Although M&R MEI's safety performance has improved dramatically over the past few years, they recognised that in order to be sustainable in their Safety endeavours, they needed to do something different.

MEI has therefore embarked on a Behaviour change process in association with IRCA- BIT to ensure continuous and sustainable improvement in safety.

As 86% of all work related injuries are attributable to at-risk behaviour, human behaviour cannot be dealt with in the classic management manner. Policies and procedures do not change people's behaviours:

Therefore, in order to be truly world class, they required a structured process whereby employees in a work team identify their critical behaviours (things they should do to prevent injuries) associated with their work, and then, using the principles of behaviourism, change their behaviour to sustained compliance with those critical behaviours.

These behaviours then have to be brought to the level of subconscious competence by means of continuous reinforcement by the team members them selves to enable assimilation into the value system of each team member. Top and line management will be required to practice Visible felt leadership as an essential part of the process.

The IMBOP process will assist them to achieve these team efforts.

The acronym stands for:

• I - Identify critical behaviours
• M - Make a PACT
• B - Behaviour modelling
• O - Observation and Feedback
• P - Problem solving

All levels of the organisation will be involved in this process. In order to make employees aware of the process mechanics and to equip them to partake, various training and coaching sessions will be conducted on all work sites.

Selected employees currently employed in MEI will be trained as Behaviour Intervention Assessors (BIA's) to coordinate this process into the future. The majority of the scheduled BBS training will be finished by the end of April. Although the BBS program will only be fully implemented on all new projects, Voorspoed Mine and the Natal Portland Cement, the principles will be rolled out throughout the company.

The steering committee established, will analyze the perception surveys done in February, to determine what our current culture is. All of this is done to ensure good corporate governance and will help them to understand their weaknesses and strong points in order to develop action plans for continuous improvement in the HSE goals for the company. This includes their current objective to lower the current TIFR (Total injury frequency rate) of 68.2 below 50.0 before year end.

In line with this process, M&R MEI started the HSE observation reporting system and the HSE practitioners is issued with new jackets with coloured sleeves encouraging the communication / feedback of non-conformance and compliance behaviors.

To head up the process, - Frans Marais (IRCA) has been appointed as Project Manager, responsible for the EXCO Steering Team, the establishment, roll-out and maintaining of the process within MEI.