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The De Beers Canada Exploration team has established a remarkable record of safety excellence, surpassing six years worked without a lost time injury.

This achievement came despite the fact that the team members often work in remote and inhospitable terrain, dealing with swamps, heavy brush and sometimes packing heavy equipment as they undertake geological mapping, claim staking, sediment sampling, bulk sampling, ground and airborne geophysics, core drilling and sample processing.

“The exploration team has a strong safety culture,” said Julie Kong, Senior Exploration Manager. “Through Visible Felt Leadership, we instill this culture to our extended ‘family’ during our projects. It is important that everyone returns safely at the end of the day.”

Communication is essential to ensuring the team is able to deal with unexpected and sometimes sudden changes to working conditions, including poor weather, wildlife encounters, hazardous and unpredictable terrain, forcing them to make decisions on the fly.

“Effective and timely communication during morning toolbox talks, consistency of the project leads to promote Safety, Health and Environmental awareness, managers actively participating with each team member in the office and field, pre-field training workshops and establishing a close relationship with our contractors are a few of the keys to our success,” said John Delgaty, Project Manager.

Learning from incidents is also important. At the end of each project surveys are sent to project team members inviting them to rate the safety performance of the project and to provide suggestions for improvement.

Part of the team’s success can also be attributed to an active effort to identify and address hazards (near hits) using the SLAM (Stop, Look, Assess, Manage) process adopted by all Anglo American operations. Since the last LTI in 2010, Near Hit Reporting has increased five-fold - with 1,199 Near Hits reported from 2010-2016.

The past year has seen a number of safety milestones across De Beers Canada, including Victor Mine receiving the national J.T. Ryan Award for safety in May, Gahcho Kué Mine being recognized by the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce Workplace Health and Safety Award on October 14, and Snap Lake Mine achieving one year without an LTI in December