Abstract:

Introduction

We have a long history of learning from events, many of them tragic, on our safety journey.

I will discuss lessons learned, and how developing, implementing and enhancing the Safety Maturity Model (SMM) has been a key step in evolving our safety culture.

Creating the Safety Maturity Model

On 17 July 1998, the Lassing mine in Austria started collapsing. A 10-day operation rescued one miner, but ten people from the rescue team died, resulting in major change in the way we manage safety. We adopted a commitment that every injury was preventable, and that leadership plays a vital role in safety.

We developed a global set of standards and an integrated system for managing health, safety, environment, security, technical, and communities and social performance risks, with mandatory controls for all operations. Subsequently, we developed Critical Risk Management (CRM), Rio Tinto’s first maturity model. CRM comprises simplified checklists to verify that critical controls are well designed, understood, in place, and working at the frontline.

Having implemented CRM, fatalities had not been eliminated. We had pockets of safety excellence in places, and pockets of concern elsewhere.

Consequently, we analysed where we were performing well, to reproduce those results elsewhere – resulting in SMM evolving from CRM. SMM, our blueprint for safety, brings together the best practices from our business in leadership and engagement, learning and improvement, risk management and work planning. Together, these practices define how we can lead for physical and psychological safety.

SMM is staged into three categories: Basic, Evolving and Advanced, allowing operations to understand their current safety maturity state and set achievable improvement goals.

Each year, an independent team spends a week on-site and follows a consistent methodology to assess the maturity of each site against the model. The assessors are safety subject matter experts and peer operational leaders.

Impact of SMM

SMM has engaged our leaders very well, with strong feedback: it is playing a vital role in supporting them to build a positive safety culture, with care and trust permeating through the organization.

Our safety performance has improved: although we still have work ahead, we sustained four years without a fatality and overall fewer people have been hurt on the job.

Our maturity increased from Basic to Evolving, so we understand the model is taking hold.

Continuous improvement

Since implementing SMM, we evolved our focus, from verifying systems and rituals to assessing the impact of the model on people’s mindsets. We believe all employees and contractors should feel they can work without injuring themselves, speak up, and make decisions to stay safe. We have evolved SMM accordingly, including how we roll out training and perform assessments.

Conclusion

We can only be truly successful – as a company and as an industry – when all our people feel they can work safely.

SMM is strengthening our foundation of safety by providing a clear set of best practices, engaging both leaders and frontline employees and contractors, and setting out achievable and measurable improvement opportunities.

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Mr. Jacques Nel

Biography