Western Region Master Mechanic Minutes

November 10^th, 2005

   Purpose for this seminar is to discuss and share ideas, experiences and procedures in how to make the work place a safer place. Also to enhance communication, maintaining and improving mining equipment.

   One topic for discussion will be the sharing from the audience of best practices performed at the different job sites. There will be presentations given from some as well.

Kevin Hughes gave an account reporting 842.00 from dues paid. They have closed the checking account in Winnemucca and have set-up a new on in Elko.

Best Practices: Safety!

Audience member: Each Employee is required to go to an 8 hour class. In this class they talk about taking ownership in their own actions and reacting in a proper way helping your partner looking after each other becoming more of a family unit verses just in it for yourself working toward a common goal of target zero, which is no accidents/no fatalities. 

AM: Concurred with the other just to make sure everyone is on the same page not getting ahead of things if and when something does go wrong.

AM: Some extra steps to make sure work environment is safe you should test the hardness of the hammers, be careful with the screw jacks when you hit the retract lever to fast it can jerk and injure you. When operating vehicles be sure to wear your safety belt. Keep tires in good repair. If pressure is low persist until it is fixed.

AM: We have employees fill out observation cards. As an incentive to get them to fill out the cards they have quarterly gift giveaways. It is called the STAR program. Any hazards can be placed on a board then will be assigned to people to take action. With the concerns being placed on the board then everyone is aware of the problem.

AM: Formal training for Tire Techs is rarely available. MSHA has been a larger interest in the training for Tire Techs. The training is very basic but it is helpful.

AM: He spoke a little on road maintenance and pressure checks. It is very important to put into place air pressure checks.

David Settler does a presentation on using a camera to increase safety. Over the last three years they have started up a group called PDM. This group helps in many different areas. With this camera they can take pictures and see first hand the problem. This camera can take digital pictures as well as geothermal pictures to see heat. For instance if there is a wire that is to hot then it will much easer to see and rectify the problem with the geothermal picture. That way you can detect the problem early on and not have as big of an occurrence in the future. The camera that David was talking about specially is a Tuff Line Camera. Those particular cameras cost approximately $50,000.00. You receive for that price the software and 4 batteries. You can purchase a camera from $10,000.00 up but you get what you pay for he goes on to say.

Another feature that the camera has to offer is that there is a cursor so you can navigate and see what any of the temperatures are at any time. As far as training goes a company called Electro physics came out and did training. It consisted of a one day course about that camera.

Question: Why use the camera verses the laser lights?

David replied: We found that we have better success with the cameras.        

Back to best practices:

AM: We are the best tool for safety working together and watching out for one another, and if you see some one getting onto a potently dangerous situation stop them right then. Stop and take a few moments and think it over. Make the best choices to keep your environment safe. You must have respect for the machines but don’t be afraid of them. That’s were good training comes in it is very important.

AM: Cortez is buying new equipment they have been given the green light to go underground. They are purchasing 20 new trucks etc. The allocations from Michelin states they only get 60 tires, so they are going to start producing their own tires. The plan looks good on paper it seems that they will have paid for themselves in about 6 months out. They are also under new management from Australia, and they have also started with the new technology of the camera.

Geotemps, Inc. Presentation

Represented by Scott Hall and Jocelyn Cervantez 

  We are looking for people who are reliable and we try to be fair. We talk to different companies and try to determine the skill level you are looking for. One of the most important things that we look for is that the employee and the company match.

We have asked people what they are looking for when being placed in a company. Their response was not surprising they are looking for stability, comparative wages, good working conditions, and a secure place for their tools.

For skilled mechanics we have found that for a little incentive for the one who would have to relocate for an signing bonus or a relocation package to be offered to them nothing to big just $500.00 or $1000.00 helps to get a u-haul or deposit on a new place we have found that they really appreciate that.

We also do direct placements as well as temp to hire positions. Nevada has a 5% unemployment rate and 3% of that is considered unemployable. Of course the best candidates we find are the people who are already employed.

Question from the audience: Do you at Geotemps carry insurance or accepted liability for the temp. employees that you place?

Yes we do. They are on our payroll so yes we accepted liability.

Question from audience: What is the cost to the mining company for working with Geotemps to find people to place in the companies?

It is 49% on top of the hourly rate. If it is an underground job of course it is a little bit higher due to the danger of the position.

Question from audience: How far out do you go to place the people?

We can place all over the world.

Most of the people that we recruit are people wanting to get back into the mining industry. There are always employees migrating back and forth from one industry to the next, for instance from oil to mining.

We also have a question for you. Are you interested in students who are coming fresh out of school?

