The Importance of Maintenance in Mining Operations

ABC Co. Ltd. Is an international firm located in Australia yet majorly operating in India. Currently, ABC is India’s leading copper mining firm. However, there are a lot of cases involving management maintenance that hinder its operation. This case is a practical study similar to other global organizations facing the same management issues. In this activity, we intend to use the intended sustainability policy to ensure that management maintenance issues are alleviated (Management, 2017).

In case a general process of maintenance is bound to take place within the organization, there is a fifty-five percent chance that the cumulative expenditure for all operations will be expensive. On the contrary, maintenance is important since it would help the organization realize its goals (Kader, 2017).

Like any other global organization, ABC Corporation is part of the world’s Agenda 2030. This agenda is all about Sustainable Development as well as the goals associated with the agenda. This agenda; as was initiated by the UN is all about environmental sustainability and economic development action plan. Since ABC is a well-established mining company, it is the prayer of the firm that significant human, physical, technological, and financial resources are mobilized to attain the sustainable development goals. With respect to the fact that mining activity is a global industry, ABC Corporation is charged with managing the sector to ensure that sustainable global economic growth is achieved (Cuozzo, Et al., 2017). Doing so would mean that jobs would be created, innovation would be spurred, and infrastructural investment and development would be promoted. The organization is also in a position of mapping linkages between mining and sustainable development goals. Such has to be achieved by incorporating sustainable development goals that are relevant to the operations of the organization. ABC Corporation will ensure that new ideas are employed in the mining environment (Laihonen, Lönnqvist and Metsälä, 2015).

Regarding sources of information on sustainability management development and implementation, our main concern would be relevant legislations and best practices. One of such sources is Australia’s environmental management procedure and policy (Mifflin, 2017). According to this document, the principles of environmental sustainability include:

1. Enhancement and facilitation of process of decision making by seeking feedback, opinions, and participation from all stakeholders on issues of environmental management.
2. Encouraging and promoting environmental responsibility and awareness among all community members.
3. Ensuring continuous improvement of environmental performance by addressing or identifying environmental risks.
4. Ensuring decision making processes to integrate short and long-term environmental, economic, equity and social considerations effectively.
5. Encouraging and offering trainings on environmental and sustainable research activities. Also promoting external awareness through the support of projects which seek solutions to environmental issues to improve global environment sustainability.

This activity also uses the USQ’s approach. This approach is structured around a three tier plan and practice comprising of the organization’s overall policy for environmental management (Abbott, 2006). The levels are:

1. Level One:this level is also referred to as ‘due diligence.’ It is this level that USQ ensures that it complies with all legislations pertaining to environmental sustainability. Due diligence principles are always set out during recruitment processes with regards to the Australian Government Environmental Protection Agency. It is, therefore, the obligation of USQ to operate in a manner that fulfills its statutory obligations. The same approach will ensure that ABC has a control management system in place to protect individuals and assets (McArthur, 2010).
2. Level Two:This level is also known as ‘beyond compliance.’ It is where USQ starts employing the corporate capacity to ensure environmental performance improve beyond compliance with the law of India and Australia. This is the level where USQ introduces initiatives that involve:
3. Long term assets design and maintenance
4. Procurement of services and goods
5. Level Three:this level is also known as ‘beyond USQ.’ In this case, the USQ develops the knowledge to be employed by the stakeholders. The knowledge regards improving environmental outcomes for the community (Obstfeld and Rogoff, 1996).

The principles of due diligence includes:

1. Pollution prevention system development
2. Pollution prevention system establishment
3. Pollution prevention system operation
4. Those with ultimate responsibility must receive reports
5. Those with the ultimate responsibility must know all environmental standards
6. Those with the ultimate responsibility must know all environmental laws
7. Those with the ultimate responsibility must personally deal with system failures (IM, 2017).

As a way of ensuring that ABC meets the operations requirements, the organization requires an adequate structure with enough responsibilities. Such responsibilities would include the creation of an environmental manager position. The manager would be responsible and accountable for all activities that affect the environment. The manager should be able to operate while understanding how his or her role affects the environment. They should also be able to reduce the likelihood of environmental concerns occurring under their watch. Communication within the organization is another important aspect. In this case, communication referred to the fact that the staff has credible information that it would require to make a particular decision. It is, therefore, important to ensure that communication flow within the organization is proper (Novaces, 2017).  

