CIVCON Site

Finally the time came for us to be on site and bring our ideas about health and safety to life!!!

Everything was finalised at the 11th hour and before I knew it, I was packing my bags and heading for Stilfontein. We were welcomed by a short and brief induction where we were informed of all the relevant safety issues on the site and given the stats of the people who had been dismissed due to non-conformances, so that clearly meant that we had to behave if we wanted to remain on site for two whole months!

We were introduced to our fellow IRCA Team members thereafter and received a very warm welcome from them from the onset. We went for site walks and did a run through of the work that has already been completed on the site in terms of the S-T-&-D Process. We are very fortunate to be working on this site as it is the first to implement the S-T-&-D Process and the testing of the new software is also happening here. It's good to know that we're not the only "firsts" on the site.

Our first week was short as we arrived on a Wednesday and left on Thursady due to pay weekend, as a result we didn't get to do much. The past weeks however have been 5 day weeks and we have definitely covered a whole lot more. We attend site safety meetings every monday morning where safety issues are discussed and we also started doing observations with the team. The observations take up most of the day as we have to transfer them to the checklists when we return from site. The site's safety is generally not bad, it's just that people become restless and their perceptions lead them astray. One thing that still amazes me is that people want to be reminded to safe guard their own lives even though they know about it. I guess that's why we're here, to try change that...

Working with the software has been great, watching it evolve from it's imperfect to an almost perfect phase. A lot of work needs to be done on it before everyone can use it but we'll get there. The team has really been of great assistance to our development in the BIT department and I am grateful for this. The S-T-&-D Process has a few differences from the BBS Process and it's interesting to see it being rolled out.

For the three weeks or so that we have been here we have acquired immense knowledge in terms of coaching, compiling daily and weekly reports, working with the project plan, capturing observations into the software and populating the checklists in the software. Unfortunately our mentor is away as he is sick but fortunately Thapelo is here is to mentor us in his absence. We hope he will be back soon as we miss him dearly.

I'm definitely enjoying my time on site.