Case Study: Safe Work Instructions
for Mobile Plant MaintenanceIron Ore Mine - WA, Australia

Our client had taken over the surface mining operations of a contractor 6 months previously.

The client was the single largest operator of surface miners in the world, which is a new technology for mining iron ore.

They were looking to improve safety performance and develop greater efficiencies in the maintenance of their fleet of surface miners.

The client had identified a requirement to develop Safe Work Instructions (SWI) to standardise maintenance work and improve the safety performance of the Surface Mining Workshop. This had been based on a study of Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) worksheets and risks associated with each task.

Development of Safe Work Instructions would ensure that work was carried out on a consistent basis with the  hazards associated with each job step well documented.

Enterprise IS was engaged to develop Safe Work Instructions for the client to ensure that maintenance work was carried out in a safe and consistent manner. An EnterpriseIS maintenance engineer was embedded on site to document the work carried out on maintenance tasks to produce Safe Work Instructions.

The order in which Instructions were developed was based around:

• The frequency that a maintenance task was conducted: High frequency tasks were prioritised over low frequency tasks.
• The risk associated with a maintenance task: High-risk tasks were prioritised over low risk tasks.
• The ability to access a surface miner while a task was being conducted.

The maintenance engineer developed the Safe Work Instructions in conjunction with the maintenance team by observing the team working on a task and documenting the process followed. The notes and photographs collected were checked against the prior Job Hazard Analysis and any OEM documentation for the task.

The final check for each Instruction was to have Maintenance Supervisors review the draft document with changes made as required. The Safe Work Instruction was complete when Maintenance Supervisors and Maintenance Superintendent signed it off. The finished document was published on the client document control system, PIMS.