ABC Corporation and Sustainable Development

Several research activities show that policies are formulated via a complex inter-relationship of processes, context, and actors. The policy triangle is the best way through which an organization can systematically think about the factors likely to affect the policy (Cassiani, 2007).

Actors: In this context, actors are organisations, individuals or the government alongside their actions which would influence the policy. Actors have their own agendas and interests.

Context: refers to systematic factors like politics, economy, culture, and society. All these factors may affect the policy. In this case, we talk of:

1. Situational factors: include impermanent, transient conditions that may have impact on the policy.
2. Structural factors: include elements that relatively unchanged in the society like. the type of economy or political system.
3. Cultural factors: include ethnicity, religion, gender, and exogenous factors. There are policies that require cooperation between regional and national organisations.

Content: refers to the substance that makes a particular policy including the topics and subjects covered.

Process: Refers to the manner in which policies get initiated and developed (Jinxing, 2017).

The formulation of a policy is under the above highlighted framework. The development is influenced by content, actors, and context. The process of formulation may at times be rational. Being rational means it weighs the cons and pros of various alternatives (Jinxing, 2017).

Strategies

1. Environmental sustainability strategy
2. Waste management strategy
3. Low carbon commitment strategy
4. Biodiversity strategy

Objectives and Goals

The mentioned strategies are intended to:

• Ensure improvement in terms of environmental performance in every aspect of operation. The performance themes are carbon, biodiversity, refurbishment, sustainable procurement, energy, waste, sustainable transport, and water.
• Ensure that operations are in line with research on sustainability
• Provide workers with opportunities associated with the development of sustainability skills
• Support the employees and managers changes via a well-developed environmental management culture.
• Develop collaborative relationships between stakeholders to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and influence sustainability practice and policy.

All the highlighted objectives will help realize the firm’s real progress. Such is due to the fact that ABC Corporation’s overall objectives are aligned to the Global Sustainable Development. The goals and objectives also meet IT standards. 

Recommendations

In order to realize real progress, business organizations, social groups, or even individuals need to be whole-heartedly motivated in whatever they undertake. As a result, this competence activity will involve the development and implementation of a sustainability policy within ABC Corporation. In this case, the development and implementation of the sustainability policy will involve four major sub-activities (MALACHOVA, 2012). The sub-divisions are:

1. Policy development
2. Policy communication

• Policy implementation

1. Implementation review.

 To ensure that the organization’s operations are successful, a partnership between the governments of India and Australia, a partnership with the civil society, and working together with the communities around the mining site would be important (Brainard, 2013). The overall objectives of our organization are aligned to the Global Sustainable Development Goals. Some of the objectives are:

1. To ensure that significant human, physical, technological, and financial resources are mobilized to attain the sustainable development goals
2. To manage every sector of mining since it is a global industry

• To ensure global economic growth

1. To come up with more jobs
2. To spur innovation
3. To promote infrastructural investment and development

Required Changes

Changes to be made should involve operations. Some of the changes involving operations within ABC Corporation would include:

1. Provision of training to recruited staff and managers responsible for maintenance.
2. Regular checks for test sensor control points. This is to ensure that energy efficiency is not compromised.
3. Application of automated control screens within areas of production
4. Waste products elimination and recycling
5. Performing processes of systems re-commissioning and audits of scheduled energy
6. Application of durable and highly efficient materials during process of system update.

Regarding changes on specific documents, all the highlighted changes should be done on the following:

• Business principles document
• Best practices document
• Technical standards document
• Recruitment strategies document
• Implementation strategies document

The highlighted standards direct the design, management, and deployment of information technology within the corporation.

Monitoring policy is to ensure that it is kept going after its adoption. Monitoring refers to the process of detecting how the developed policy is doing. For proper monitoring, some data will have to be obtained regarding the policy. A proper implementation plan should suggest ways through which data regarding policy should be generated with regards to policy monitoring and maintenance. For instance, from documents, records, diary entries of staff, feedback from program clients, tests, ratings by peers, physical evidence, and observation, monitoring could be done (Rinkesh, 2009).

