Recently our MEMS course went international. Mark Freeman and I conducted courses at Harmony’s Hidden Valley Mine in Papua New Guinea. Three one day courses with participants from all areas of the mining operation attended. HHVM is a Gold Mine in the Morobe Highlands situated some 3000m above sea level, 40-minute plane flight from Port Moresby and a short 40km drive from the town of Bulolo with approx. 1200 persons onsite at any time. We got to see firsthand how intensive the mine paramedics train and discussed in finer details how often and the scenarios they carry out. Our courses were well received by all participants, ranging from the general manager down to the ERT members.
Training in IMT for the Level 1 in July is well underway for Grosvenor with 2 courses being facilitated in Moranbah with large numbers of participants for each group. QMRS still have plenty of spots available for the 2018 courses in April, June, August and November.
Well underway is the planning of the GICCS, (Glencore Incident Command & Control system) for Glencore 2018 with the course being run at Newlands Coal in February and a course is planned to be run in mid-June for Oaky North Coal.
There is a proposed Surface MEMS Course planned to be run in the second week of August in Mackay with plenty of spots available. There will also be specific courses for Curragh Mine in late May and for Peabody’s Coppabella and Moorvale in the first week of August.
Competition planning is well underway for 2018 with the QMRS Cup being hosted by Grasstree Mine on the 3rd May. The team of district assessors visited the mine in late February and I believe have come up with some new and interesting scenarios to test the nominated teams.
This year, QMRS have asked for two persons from Broadmeadow Mine, Moranbah North Mine & Grosvenor Mine who have not competed before, to be put together as a Composite Team. The Captain of this team is still to be named, this person chosen will have been a competitor before to guide and impart knowledge on the new participants. Good luck to the six teams competing. On the 13th March, the Australian Competition Committee met in Brisbane to review 2017 Narrabri Competition with the view to set the bar higher for 2018.
Recently the Operations Managers and the CEO met and reviewed all information from 2017 Level 1 held at Broadmeadow Mine. Moving forward post change management, will see no longer MAG 1, 2 & 3. Groups now are MAG North and South, there is no change to the training groups, only the response. Furthermore, all Duty Cards for QMRS have seen some changes, from DC 1 to DC 7. Please ask the trainers to view Duty 4 and 5 when you come to training.
So far this year, QMRS is seeing a greater number of persons sitting for Gas Ticket assessments. If you would like to sit an assessment, please ensure you plan well in advance for dates to be allocated.