Back in the mining game

It has been a week since I started my internship at KCGM. Fortunately for me, this is my third time working for the organisation as a student. Every time I rejoin the Community Relations team at KCGM (which is a part of the Environment and Social Responsibility department), they welcome me with open arms and throw projects at me which are even more challenging than the last time.  The first time I worked there, I got to do a bit of everything, my second stint gave me the experience doing a bit of everything and more, including organising a community open day for the tourist mine, of which over 1500 people attended. This time around, I've been thrown into the deep end once more and I'm loving it.

As KCGM is a gold mine which is not only on the door step of the City of Kalgoorlie, but also has operations which are on the historical Golden Mile; catering to the needs of residents, local businesses and other stakeholders and celebrating the history of what made the city it is today, is very important. It is the 50th anniversary of continuous operations at Mt. Charlotte operations this year and I've been given responsibility to help organise the two months worth of celebration tours coming up later this year. Some of my responsibilities include: Assessing risks in Team Based Risk Assessments (TBRAs), figuring out a budget, organising logistics, tickets, ensuring the safety of others, writing tour notes, procedures and work instructions for tour participants and working out a media plan.

In addition to this, I am helping to produce and write a short film celebrating the history of Mt. Charlotte which will go straight to be sold in the Super Pit Shop on DVD. Some responsibilites include script writing, research, conducting interviews and piecing it altogether. As this comes under the same major Mt. Charlotte project, everything is coming together pretty nicely and I had the amazing opportunity to do my underground induction today in preparation for heading underground for filming and tours and I got to head about 600m underground which probably made me way too excited, all things considering.

Once again, I'm thoroughly enjoying my work placement so far and am fortunate enough to be able to do it for this the internship unit. I'm curious to see what happens over the next few weeks due to the gold price crisis which is a huge issue at the moment and one that affects KCGM greatly due to its sheer size, however I'll let you know how my projects are coming along shortly and how things start to pan out over the next few weeks in the mining industry. It's ever growing and always changing.