Yes we are but of course the only position we would be able to offer them is the entry level positions and once they are trained of course we could do more form there.

Scott: once you have trained an entry level person you farewell. We have also found good luck in placing military personnel. We find that placing them in the mining industry it works well because some of them have already worked on heavy machinery. They also seem to be really safety conscience, reliable. The only down fall is that they could be reactivated. 

Question from audience: Do you at Geotemps help people who are relocating find housing?

We can not typically with laborers but geologist, engineers, or highly skilled mechanics we will. It’s us going to extra mile to help.

Finishing up with Best Practices:

AM: I have found that tome management is very important. I plan out my whole month ahead of time. Of course I know time and  unforeseen circumstances happen but at least with a schedule and planning ahead when you notice something you can take care of it right a way. That helps with some of the safety issues too.

AM: On equipment: I have found with the large electric trucks getting away from people if you put a safety burm in the middle of the road verses going up an off ramp. The off ramps tend to cause a lot more damage to the trucks where the alternative brum only causes a minimal amount. Chain inspections are very important as well.

A Newmont Representative speaking on their new positive attitude program.

 This program was designed by a gentleman up in Canada by the name of Jim Burns especially for the mining industries, timber industries, and oil industries. Which in each crew there is an individual called the past champion. Each crew has a safety meeting at the start of every each shift. What they talk about is the shift they had the day before, if there was or is any safety issues and if they can be resolved and what can be done to make the work environment safe until the issues has been resolved. They will also pass that information on to the other crews. There is also a grading system. Each day they grade either an A, B, or C. A Being a good day no injures of fatalities, B being an issue or minor injury, C not a good day either a major injury or a fatality we try not to have any C day’s if at all possible.

Question from audience: What is the supervisor to employee ratio?

There are about 12 to 14 people on each crew.

Back to best practices:

AM: What we have found if you are using the 1000 gallon boiler and you may be far away from the shop we have found that we can call one of our oil vendors and they will come out to your location with one of their bigger p.m.’s and they will haul the oil for you, that way you don’t have to double handle it. They will also bring the load back out and refill the shovel for us. We have found this to be a big help and a great time saver.

AM: Newmont rep: We have been coming into the new millennium with expanding and such so we have had to do some hiring which means training of new hires. One third of our work force has expanded 65 people out of 190 so lots of new hire training. Manpower / Great Basin Community Collage have sent over a few people. We have had 7 students come to work out at Newmont. We have them work a Friday and Saturday 12 hour shifts. We also work with the collages to make sure they are attending their classes. We are happy to review their progress at the end of the year and perhaps a hiring interview at the same time.

We are working now to get a program in place so that we can have our policies, procedures and guidelines in writing that also meets regulations. We do also realize that knowledge and field training is a big deal. With all the new equipment we have been purchasing it gives a great opportunity for training. OEM instructors are hard to get. Finding people who really know the in industry that can communicate with people well are hard to find.

One of our concerns with manpower is looking at the people’s ages the average years for a tech is 16 to 19 years. Our tech’s make up about 30%, so our concern is retirement with in the next 3 years. Tech 6’s will be retiring in 5 years a landslide with in 8 years that’s most of them practically all gone. So we have to starting looking at the tech 5’s to replace the 6’s and the 4’s to replace the 5’s so on and so forth.

Question: The students that you hire do you pay them? Yes they are paid through the manpower payroll.

Where do you start them at? We rotate them about every 6 weeks these guys are not gofers they are not allowed to work alone either but we do want them to be productive.

Mike Simmons Newmont:

We go to work everyday and don’t say anything about putting on hard hats but we should. A couple of weeks ago one supervisor had a 4 wheeler accident and wasn’t wearing a helmet. Another employee was at home changing a blade in his saw. He didn’t unplug it before he went to change it and he cut his finger off. The moral is that we should be practice the same safety rules at home that we would at work.

Newmont rep.: They are not just bring in the same safety procedures used over the years they are also implementing new procedures, new software the works.

A lot of the people we are getting from manpower are people who want to move back home, young kids fresh out of tech school, a few military, but mostly guys that want a change out of the construction fields. I’m trying to steer towards ones who want to work long term. There is a lot of promotion in the mining industry.

We had about a week and a half ago some of the guy’s who hadn’t either worked shift work in a while of had never before worked shift work before and I think they just didn’t understand the responsibility, but on the way home one of them got into an accident with a Winnebago going about 70 miles an hour because he fell asleep. We would rather you guys stay over night them to try to travel many miles and fall asleep behind the wheel.

