SAFETY SHARE: With SME’s emphasis on health and safety in the mining industry, one of my goals this year is to encourage everyone in SME to begin all of their meetings — whether a committee meeting, local section meeting, board meeting or of course, at their work place — with a safety share as the first agenda item. I also recommend and encourage everyone to start his or her day with a personal safety share.
For example, before you get in your vehicle, walk around it, be aware of your surroundings and make sure there is nothing obstructing the vehicle. Especially anytime you are leaving a parking place or the driveway, make sure there is nobody standing behind you. Some of us drive big pickup trucks or SUVs, and many times it is difficult to see what is behind you. Unfortunately, we have heard about many accidents where someone has backed up and run over someone, which is especially heartbreaking when it’s a child or a loved one. So in any setting, be aware of your surroundings.
SME has always had very strong health and safety programs that worked cooperatively across our divisions where there was commonality. After listening to the proposals for a new Health & Safety (H&S) Division, the consensus of the SME board was that it was important to elevate the prominence of health and safety awareness in our society. Approval of the creation of the Health & Safety Division within SME stresses the importance the industry places on health and safety. It is also designed to better coordinate programming and provides more opportunities for special programs across the country. The new division provides a home for health and safety professionals who might work across sectors. One goal is to attract other health and safety professionals into SME as members. One of my goals is to make sure this initiative is continued and properly implemented.
There were a lot of questions from our other divisions about how this would be implemented and concerns that the existing division membership and programming could be watered down, not properly coordinated, be redundant and conflict with other sessions. The Health & Safety Division is in the process of being organized and is creating programming that should not impact the efforts of any other SME division. The H & S Division will work with, and support, all SME divisions in their health and safety programming efforts for the greatest benefit to the SME membership. It is my intent to make sure the implementation builds on the strength of SME’s existing divisions and programs.
Raising awareness of health and safety is one reason that I have asked all SME meetings start with safety shares. I have asked the new H&S Division leadership to compile a list of appropriate safety shares that can be used in any of our meetings and to keep it continually updated. In fact, I encourage all members to send in your best safety shares that can be posted on the SME website. I intend to start all of my articles with a share, so send ideas in and I will pick one each month. Bill Gleason (gleason@smenet.org) is the SME staff liaison for the H&S Division.
SME had a great annual meeting in Denver, CO in February. I want to thank John Marsden for his leadership and vision during his term as SME president. I am honored to serve as the 2015 president of SME. John is turning over the presidency after a very successful and productive year. John has been an excellent advocate and voice for SME and he has done a fantastic job promoting our interests in the United States and around the world.
It has been my pleasure and honor to work with John during my year “in training.” We have had some good times and good discussions. We will all remember the laser tag outing at the midyear meeting in Phoenix where John brought in ringers, his two sons who showed up the rest of us. At past president George Luxbacher’s suggestion, we are going to one up John when the midyear meeting comes to the Bluegrass state in September — we are going to be shooting with real guns. (Sporting clay shooting after the meetings are over for those who want to participate.)
I’m coming into the presidency at a very strong point and, hopefully, I can help that trend continue. I feel that SME has become the “go to” group for mining and is recognized as the place to go for information. In fact, SME’s longterm vision is “to be the premier resource and advocate for the mining community we serve” and our mission is “SME serves professionals in the mining community and supports the advancement of the industry.”
Looking forward, SME’s Board approved an update of the SME Strategic Plan. As part of that process, a survey of members was taken. The two things that were of greatest concern to our members was the public perception of mining and a perceived disconnect between local sections and SME. Those are not really new issues. They were of concern to members in the 1970s, as evidenced by columns I read in issues of Mining Engineering from that decade. My first real interest in SME came about through my frustration with those negative public perceptions. Not long after I became an SME member, I became involved with the Government, Education, Mining (GEM) Committee to try and address that concern.
Many times we find ourselves preaching to the choir. I want to challenge members to preach to the public. And by preach, I mean educate with facts. SME has developed abundant resources to help with this endeavor. So, how do you change public perceptions of mining? My goal is to have SME focus more on this issue and to develop a more unified strategy, collaborating with other stakeholders in all sectors of the mining industry to more effectively use the tools that we already have in place. We want to study and figure out how we can make a difference instead of just throwing money at it. SME has a lot of programs and tools that people can use. For example, the Mining in Society merit badge that we were able to get reinstated with the Boy Scouts is one that will make a huge difference in public perceptions and we want to build on that success.
I want to enlist our members to be ambassadors for mining. We will not change everyone’s opinion, but we need to change the opinions of people who are only hearing one side of the issues. Talk to friends, neighbors, relatives and enlist your coworkers to do the same. Don’t be afraid to write a commentary or letter to the editor or participate in constructive community debates. I have found that reasonable people will listen. We just have to give them another voice to listen to.
Local sections are important to me and to SME. To help identify ways to provide more value to members of local sections, I have appointed Tim Arnold, 2016 SME president-elect to lead an ad hoc committee to see how SME can better serve its members in the local sections. We are in the process of organizing that committee and will be soliciting members to join the committee to share their ideas and experience. Local sections can be an important part in combating the public perception problem.
I also want to make sure we continue the important initiatives that are ongoing — implementation of the Ph.D. Fellowships and Career Grants program that the Education Sustainability Committee proposed and the SME board approved, raising the recognition of health and safety in SME with the new Health & Safety Division and continuing the discussion on mining and sustainability.
Jessica Kogel, 2014 SME president, was very involved with mining and sustainability. Besides SME’s Sustainability Committee efforts, Jessica was involved in several initiatives to reach out to nongovernmental organizations to find some common ground and show that we really are mining for sustainability and to find ways that we can work together. That’s also something that I want to make sure that SME continues. Jessica is taking over the efforts that Nikil Trivedi has ably led with the World Federation of Engineering’s Task Force for Sustainable Mining.
Other past initiatives that already have significant success and momentum are SME’s global outreach and our social media engagement. SME is truly an international society, and we have significant potential for growth in other countries as evidenced by our success in Peru in 2014. One of our strengths internationally is OneMine.org. OneMine.org is the attraction for international members and cooperative efforts with other societies.
SME will be rolling out a redesigned website in the next few months and a new association management system that will be much more user friendly. I want to encourage our local sections and members to utilize the social media to better communicate with each other. All of these initiatives and efforts tie together and, in the end, I feel will lead to improving the overall public perception of mining. Local sections play an important role in the success of all of these initiatives.
It is time for everyone to begin thinking about nominations for SME leadership. Our society has a long history of service from its members. Many people have told me they are interested in serving in their division leadership and the many important committees that SME has. Please review the list on the website and submit your interests. Also important is our local section leadership. There are sections out there whose information at SME headquarters and on the website is out of date. Please take some time to review and send those updates in. Angie Grace is SME’s Local Section Coordinator (grace@smenet.org).
I will continue to provide updates on these initiatives and other activities in the Society. Until next month, stay safe out there.
Photo taken during a 2014 coal conference in Evansville, Indiana. We placed an exhibit to showcase the SME technical briefing papers to help spread the word about their existence and uses.
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