A message from Nick Raffan, October '23

Welcome back to another edition of The Fix.  

I am recently back from a site visit to Port Hedland with our Board, where we took them through our workshop and to visit our site teams. It was great to see firsthand how impressed they were with our growth in the region and the diversity and quality of the work we deliver, which is a true testament to our team.  

This month, I was pleased to come together with leaders from across the business at our M&IS Leadership Conference. These forums are always a good opportunity to connect with and learn from other business units and to understand what is happening across the division. We had the opportunity to share some innovative ideas from our region and received great feedback. It’s a good reminder that all ideas, both big and small, can add a lot of value to not only to our team, but to the wider business. Be sure to continue to log your ideas and innovations in MProve or by speaking to your Supervisor. 

There has been a lot of good work happening out in operations and I thought we could take a quick look at what our teams have been up to.  

The team at the Port have been busy, not only executing record volumes of work, but also juggling a diverse work portfolio and customer pool. This certainly brings some unique challenges, but the team are doing a great job navigating them.  

Over to East Pilbara, the team are working together to execute a diverse range of projects across a large geographic spread. They recently completed a major shutdown at BHP Whaleback and are also close to finishing up projects at Rio Tinto Hopes Downs 1 and FMG Flying Fish.  

Across to the team in Tom Price, they have done an excellent job in wrapping up some large projects and are progressing well with a variety of works, including executing gravity tower upgrades (GTU’s). I congratulate the team on taking out the M&IS Most Improved Safety Performance award at this year’s conference. Well done to everyone involved. 

Our team in Karratha have continued to progress nicely in the projects space, with the GTU towers and Hawser Rail project, as well as executing ongoing maintenance works at Dampier and Cape Lambert. Our new facility at Gap Ridge is edging closer to completion, with the team’s relocation to their new base expected next year.  

From a safety perspective, we have been leading the division in Fatal Risk Control. Embracing the red initiative, in the month of August we impressively hit 275 interactions with 32% of those identifying gaps and action being taken. Our level five near-miss a few months ago drives home the importance of ensuring we continue to keep these numbers high. A special shoutout to Jacinta Chamberlian, Steve Cunnold, Rob Kean, Brandon Dale and Seamus O’Connell, for their continuous and proactive approach to identifying risks and finding the safe way. 

Before I close out this update, I would like to congratulate our own Stormy Williams on winning the Delivering the Safe Way in Action divisional award. You can read about how he demonstrated our safe way behaviours to help a teammate in need, which saw him win the award here.  

Thanks all for your hard work over the last few months and I encourage you to remain focused so we can finish out the year strong.  

Nick Raffan