Safety performance at Olympic Dam improved in 2004, with a serious injury frequency rate of 10.6 compared with 13.3 in 2003, a 19% improvement. We recorded 18 lost time injuries, which is an increase on the 16 lost time injuries recorded in 2003. We recorded 35 medically treated injuries in 2004, an improvement on the 43 medically treated injuries recorded in 2003.

Definitions
LTIFR	Lost-time injury frequency rate - the number of lost-time injuries per million hours worked.
MTIFR	Medically-treated injury frequency rate - the number of medically-treated injuries per million hours worked.

Safety Management

WMC's 'Take Time, Take Charge - The Difference' program is a company-wide experiential training program that aims to emotionally engage our workforce to pursue injury-free and incident-free operations. At Olympic Dam, this program has been rolled out to supervisors and to some workgroups at technician level. General feedback from this training has been very encouraging with great participant support. Over the next year, we aim to roll it out to all employees.

We encourage safety improvements at Olympic Dam by focussing on positive recognition for safety initiatives and safety-conscious behaviour. In 2004, the processing area launched the Positively Safe Processing program, which recognises positive safety behaviour. During meetings, individuals share any positive safety initiatives they have been involved in. As a further reinforcement, these stories are written up in the Positively Safe Processing fortnightly newsletter, to assist us in reinforcing the positive behaviours and more formally recognise the positive actions.

Crisis and Emergency

Olympic Dam has an Emergency Management Plan outlining a three-tiered management structure, with Emergency Response Teams and Emergency Management Teams at sites and a Crisis Management Team in the Corporate office.

The Emergency Management Team provides technical, logistical and services support to the Emergency Response Teams. Olympic Dam has 24 full-time Emergency Response Officers, covering four shifts over 24 hours. Training is reviewed annually and covers activities such as fire-fighting, rescue at heights, emergency response, chemical hazards and Certificate 4 medical training.

The mine also has a separate Underground Mine Rescue Team, staffed by volunteers with strong technical knowledge of the underground mine.

The site runs two major emergency response scenarios per year. This year a supplementary major emergency exercise was run for the Olympic Dam airstrip. This was conducted under Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) regulations and included all Olympic Dam and local emergency services organisations.

The Olympic Dam Emergency Response Officers give advice and support to the Roxby Downs Disaster Committee, which meets four times per year.

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