Thursday, 15th July, 2010
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Students at Western Australia’s Central TAFE have put their Mining and Resource Processing studies to use with the help of our Red Hill and Byford quarries.
Ten students visited both quarries to gain a hands-on understanding of the end-to-end quarry process.
The initiative was developed jointly by Quarry Managers, John Guthrie and Cliff Kelly, with Charles Dornan; Mining and Geoscience lecturer at Central TAFE and Claudia Baker; Mineral Processing Lecturer.
At the Byford quarry, students used the quarry’s screens, jaw crushers, gyratory crushers and apron feeders to understand how quarry materials are produced.
“We set up an old conveyor, complete with its guarding, v-belt and pulleys. That allowed each student to complete critical procedures including a change-out of the v-belts and the tag-out/lock-out procedure, while also making sure they had the right PPE,” says John Guthrie.
“As a result, they not only left with a really good understanding of how our quarry production works, but also the safety precautions involved.”
Cliff provided the students with an educational tour through Red Hill’s pit, control room, screen-house, crushing operation and laboratory, with each student also leaving with aggregate samples.
“It’s absolutely imperative for the TAFE course that the students have access to a real working place. From our point of view, both Cliff and John have been excellent in their approach and amazingly proactive to train the students so they’ll be off and running by the time they get a job,” says Charles Dornan.
“Everyone here at the TAFE thinks Hanson is a great corporate citizen and certainly doing their fair share to assist the industry,” he adds. Claudia has already arranged for the next round of Mining and Resource Processing students to visit the quarries in Semester Two.
“Since each visit was treated as an assessment, it was great to see the students feel so comfortable asking John and Cliff questions about any of the aggregate processes. They were extremely accommodating and it will be excellent to see next semester’s students get the same benefit out of the hands-on study,” Claudia adds.