Quarry Products Association

Background The UK quarrying industry has taken great strides in improving health and safety practice, particularly by halving the number of incidents in the five years to March 2005, in line with the Hard Target initiative of the Health and Safety Executive, HSE – the national regulator. Despite these major advances, HSE statistics show that quarrying remains one of the higher risk industries in the UK. The industry recognises that to improve safety performance further, requires even greater emphasis on raising the awareness of employees and contractors at all levels within the industry and, importantly, sharing information between companies of all sizes. Resources www.safequarry.com brings together four key elements, viz: • A database of best practice entries from 8 years of the Health and Safety Best Practice Awards Scheme, run annually by the Quarry Products Association • The ability to share incident alerts across industry via a dedicated searchable website • A repository of toolbox talks covering key health and safety issues • The ability to share information on relevant “hot topics”, including industry-specific guidance; consultation documents; award scheme entry forms; etc. The project was developed as part of a complementary package that included a hard copy guide and a DVD, the contents of which have all been integrated into www.safequarry.com Managed by a steering group that included representatives drawn from large and small companies on the QPA’s Health and Safety Committee; the other principal partners were the HSE; EPIC (national training provider to the UK extractives and mineral processing industry); the British Aggregates Association; and the University of Leeds. The overall manager of the project was Martin Isles, Director of Health and Safety for the QPA and the project was coordinated by Daybreak Communications. Benefits All stakeholders in the ‘aggregates’ Industry – land & marine-based, also producers of added-value materials – are benefiting from: • Free access to current ‘best practice’, moderated by experts from the QPA’s H&S Committee • Personal email notification (if registered) of ‘incident alerts’ and other new uploads. • Access to ‘toolbox talks’ – of particular value to smaller companies • Access to ‘hot topics’ – bringing relevant developments to the attention of the whole industry Since its launch in September 2006, www.safequarry.com has enjoyed continued growth in usage to around 4,000 distinct users a month. Acknowledgement and Support In addition to endorsement by the Director General of the QPA, support for this UK Entry into the UEPG Sustainable Development Awards 2007 is presented from the following key organisations: • Trades Union Congress (TUC), representing all 63 affiliated trades unions across the UK • Health and Safety Executive (HSE), representing the national regulator • EPIC, the national training body for the UK extractives and mineral processing industry Resources Summary Key elements of the searchable www.safequarry.com database, are: • 350 items of Best Practice • 80 mini-videos • 53 incident alerts European Development Potential QPA has initiated discussions with the European Mines, Chemicals and Engineering Union (EMCEF) to explore a possible social partnership application to the European Commission for funding to develop www.safequarry.com into a multi-lingual platform. This plan would render the resource of even greater value to an industry that has set its ultimate goal as “zero incidents”. Conclusions This project has made examples of best practice far more accessible. It has created a mechanism by which examples of actual incidents and “near hits” can be rapidly shared across the industry, locally, nationally and, indeed, worldwide