Pod Mods in Hunter Support Safety Milestone Achievement
The Hunter team is part of Fenner Conveyors’ 30+ service centres across Australia, and another to successfully reach the safety milestone of 365 days recordable injury free.
Branch Manager, Andrew Lucas, said this milestone was achieved through hard work, safety workshops, and shared learnings from around the business.”
“Our team members regularly engage in high-risk activities, including maintenance activities, belt, gearbox, motor, and pulley replacements. It’s a diverse and challenging environment that presents many risks,” said Lucas.
Fenner Conveyors’ Hunter team is made up of conveyor service experts based out workshops in Newcastle and Muswellbrook.
Over the last 12 months the team have overcome many challenges that had the potential to impact safety. One such being the investment in pod modifications to improve loading and unloading of belt splicing equipment in underground mining work environments.
“As a regular and repetitive task, we identified that improving ease of use and ergonomics for the team when handling equipment was a priority,” explained Lucas. "We modified the pods to have additional doors for easy access to the equipment and reduced manual handling."
National Injury & Wellbeing Coordinator, Emma Mulhern, said that manual handling workshops through Ethos Health also attributed to the injury free milestone.
“The workshops helped maintain our team’s mindset about safety culture regarding manual handling activities,” said Mulhern.
The Hunter team also leveraged learnings from other Fenner Conveyors’ locations to identify and avoid potential safety hazards when completing high-risk activities.
“We regularly communicated safety activities and performance with all 62 members of our team. The entire team were eager to participate and reduce our total recordable injury frequency rate.”
This aligned commitment ensured the Hunter team were set to achieve 365 days injury-free and is a testament to just how much the team values safety.
“It’s a fantastic result for our team to reach 365 days injury-free. Our safety culture has everyone out there looking after their mates, and making sure every member of the team goes home safe. This is something we can all be proud of,” said Lucas.
