Driving efficiency and resilience in the aggregates industry

“Both quarries and other types of aggregates facilities are dangerous places,” says Richard Graham, Industry Sector Manager for Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) and heavy manufacturing at RS. “Imagine the size and scale. You’re working out in the elements, with stockpiles of material, pools of water and large machinery. There could be a 15-foot tyre on an earth mover.”

As this observation indicates, the health and safety challenges facing the aggregates industry are huge. This article considers the hazards involved before exploring how strategic partnerships can help businesses to mitigate risk and make working conditions safer.

Among the health and safety professionals that responded to the RS Health and Safety Industry Report, 84 per cent are confident that their organisation is capable of protecting employees. Not all industries, however, come with the same level of risk.

Although aggregate operations can be a danger to the public, with water-related incidents being a particular problem, it is workers who are most at risk with hazards that range from immediate injuries to longer-term health issues. Some of the biggest threats relate to vehicles and machinery but there are also other sources of risk including noise levels, snake bites and stagnant water that can harbour Legionella, a type of bacteria that causes the potentially fatal form of pneumonia Legionnaires’ disease.

Given the level of danger and range of threats, it is unsurprising that regulator the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has a whole section of materials dedicated to quarries. Industry bodies such as the Quarries National Joint Advisory Committee (QNJAC) likewise provide extensive health and safety guidance, including advice on how to minimise risk when undertaking the most hazardous aspects of extraction such as blasting rock with explosives.

That said, guidance is only robust if it is consistently implemented. As QJNAC comments, “Risk assessment is a legal requirement and it is unlikely that any quarrying companies have failed to put this in place. However, the effectiveness, currency, visibility and awareness may vary considerably.

“People may be tempted to deviate from complex or time-consuming actions, especially when approaching the end of a shift or under pressure from multiple jobs.”

Reducing the pressure on workers can, as the QJNAC statement suggests, help to reduce health and safety risks by making it less likely that they will cut corners or ignore procedures.

Unfortunately, the situation on the ground is often far from ideal in this sense. On the contrary, engineering teams in this sector are often overstretched. They’re covering multiple sites with little time to plan ahead, while also bearing responsibility for ageing equipment with limited visibility of what’s about to fail or what is in stock and available for use in repairs. They’re only ordering parts when assets break, increasing cost, delays and disruption even further.

There are, however, cost-effective measures that aggregate businesses can introduce to turn the tide and move in the opposite direction. A strategic partnership, for instance, can provide access to value-added services and solutions that reduce downtime by ensuring vital parts are always on hand and free up time and resources to be deployed elsewhere.

Graham highlights vendor-managed inventory service RS ScanStock® as an example. “Rather than allocating your engineering resources to managing stock and inventory, RS is managing that,” he explains. “We’re making those budgets go further, which a lot of engineering managers are asking us to do.

“We’re also allowing engineers to get back to their core role. We’re giving them back time in their day to go and look after the assets knowing that the products they need will be in the right place at the right time.”

More time for their core role means less temptation to forego health and safety provisions. It brings other business benefits too, adds Graham: “It’s about redeploying that talented, and expensive, engineering resource to what they’re great at and what they should be doing.” Who doesn’t want that?