Caroline Peachey
8 min read
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.
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.
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.
Traditionally – 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.
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.
