Mining overseas: Risky Business | Mining Australia

Australian miners operate in some dangerous areas of the world and have to be prepared for anything, but how do you become prepared?

From simply losing passports to threats on workers lives, expertise is needed to handle a company's response.

"Dynamiq is an emergency response and risk management business, we help clients and especially mining organisations to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from incidents which could affect their people, their operations and ultimately their reputations," chief executive officer Anthony Moorhouse told Australian Mining.

Covering everything from evacuations on mine sites, extortion threats made on executives, to helping a worker if they have lost a passport, the company provides 24 hour assistance through their call centre in Sydney.?

"We have a 24 hour emergency centre in Australia manned by doctors and nurses and crisis response experts," he explained.?

"Dynamiq does about 300 emergency cases a year."

But with more and more companies now making the move overseas, Moorhouse explains the risks can be heightened and that is where his team's expert knowledge is utilised.?

"About 55 per cent of Dyna?miq's revenue is generated overseas and the vast majority of that is supporting Australian clients," Moorhouse said.

Entering new territory

With the risks associated in more exotic locations like Africa and Asia, companies had a responsibility to ensure workers remained safe wherever they were located.?

"Because some of these countries are so remote, their medical and safety security infrastructure can be poor so we help them to be self sufficient."

"What we help them with is dealing with the unique working environment, and mitigate those risks by providing policies, plans and people for medical and security purposes."

Providing initial risk assessments through to on the ground support, training, and emergency response, it ensures workers are not only safe, but are ready to respond in the case of emergencies.?

And with many workers travel?ling overseas, the company also pro?vides strategic training and the know-how depending on where the individual is travelling.?

"We work with individual staff and in particular travellers who are going to more exotic locations that may face a safety, security, or medical incident to make sure that they're not bumbling around not knowing what they are doing."

Moorhouse said that while Australian companies are very good at keeping workers safe, incidences were bound to occur where specialised skill sets and responses are required.?

"In the space of a fortnight we conducted evacuations out of the Democratic Republic of Congo, responded to a car-jacking in PNG, and also had an extortion attempt against an Australian executive.

"In essence, we become an outsourced, 'when shit happens' function for these guys."

"They can worry about their core business which is to extract minerals out of the ground and we can take care of all the contingency planning scenarios and making sure the system is robust to deal with anything that goes wrong."

And the support is not just on the ground level. The company first consults with board members about policy, ensuring that safe practices are understood from the top down to make for a safer working environment.?

"We work with the board and senior managers to get them ready to deal with an emergency event, so we help those teams prepare so that if the worst happens, they have got a game plan and they feel comfortable with that plan."

Dynamiq also provides on-site training at mine, where emergency response drills are practised with staff so they know "how to deal with a more tactical event like a fire or a mine site collapse.

"We do a lot of training, consulting and testing at sites around Australia," he stated.?

With the much publicised boom shifting, Moorhouse said that in recent months discussions had centred around cutting costs while still ensuring the safety of workers was not compromised - a task that had been exciting, allowing for customised solutions.

"We are finding that we are actually growing through this phase because we can provide solutions to clients that are more cost competitive," Moorhouse explained.?

Moorhouse told Australian Mining that many rival companies were now benefiting from combining resources in order to cut costs.?

"By sharing resources with other companies or doing more remote on-call assistance rather than having a huge permanent staff base or sharing roles we are able to provide this risk management support to our clients.
"It's about risk management," Moorhouse said.?

"Let's think of smarter ways to do more with less."?

A former Australian special forces counter terrorism commander, Moorhouse founded Dynamiq eight years ago, and the company now employs 150 full-time staff in Australia and has offices in both Sydney, Papua New Guinea and future plans for a greater push into Asia and South America.

Source: http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/features/mining-overseas-risky-business

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