Sources of Information for Sustainability Management

IT Requirements

In this plan, the purpose of IT Standard is to ensure that ABC Corporation’s IT policy requirements are specified. Such is also to ensure that the IT policy is in line with the applicable laws and regulations. Some of the standards, in this case would include:

• Business principles
• Best practices
• Technical standards
• Migration strategies
• Implementation strategies

The highlighted standards direct the design, management, and deployment of information technology.

In this case, we shall use a Database Management System Software (DBMS) tool to record and store appropriate information including the usage of resources. However, statistical analysis would be made possible by the application of Microsoft Excel. 

Implementation Methods

It is the duty of the policy analyst to sketch out an implementation plan. The plan must be one that considers:

1. Relevant actors alongside their interests
2. The resources required and individuals to provide them
3. Facilitators alongside the possible barriers
4. A time frame that is reasonable

The analysis of an implementation is likely to involve a “best-case” and a “worst-case” scenario for every policy. It would also involve outlining a “most likely” outcome. In this case, the idea is to develop a systematic thinking approach through the entire implementation process (Dews, 2015).

Some of the positive outcomes of implementation include:

• Ensuring improvement in terms of environmental performance in every aspect of operation. The performance themes are carbon, biodiversity, refurbishment, sustainable procurement, energy, waste, sustainable transport, and water.
• Ensuring that operations are in line with research on sustainability
• Providing workers with opportunities associated with the development of sustainability skills
• Supporting the employees and managers changes via a well-developed environmental management culture.
• Developing collaborative relationships between stakeholders to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and influence sustainability practice and policy (Martin, 2017).

Organizational communication is vital. As mentioned before, organizational communication is perceived in the context that the staff needs to obtain information that it would use to make a particular decision. It is, therefore, important to ensure that communication flow within the organization is proper. The organization is bound to deal in communication that is:

1. Two-Way

For a communication strategy to be effective, the form of communication needs to be two-way. Managers should engage workers in conversations regarding their ideas, their work, and their perspectives.

1. Results-Driven

Any form of communication within the organization should be results-driven. It should also be focused on achieving results that are measurable.

1. Multi-Channeled

Organizational communicators that are effective understand the fact that messages ought to be delivered multiple times and in several ways to have the most impact. The use of multiple channels to communicate with audiences would increase chances that the communication would be effective.

For the purpose of implementing this sustainability policy, the following elements must be incorporated:   

1. New Appointments.
2. Such should include the assessment of communication skills
3. Confirmation of prospective communication skills required to undertake the outlined duties.
4. Periodic Evaluation and Assessment.
5. Provision for assessing and evaluating workers monthly. The procedure must include a mechanism for written evaluation.
6. A preliminary assessment should be provided within the first ten weeks of the assignment of duties (Martin, 2017).

Recording System for Monitoring       

A proper implementation plan should have a recording plan. The system records the methods through which data regarding policy is generated with regards to policy monitoring and maintenance. For instance, it records information regarding records, diary entries of staff, feedback from program clients, tests, and ratings by peers, physical evidence (Martin, 2017).

Strategies for supporting continuous improvement

As mentioned before, the mentioned strategies include:

• Ensuring improvement in terms of environmental performance in every aspect of operation. The performance themes are carbon, biodiversity, refurbishment, sustainable procurement, energy, waste, sustainable transport, and water.
• Ensuring that operations are in line with research on sustainability
• Providing workers with opportunities associated with the development of sustainability skills
• Supporting the employees and managers changes via a well-developed environmental management culture.
• Developing collaborative relationships between stakeholders to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and influence sustainability practice and policy (Martin, 2017).

1. Enhancement and facilitation of process of decision making by seeking feedback, opinions, and participation from all stakeholders on issues of environmental management (Management, 2017).
2. Encouraging and promoting environmental responsibility and awareness among all community members.
3. Ensuring continuous improvement of environmental performance by addressing or identifying environmental risks (Management, 2017).
4. Ensuring decision making processes to integrate short and long-term environmental, economic, equity and social considerations effectively.
5. Encouraging and offering trainings on environmental and sustainable research activities. Also promoting external awareness through the support of projects which seek solutions to environmental issues to improve global environment sustainability (Management, 2017).

As mentioned before, ABC Corporation needs to be whole-heartedly motivated in whatever it undertakes to realize real progress. This competence activity will, therefore, involve the development and implementation of a sustainability policy within ABC Corporation (Kader, 2017).

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