CASE STUDY

Kwame Commander is the Drill & Blast Superintendent of a large scale mine in Ghana. His job involves managing the drill and blast operations, SHE procedures, production, standards and ensuring communication between management and the employees in the department. It is a very exhausting job as he is required to blast a tonnage of over 120,000 a day to feed the fourteen hungry excavators of the mine. In achieving this, Kwame has to plan his day 24 hours earlier.

There are one hundred and forty five employees under his fold, he manages four MMU trucks, one stemming loading equipment and has to ensure enough stemming material is crushed for his operations. In addition to this he attends a safety meeting every day at 6am and a mine production meeting at 9am all lasting for 30mins. During the afternoon times, he attends a management meeting usually between the hours of 14h00GMT and 15h00GMT.

It is a Thursday and Kwame wakes up, prays and goes about his usual morning exercise routine. Suddenly, he hears a large thunder bolt Rains! Kwame shouted at the top of his voice. His cell phone rings and it was the night shift supervisor. The rains had washed debris and sand into all the blast holes that had been drilled by the night shift employees. Not a single drill hole was standing.

As required Kwame has to rush to the scene, get first-hand information before reporting to the Mine Manager by 7am. In the rush of getting out of his house, he stumbles and falls face down. It was a minor laceration on his forehead. Managing to get up on his feet, he enters his car and drove straight to work. At the access gate, Kwame forgot to pick his ID card that would enable him enter the mine. He was directed back home (which was 15 minutes drive from the mine) for his ID card. He manages to get back onto the mine after about 30 minutes.

Part 1 - Planning

Kwame took pictures of the condemned drilled holes, sent them to the Mine Manager as per standard operating procedure. A day earlier to this, there had been a management meeting and high grade ore was required to be supplied to the processing plant. This ore was yet to be blasted and Kwame was tasked to deliver the blast at 10 am the next day (Thursday).

The Mine Manager would not accept that the blast holes had been destroyed by the rains. As such Kwame summoned all his supervisors and tasked them to move all 14 drill rigs to the shot within 30mins and ensure the blast holes are ready within two hours. The nearest drill rigs were 1km away and the rest about 3km 4km away. Two low-beds were arranged immediately to transport the nearest drill rigs to the shot. Three dump trucks were also dispatched to ferry the rest of the drill rigs which were 3km away. Within 20mins, 90% of the drill rigs had been moved to the shot and re-drilling was in earnest. Comment!