Last night in Townsville Lake Lindsay's Evan Greenaway and Dan Robertson were rewarded for their team's hard work in design and build when they won the overall award for Innovation at the Queensland Mining Industry Health and Safety Conference Awards.
Coming first in a field of more than 65 Queensland resource companies, 18 submissions and 10 finalists, their innovative solution "Magnitude, The Magnetic Lifter" was recognised as a creative and practical solution in health and safety across the Queensland Resources Industry.
Engineering and Maintenance Manager Shane Swift said the idea of developing a special tool to assist with the change-out of the 43 kilogram brake callipers on an 830E Komatsu Truck first eventuated at one of the monthly safety meetings held by the Capcoal Opencut Maintenance Workshop team.
"While the Komatsu 830 Electric Trucks are not new to mining, they have only been at Capcoal since early 2012 and since their arrival the change-out of their brake callipers has raised genuine safety concerns amongst Capcoal's Maintenance crew.
"The crew came together to generate and discuss ideas to find a solution that would be financially viable and that would result in this job being done safely and efficiently. The device also had to be something that was going to be easy enough to manufacture on site.
"The concept of the design was a team effort, however, Dan Robertson, our Shift Fitter and Evan Greenaway contributed greatly to creating the 830E tooling device," Shane said.
Maintenance Workshop Shift Supervisor Evan Greenaway said a team design for the Magnitude was promptly created that would provide a practical solution to safely lift and manoeuvre the brake callipers into place, avoiding unnecessary manual handling on these 830E Trucks.
"The change out of one of these 43 kilogram brake callipers requires two people and is a challenging manual handling risk due to the limited space available with the confines of the truck.
"The design we came up with is a Capcoal Opencut original, it cost less than $3,000 and has not been modified from any other piece of equipment, "Evan said.
Head of Opencut Operations, Mark Heaton said Capcoal's Maintenance Workshop team made a positive impact in the way they work to strive for excellence and zero harm.
"By inventing this tool this team has been able to avoid unnecessary lifting and straining in changing out the brake callipers on the 830E Trucks and it has also contributed to overall productivity in the workshop as the Magnitude can be used in a multitude of other areas in the workshop, making their shifts safe and effective.
The Lake Lindsay HME B Crew are to be congratulated on this award. By demonstrating their strong safety commitment to achieve Target Zero Harm, they have saved Anglo American time and money" Mark said.
Evan Greenaway and Dan Robertson presenting their initiative at the Queensland Mining Industry Health and Safety Conference
Lake Lindsay’s HME B Crew with Magnitude
