A message from Paul Francis, May '23

Welcome to our May edition of The Pipeline. I can hardly believe we are about to hit the mid-year mark – it feels like just yesterday we were wishing each other a happy New Year.

Before we dive into the exciting activities happening across our regions, I’d like to start this update on a more serious note. Disappointingly, we have been hurting too many people recently, resulting in a poor safety performance where our recordable injuries have more than doubled since late last year. We have had a series of incidents across all our operational areas, mostly relating to line of fire incidents, the main issue being interactions with tooling and equipment, resulting in serious hand and finger injuries.

I urge you to be extra diligent in this space. Before starting a task, stop and be mindful. Ensure you are risk assessing before beginning. Our HSE and leadership team will be reviewing each of the events thoroughly to better understand what happened. We will also be conducting research and feedback via surveys and site visits. This information will then be used in a formal plan that we will roll out across our business.

Aligned to this, we have already held a HSE forum, bringing together leaders from across all of our operations to discuss these recent issues and work through solutions. There was good conversation in the room, and I believe there is a lot of value in collaboration from across our operations. Check out a photo of our leaders following the event.

Now to round out on a lighter note, we have had a lot of good activity from across our regions as always. In this edition, we touch on the great ideas that have been put forward by our people in MProve. Keep up the good work in this space, small ideas can often make the biggest impact. If you want to know more about how you can submit ideas, please reach out to your supervisor.

Lastly, in the weeks ahead we will be recognising and celebrating reconciliation and NAIDOC week. I encourage you to educate yourself and get involved in these activities in your area. It is important we engage with these initiatives as a part of our RAP (Reconciliation Action Plan) commitment.

Stay safe, look after yourself and others.

Paul Francis.