Cortez Rep: With new employees when we bring in entry level people for mechanic positions we start them out as oilier, then they become a mechanic’s assistant and go out on lube trucks then they can feel the piece of equipment look at it, grease the fittings. I don’t know who to talk to or how to get across to maintenance that the oilier are probably the one of the most important persons in that maintenance group. We don’t really have a proper training program for oilier. We had some consultants come in from Australia and they said we were doing it all wrong. Then he explained why he said that. He said,”they call in and say the hoist pump has gone out you send your best guy out there to fix it. The guy is a hero because he got the truck up and running.” Then the consultant looked at everyone in the room and said I would have fired him. Why you ask? Because he just changed the pump and didn’t try to figure out why it failed in the first place. The point is, is that we talk about training and mechanics but our focus is not in the correct prospective.

How do you guys train or handle a situation such as this dilemma with training?

Newmont rep: I have found over the years after designing all kind of different training programs that that there is no better way then just hands on with a veteran ready to show hands on h=what he has learned from his many years of experience.

In the expansion process we have a tendency to over do things and what it ends up coming down to is that when it comes time for the budget crunches the first thing to go id training programs because they say that it doesn’t pay off and when the mine is not producing all year around they say were is the return form all this training we have paid for. So what we need to do is understand that even when the mines are not producing like they think they should we still need to be training. The training process should never stop.

Question from audience: How do you hand out procedures to the mechanics before a job or do you just rely on the mechanic to go get the procedures themselves?

Comments from audience in response to question: A lot of it depends on the job some are pretty familiar with the different procedures, but in some cases with a new crew we will have some one print them out and put it with the job cards and if they have any questions they know to come and ask. Some have there own personal email accounts, mailboxes, and techs have a meeting every month.

Goodyear Presentation:

We have never had a problem with the 1ply tires until about 3months ago, now we are starting to see shoulder separation. The good thing is that I have never seen the read just come off. In this industry the tires take a lot of wear and tear of course it does depend on the area of the mine, the road conditions and air pressure. Spring creek and Cortez are the only ones running 2 piece tires. In the tire shortage it is always good to have options. It takes longer to change the tread then it does on a set of conventional tires it seems they have to fight with the tires every time to change them but that might just be a training issue.

Cool tool presentation:

We will just have a general discussion. When changing tire rods, steering cylinders and things of that nature (equipment for the cat) sometimes it is very difficult to get the nuts and bolts tight enough if you are using a standard socket wrench, they have come out with a design that is like the standard socket wrench but it gives you the proper torque on an air operated torque wrench. We are not sure of the name. We will find out and get that to you and the product numbers.

The Floor is open for discussion on anything:

AM: One thing that we ran into is with our upper hoist cylinder pin. It wasn’t moving in a very conventional method. Conventional method being, back on the back side of this place there is a hole where you can drive this pin out. The guy’s weren’t able to get the pin out so they welded nut in, then they attached a cable to it. They attempted to pull the pin out by applying force and heat. The weld broke and the cable came through the cab of the forklift with the operator in the cab. Fortunately his hand was the only thing that was injured. During the investigation there were several things to change:

1. To design a new pin one that is hollowed out
2. Had they attached another cable to the pull cord that would have allowed for the cable to drop straight down in the event that the weld had broken.
3. The guys continue to say we have done this a thousand times and it works just fine which leads me to believe that we are to confidante. Thus more of a need for field risk assessments.

Communication is he key to a safe working environment.

AM: An incident that we had about 8 months ago, we were changing ropes on a shovel they were using a forklift to pull. When MSHA did the investigation on that they said we were not in compliance with procedure because forklifts are not rated for pulling anything they are rated to lift.

Question to audience: Has anybody had a problem with seatbelts in the cat? Or them not buckling down or just not fitting correctly?

AM: We have eliminated the seat belts out of the cat. When you have some guys 150 pounds and others 400 pounds the same belt is not going to fit everybody. And when you start messing with the manufactures specs then you have to assume liability.

AM: The pressure in the release brakes is key. You have to make sure that the Electric hydraulic is in range. The calibration goes right along with that for then to work correctly they have to be in range.

There is a rumor going around that the 134a are going to be obsolete. A few others in the room have heard the same thing. They are going to look into what would be a good replacement if that is true.

AM: Another issue is that of the vendors. What has been happening is that the vendors will bring products (solvents what have you) on the site with no labels and they products are not being put into inventory. So if they haven’t been put into inventory then we don’t know what we have on site and we can’t supply a MSDS for it. What happens is if it is not properly labels and it is left on site and MSHA sees it we will be issues a citation.

The next meeting time and dates:

The meetings are scheduled for the second Wednesday and Thursday of March, July, and November. Elko March 1st & 2nd, Winnemucca July 12^th & 13^th, Reno November 8^th, 9^th, 10^th.