The mining and lifting industries have much in common. Both sectors operate heavy-duty machinery, have a high focus on safety and face challenges when it comes to attracting, recruiting and training their workforces.
Global Lifting Awareness Day (GLAD), which takes place on 12 June, is an opportunity for manufacturers, suppliers and end users of lifting equipment (including miners) to recognise the sector and share material that supports safe and high-quality load lifting.
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GLAD, now in its fifth year, is led by the Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA), a trade association for the lifting industry. With around 1,200 members, the LEEA offers a quality assurance mark for its member companies as well as ongoing compliance support.
The body also produces around 20 guidance documents a year, including those that cover the equipment used in the mining community.
Ahead of GLAD, Mining Technology spoke to Ross Moloney, CEO of the LEEA, about current industry trends, the skills shortage facing the lifting sector and how mining companies can ensure they are meeting the latest industry standards.
Caroline Peachey: Tell us about GLAD. Why is the LEEA looking to raise awareness of the lifting sector across a range of different industries?
Ross Moloney: The lifting industry is not unique in that one of the main challenges that our members face now is a concern around recruitment for the future workforce.
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By GlobalDataTraditionally – and for as long as I have been involved in skills and development – the whole engineering sector has been concerned around where we are going to get tomorrow’s engineers from.
I think that also speaks to the mining industry. These industries are powerhouses of the western economy but are often looked at as ‘for other people’s children’.
So, two messages will underpin GLAD. It is Global Lifting Awareness Day, so we are looking to make people aware of the wonderful [employment] opportunities within the industry – but, we are also looking to remind customers that it matters how you manage risk when it comes to lifting.
We make the argument that when you are buying [lifting equipment], make sure you are buying from a trusted partner and make sure that you are getting your equipment checked by somebody who is trained and competent.
Caroline Peachey: Can you give an overview of the current state of the lifting industry, with a focus on mining?
Ross Moloney: I live in Nottinghamshire in England, so I am surrounded by the heritage and the history of what the mining industry used to look like. Lifting has always been part of the mining community, but mining itself is an ever–changing, ever–growing and ever more technically reliant industry. We are not just talking about getting fossil fuels out of the earth anymore, we are talking about rare minerals and rare metals. So, the mining industry is fundamentally changing from what it was 50 years ago where I live.
This speaks to the partnership between the mining industry and the lifting industry, too. From an outsider’s perspective, you can look at both industries and think that they are old fashioned, and that lifting is about grease and heft. However, both industries are on a parallel journey of technological innovation.
There are more and more inclement territories – places where it might not be possible to bring in and leave heavy equipment – and we know that there are geopolitical issues that both of our industries work in.
When we think of the core places that mining happens, there is a huge mining effort and lifting equipment in Western Australia (WA). The LEEA has members in Perth and the wider WA region that service the mining community out there, but LEEA members are also serving [oil and gas] exploration in the Middle East and in South East Asia; I have a membership hotspot in Aberdeen, so the North Sea is a really important place.
Caroline Peachey: What are the main challenges facing the industry and how are they being addressed?
Ross Moloney: I think the number one challenge that we all face in any engineering industry is the concern about ‘a race to the bottom’. We are in such tight financial times; it is understandable that all businesses are looking at ways by which they can cut costs and increase profit margin.
We are effectively a safety industry. So, there is always a concern that best practice and safe practice can come under pressure. That is a concern shared when I speak to other chief executive officers and trade associations. That is not just a lifting or a mining issue – it is an engineering issue.
Engineering is under pressure not just because of the rising cost of living, but [due to] the increasing price of raw materials, tariffs and growing logistics costs. We in the engineering world are really feeling the pressures of price increases.
So, the number one challenge that we are facing is how do LEEA members maintain this position of market superiority in terms of quality but continue to make this argument when there is definitely a race to the bottom?
We are an association that believes it is our job to make the argument that while you might be looking at cutting [costs], please don’t cut your attitude towards safety.
Caroline Peachey: What trends are we seeing in the lifting sector in terms of improving safety and technological innovation. What benefits can these bring to operators?
Ross Moloney: The LEEA’s vision is to eliminate accident, injury and fatality. We know that we work in risky industries; but risky doesn‘t mean it has to be dangerous. Again, in common with the mining industry, we have seen significant trends in awareness of and engagement with risk.
One trend that we have noticed is that product/machinery is failing less because of standardisation and the over-engineering of solutions. There are multiple factors being built into products now, so that if one little bit failed there would be other catches that would make sure that the product is safe.
Another trend that we are noticing globally – and is particularly of relevance to the mining community in Australia – is that we must be careful that we do not move away from expecting truly competent people to be in their roles.
To be a truly competent professional working in a high-risk and therefore dangerous environment, the trend that we are fighting against is the idea [of what] is enough training. We believe in ongoing life-long training as the way by which you can stay competent, but there is a base level that you must get to before you should be trusted anywhere near lifting equipment.
Caroline Peachey: Skills is the focus of GLAD this year. Would you say the lifting industry has a skills shortage or a recruitment challenge?
Ross Moloney: The LEEA has recently conducted what we believe to have been the biggest-ever study of skills recruitment issues in our industry, with nearly 400 respondents globally. On GLAD, my colleague and I are going to be launching a report into the state of the lifting industry. We will highlight the issues, the challenges and some of the solutions that we believe will take our industry forward.
Just to give you a teaser, in the report we are highlighting the average age of the workforce, the challenges and the skills gaps but also the skills shortages. How hard is the training, so that a person in a role is fully qualified? We are also talking about where our workforce comes from, and where else we might look at attracting them from.
The LEEA and myself believe that the engineering industries really must do better at creating career pathways, otherwise we are forever just going to be catching one or two people. What we really want is cohorts of 10–20 coming from colleges or local environments.
We must win hearts, but we must also build the road so that people can come into the industry and stay in the industry.
Caroline Peachey: How does the LEEA support efforts to raise awareness or to improve the safety of the lifting sector?
Ross Moloney: If you are a member, we communicate with you at least monthly – and we have a very open-door policy where we take questions, comments, phone calls, etc. We really believe that we are a knowledge management association.
We also believe that we have a duty of care for non-members. On LinkedIn we share links to documents and we post news that is happening in the industry. If you go onto the LEEA website, you will also find that whilst some documents are member only, many of our documents are available for the industry.
We see ourselves as a support service to the mining community. Traditionally we have concentrated on supporting the manufacturers, the distributors or the examiners of lifting equipment. In September this year, we are going to be launching a new grade of membership aimed specifically at users of lifting equipment and we are calling it our safe user grade.
We are promising that we will be a partner that will vastly reduce the risk of – and the reality of – equipment failing and accidents, because we are going to help people understand the things that they must be doing when it comes to buying, caring for and using lifting equipment.
Register today for a webinar to mark GLAD…
To mark Global Lifting Awareness Day on 12 June, Ross Moloney and Matt Barber, LEEA director of membership, will host a webinar launching a report that highlights the most pressing issues related to skills shortages, skills gaps and recruitment across the lifting sector. Register here.
