‘Safequarry’ boost from tax monies

SAFEQUARRY.com has received a welcome boost from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund after the Quarry Products Association’s ‘lead partner’ application to the Minerals Industry Sustainable Technology (MIST) Programme received unconditional approval by its independent evaluation panel, which met on 16 April 2007.

In addition to support from a raft of QPA member companies, as well as the BAA and EPIC, the project application (one of 34 received by MIST) benefited from the signature of Dr Phil Smith, Principal Inspector for the HSE’s Metals and Minerals Section.

The specific objectives of the 10-month, £60,000 project are to enhance the usefulness and user-friendliness of the website by:

1. Refining and simplifying the base pages to encourage greater voluntary access by industry personnel at quarry operator and supervisory level, many of whom have little or no experience of computer databases, thus significantly widening the range of users of the site.
2. Creating additional free tool-box talks that address key issues not already covered by the resources available on the site.
3. Developing an online facility for generating reports of personal activity/access to Safequarry.com as a valuable record of Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
4. Encouraging greater sharing of best practice, particularly by smaller companies, by creating the facility to submit information electronically.
5. Encouraging greater utilization of the ability to share incident alerts across the industry.
6. Continuing to build Safequarry.com as the premier portal for sharing health and safety knowledge for companies of all sizes involved in quarrying and products derived therefrom.

Martin Isles, the QPA’s director of health and safety, says the ultimate aim of the project is to ramp up the contribution of the website (www.Safequarry.com) to the achievement of the overarching target of zero incidents.