Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Quarry industry
The quarry industry has surpassed its ‘Hard Target’, by reducing all reportable injuries by 52% in five years.
In 2000, the government launched the “Revitalising Health and Safety” Strategy, which aimed to inject new impetus into health and safety in all workplaces. In June 2000, the Quarries National Joint Advisory Committee (QNJAC) responded by adopting the “Hard Target”, aiming to halve the number of reportable accidents in the industry by 2005. Bill Callaghan, Chair of the Health and Safety Commission, launched the initiative at HSE’s London headquarters on 17 July 2000.
The British quarry industry has traditionally had a poor health and safety record. However, through an effective partnership approach with HSE, this is no longer the case, and the success of the Hard Target initiative has caught the attention not only of senior health and safety figures and leaders from other industries in Britain, but internationally.
The QNJAC is a tripartite committee (HSE, employers and employees) at which stakeholders in the British quarry industry are able to discuss priorities and develop solutions. The HSE’s definition of a quarry includes all surface mining: i.e. opencast coal, industrial minerals, kaolin, ball clay, brick clay, barytes, gypsum, silica sands, fluorspar, china stone, slate, fullers’ earth, limestone, dolomite, basalt, and aggregates. Thus defined, the industry consists of some 25,000 direct employees, 25,000 contractors and daily 35-40,000 lorry drivers.
In an event held on 29 November 2005 to celebrate the achievement of the Hard Target, HSC Commissioner, Hugh Robertson, congratulated all those who had helped reach the target. He said:
"Well done to everybody in the industry who has risen to the challenge of the ‘Hard Target’- to cut reportable injuries by 50% by 2005. The quarry industry has shown that a competent management and a genuinely involved workforce will deliver targets making it an exemplar to other traditional heavy industries."
The achievement has included significant progress against each of the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) priority programmes – falls from height; slips and trips injuries; manual handling injuries; and workplace transport injuries. Major injuries have also reduced by 36% whilst over three day injuries have decreased by 55% in the five years to 2004/05. (HSE’s statistical reporting year runs from 1 April to 31 March.)
Under the Hard Target, a balanced set of strategic objectives contributed to the achievement of the target:
Major education and training initiatives have been undertaken across the industry to improve competence and raise health and safety performance.
Key achievements under this objective include:
This refers to work to influence key groups such as Chief Executive Officers and employee representatives, and to ensure that effective control measures are in place at high-risk plant, such as vehicles and conveyors, and processes, such as explosives and geotechnics.
Key achievements under this objective include:
Various publicity initiatives have been taken forward on quarry health and safety, with a programme of topic inspections in addition to HSE’s normal rigorous enforcement of appropriate standards. Articles in Quarry Fact File provided practical information in support of this programme.
Topics covered have included:
Following the success of the Hard Target Initiative, the next stage (2005-2010) will be to achieve a further 50% reduction in injuries by 2010 with the ultimate aim of zero incidents by 2015. A special QNJAC meeting was held in May 2006 to start to map measurable objectives within Target Zero to assess progress of the initiative within its five-year span. Target Zero is based on the principles of the HSC "Strategy for 2010 and beyond", working in partnership with all stakeholders who can make a difference. Partnership working is mutually beneficial to the organisations involved, and this together with the emphasis on achieving a fully competence assured industry enables the industry to become progressively more self-sustaining and self-regulating.
The overall objective of Target Zero is to achieve a further 50% reduction in injury over a wider range of the workforce, and to address occupational ill health, by creating a competence assured industry that:
The Quarries Regulations 1999 require that no person undertake any work in the quarry unless s/he is competent to do so (or is acquiring such competence through training and supervision). A lack of competence has shown itself in the historically poor accident and ill health history of the industry.
The Hard Target 2000-2005 set in place a number of critical initiatives that have laid the foundation and proved the validity of concentrating on competence as an underpinning principle of good management. Not only health, safety and environmental management but business efficiency, quality and operational productivity are likely to be improved by increasing workforce competence.
The Quarries Regulations 1999 are workplace-based rather than employer-based, and therefore Target Zero includes contractors and hauliers who work daily on quarry sites, and that in turn will directly influence injury in other industries including construction, transportation and manufacture.
Under the provisions of the quarries legislation they are all treated as employees of the quarry operator:
Workforce participation and involvement depends on a competent, confident workforce, and improvements in health and safety management depend on a competent management.
Comparing British quarrying with international companies who have the same risk profile (using figures provided by the Global Mining Initiative) shows that their lost time injury frequency rates are at most 75% of those in Britain.
Comparison of injury rates between GB and major global companies, courtesy of Anglo American PLC 2003
Therefore the target of an injury rate for quarrying, which as a minimum matches that of the British construction and agricultural industries by 2010, is achievable and sustainable, and further improvements can be made by 2015.
On 29 November 2005 senior representatives of the industry and its stakeholders were invited to recommit themselves on behalf of their organisations to achieving Target Zero. The event attracted commitments not only from quarry companies who signed up to the Hard Target at the original launch in 2000, but from a much broader range of industry stakeholders.
Speaking of the next five year target, Helen Turner of HSE’s Manufacturing Sector said:
"In order for injury reduction to be sustained into the future we must ensure not only that we share a common vision of where we want to be, but also that it is the right vision, and we know the steps we must take to get us there together. The thrust of HSE’s efforts over the last five years has used the overall concepts of commitment, competence and involvement and these remain key underpinning requirements."
Other speakers highlighted areas of activity which remain priorities if injury reduction is to be sustained. These include occupational ill health, workforce involvement, working effectively with contractors and hauliers, equipment design, gaining and supporting improvements in small and medium sized businesses, and maintaining emphasis on the competence of all who work in the quarry industry.