Turquoise Ridge General Manager Nigel Bain brought home the award, but he says it belongs to the whole mine. On Oct. 29 during the closing luncheon of the 2014 Mine Safety and Health Conference in Reno, Nevada, Bain was honored as the Safe Mine Manager of the Year.
The conference, which is sponsored by several state mining associations, industry leaders and the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, recognized Bain for his efforts in making Turquoise Ridge the safe work environment it is today. Bain was completely surprised by the recognition and suspected Joe Riney of the Nevada Mining Association and Simon Pollard, Turquoise Ridge's Safety and Health Superintendent, had something to do with the award.
"It was an honor for Turquoise Ridge to get this recognition," Bain said. "I was nominated by the mining association, and they'd approached Simon Pollard to write about it. I didn't know about it until a couple of people kept congratulating me, and Simon confessed about what was going on."
While the recognition and award were a nice surprise, for Bain and his people at Turquoise Ridge, the real reward is everyone going home safe and healthy every day. In July, Bain explained to Barrick employees at a meeting in Toronto that Turquoise Ridge did not have a good safety record historically. At one point, the mine had to shut down due to poor safety performance.
"We made significant improvements, and I think we are now on the right track," Bain said.
While no one person or action can be credited for the turnaround, he listed a handful of changes that helped to strengthen the culture at Turquoise Ridge. First, he said Simon's work at the site has been crucial. He credited Simon's energy and passion about safety as something that is infectious at the site. Simon is frequently on site during his off hours to attend a safety meeting and demonstrate by his commitment how important safety is to him and to Barrick.
Second, Bain said the safety culture was emphasized through all levels of leadership at Turquoise Ridge.
"We emphasized to our leadmen and supervisors that this isn't just a safety issue from Nigel, Simon or Jon (Laird, Turquoise Ridge's Mine operations superintendent)," Bain said. "We wanted each one of them to make sure safety was their issue as well. We hold everyone at the site responsible for safety, starting with our leaders."
Simon said Bain made health and safety targets part of each supervisor's performance commitments.
"Clearly he was sharing the message that he expected every leader on site to operate with safety as their highest priority," Simon said. "He also quickly began engaging with the front line workforce to ensure that each person on site was aware that safety and health would always come before production."
Next, it was important to get everyone on site involved in the change to the safety culture.
"It requires everyone making an effort," Bain said. "We preach that FLRAs (Field Level Risk Assessments) are a key to our safety. Employees are expected to complete FLRAs every day, on every shift and in every work environment."
Bain said the four questions: what am I doing, what could go wrong, how could it affect me, others or the environment, and what will I do about it are good for safety and good for production, which leads to another success at Turquoise Ridge. In addition to having a banner year in safety, the site is doing the same in production. Bain said the site is having a record year in production.
"Safety and production can go hand-in-hand," he said. "They're not mutually exclusive things. We're creating a good culture for both goals. We have a lot of good things happening here."[[In-content Ad]]
