Vision
A mining industry free of fatalities, injuries and occupational illnesses associated with operating and maintaining earth moving equipment.
Purpose
Accelerate development and adoption of leading practice designs to minimise the risk to health and safety through a process of Original Equipment Manufacturer, contractor and user engagement.
The backstory
Since early this century, mining companies have jointly discussed the contribution of earth moving equipment design to unwanted events such as incidents, damage and production delays. The initiative was driven by the desire to fill the functional knowledge gap between customers and equipment designers, focusing on new designs where the opportunity for major change was not only possible, but made economic sense. For six global mining companies, these discussions evolved into a formal global initiative in 2006 – the Earth Moving Equipment Safety Round Table (EMESRT).
The next step was to develop and implement a strategy for mining customers to engage with OEMs. The first meetings were with eight surface mining OEMs and these discussed the EMESRT design philosophies to develop an understanding of each other’s perspective. Once this approach was confirmed as adding value the design challenges were expanded from surface mining equipment to underground coal and metal mining, along with exploration drilling.
In 2006, serious injuries and fatalities from access and working at height incidents from mobile equipment were occurring in most mining companies and across all regions. Working with OEMs, EMESRT confirmed customer equipment access and working at height requirements and these became the basis for improved design. By 2012, this approach had largely eliminated equipment access and working at heights hazards in new mining equipment.
Following OEM requests in 2008, EMESRT developed OMAT (Operability Maintainability Assessment Technique). OMAT promotes the use of EMESRT Design Philosophies by engaging users in a structured task-based assessment methodology.
This was followed up in 2011 with the development of ENDEEP process for evaluating OEM equipment design during mining company equipment procurement. OEMs who apply this process can demonstrate that they are designing beyond standards are applying task-based design reviews and are linking design features to priority issues.
Our vehicle interaction project commenced in 2013 continues. This complex industry level work is based on Design Principle DP 5 Machine Operation and Control and is further explained in this report.
Following on from a strategic review in 2017, we undertook several important actions to sustain EMESRT beyond its foundation member cohort including confirming our success factors, confirming industry project management processes, and updating our strategic plan.
In 2018, EMESRT developed and piloted the Control Framework approach and this was applied to industry projects: