Modern Mining March 2022

“Underpinning our safety initiative is the De Beers Technology 4 Safety (T4S) programme which was developed based on the principle of safer, smarter, and better to ensure that critical controls are proven effective 100% of the time”. To make sure that its safety culture is well embedded and that everyone is working to elimi- nate risk proactively, the miner has implemented high potential hazard (HPH) reporting which is used to proactively identify risks. The learnings from the report are shared with all its employees. “In 2018 we embarked on a programme to eliminate fatalities by identifying the risks at the workspace that caused the fatalities. A key part of the programme was to foster open, honest relation- ships and focus on psychological safety to ensure all individuals know that they have the right to speak up and to stop work at any time if they believe it not to be safe. In this way, individuals felt safe enough to identify and report risks before the risks became incidents, injuries or fatalities. The initiative has been so successful that last year alone, 921 HPH incidents were identified and reported before they could cause harm.” “By adopting these safety measures, we seek to remove people from catastrophic risk situations and eliminate fatalities,” says van Eck. 

The $2,2-billion VUP is the single biggest invest- ment in South Africa’s diamond industry in decades. Also on the agenda is official inauguration of the world’s largest diamond recovery vessel – the Benguela Gem – this month. The new 177 m vessel which recovers diamonds from the seabed at a depth of 90 – 150 m, will increase offshore diamond production in Namibia by around a third, explains Lincoln. Pioneering Brilliant Safety Hand-in-hand with its drive for a future with sus- tainability at its heart is De Beers Group’s focus on safety, which sees the company targeting “Beyond Zero Harm”. According to Gary van Eck, Group principal safety lead at De Beers Group, the miner’s strategy is to transform the safety culture from reactive to inher- ent, given that safety permeates across all facets of its operations. To achieve its ambition of going Beyond Zero Harm, De Beers Group has embarked on a journey to Pioneer Brilliant Safety – a new safety initiative based on the ‘four Cs’ of culture connectedness, cul- tivation of values and competence. Together, these will work to underpin De Beers’ safety performance. “We believe that people are our strongest link and want to ensure that safety is inherent in all that we do. We aim to take safety beyond the mine fence into our homes and communities.” To achieve this, De Beers is harnessing digitisa- tion to improve its decision-making capabilities and adopting technology to automate functions such as critical control monitoring and data analysis and to drive the adoption of relevant action.

Illustration of Chidliak Future Smart Mine.

De Beers Diamond FutureSmart mining

 Diamond FutureSmart Mining is De Beers Group’s innovation-led approach to sustainable mining  These are the step-change innovations set to transform the nature of min- ing – how De Beers Group sources, mines, processes, moves and markets its products.

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