Quarry industry must regain safety standards

Health and Safety Executive Northern Ireland calls on industry to redouble its efforts on safety
 
THE Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI) is calling on the quarry industry to redouble its efforts to reduce workplace fatalities. The call comes after the industry saw a nine-year period free from workplace fatalities come to an end with two deaths in March 2015.

To assist in rebuilding the industry’s safety record, HSENI has this week been running a series of targeted quarry workshops, hosted by various quarrying companies across Northern Ireland, with a focus on two high-risk areas – quarry face management and the use of explosives.

Urging the industry to get behind the initiative, Ken Logan, who heads up the extractive industries team at HSENI, said: ‘We recognize the efforts by our partners in industry to raise safety standards. However, recent tragedies underline that more work needs to be done and HSENI will be making the quarry industry one of its priority areas for this year and beyond. By working together we can move towards regaining the good safety standards across the industry.’

Supporting the training initiative, Gordon Best, director of the Quarry Products Association Northern Ireland (QPANI), said: ‘Health and safety is a key priority for the quarry industry and we welcome this opportunity to continue our work with HSENI to improve standards and to re-establish our excellent safety record.’

The HSENI is planning to run another series of workshops in the autumn to target quarry vehicle safety, and in the coming weeks a new range of safety leaflets will be available for download from the mining and quarrying section of the HSENI website.