the views of employees and contractors and provide them with the opportunity to contribute to the decision-making process regarding workplace health and safety
• provide employees who may be affected by decisions that relate to their health and safety with an opportunity to express their views and understand the reasons for the decisions undertaken
• facilitate regular health and safety meetings, such as prestart and toolbox meetings to discuss and promote safety performance
• supply health and safety information upon request and presented in easy-to-understand language and format
• assist elected health and safety representatives so far as is reasonably practicable to support our workforce.

MinRes is committed to creating environments where employees can enjoy rewarding and fulfilling professional working relationships, differences are celebrated, and free from inappropriate behaviour including bullying, discrimination, harassment and workplace violence and aggression.

Our Safe and Respectful Behaviours Procedure defines and explains key terms relating to safe and respectful workplace behaviour and provides information on responsibilities and expectations as well as education and options for raising concerns.

Living our values means supporting each other, showing respect in our interactions and doing our best to consider things from someone else’s perspective. We encourage everyone in our workforce to be active bystanders by showing up, standing up and speaking up when witnessing impropriate or unacceptable behaviour.

Any person in our business who has witnessed or experienced sexual harassment, sexual assault or any behaviour that doesn’t align with our values or Code of Conduct is encouraged and supported to report through internal channels or externally through our confidential whistleblowing service.

We maintain site-specific induction packages, which can be completed prior to arriving on site, featuring site-specific information and supporting a streamlined transition to site.

MinRes continues to review our training processes, conducting a needs analysis of our systems, requirements and onboarding process for all personnel joining the business.

Minimum and recommended training requirements are identified for specific job roles to ensure workers, supervisors and managers are suitably experienced and qualified to perform their work.

We assess the competency of our workforce to meet safety requirements through our Verification of Competency Procedure, which ensures:

• employees have the required skills and knowledge to successfully achieve their job scope safely
• employees are competent to successfully complete their job scope to the required standard
• we comply with all legislative, organisational, industry and client requirements.

MinRes has thorough processes for hazard identification, risk assessment and incident management.

Our Hazard and Risk Management Procedure defines the minimum requirements to identify, analyse, evaluate, control, monitor and review occupational hazards and risks within the business.

Defining risk consequence levels, likelihood, risk ratings and a hierarchy of controls ensure consistent application across the business.

We identify all principal mining hazards (PMH) specific to our operations, in line with new provisions in the Work Health and Safety (WHS) Mines Regulations 2022.

To ensure a consistent approach to identifying and assessing a PMH, we implement a Principal Mining Hazard Management Plan framework across our mining operations.

Facilitators of hazard and risk assessment processes must be trained and competent in the tools and techniques used.

Our workforce undertakes compulsory training on the task-based assessment tools in use. We evaluate the effectiveness of our risk assessment process to mitigate hazards and ensure continuous improvement.

We also have a clear focus on near-miss reporting. We believe learning from these events is essential to helping prevent reoccurrence and continually improve our safety culture and performance.

Our contracting partners are an important part of our workforce and are integral to the safe delivery of high-quality products to our customers.

Our Contractor Management Procedure outlines the process for verifying that contractor and subcontractor groups have the necessary skills, resources and equipment to safely undertake work activities assigned by MinRes.

Several key processes are followed when engaging with our contracting partners, ensuring compliance with our standards and agreed obligations and responsibilities.

Key elements to successful contractor engagement at MinRes include:

• a scope of work submission of a Safety Management Plan
• completion of Contractor Authorisation to Commence Work and Close Out Form
• completion of a Contractor Induction Checklist
• monitoring performance.

Additionally, we work closely with contracting partners, monitoring their performance and ensuring safe execution through our contractor safety interaction process. This process supports the implementation of our Contractor Safety Management System.