Yelena Nicholson

Anglo American has introduced flexible working hours with the requirement to work 90 hours a fortnight, so I currently work a 9-day fortnight with every second Monday off. One week I work 5/2 (Monday to Friday at work, Saturday to Sunday home days). During this week Monday and Friday are travel days. The alternating week I work 4/3 (Tuesday to Friday at work, Saturday to Monday home days). During this week I travel to work Monday evening and home on Friday Afternoon.

4.40 AM

It’s Wednesday morning and my alarm has gone off to get ready for work. I get dressed, collect my belongings and head off.

Today I am not heading underground but if I was, I would be getting up at 4.10 AM so I have time to get ready at work and attend the 5.30 AM prestart.

5.00 AM

I head off to work. I drive by myself to work, and it takes approximately 25 mins to get to work.

There is an option to catch the bus however, it leaves early so the underground workers have plenty of time to make the prestart.

5.30 AM

I arrive at the site and set up for the day.

I check my emails and organise my day. I check what meetings I have and set my priorities for the day. Today my priorities are development comms, comms to the nitrogen plant and the monitoring system for the diesel plant.

6.30 AM

For the next few hours, I work on the development comms. I check Citect, iPam and the Nautitech Wingman to see what we still have comms too. Currently we still have comms to our DCBs and shuttle cars. We do not comms to our continuous miners. My main job has been trying to get comms to our continuous miners, however we have had difficulties with the communication system as it has limitations with the length of cable to the miner.

I head down to the development office to talk to the electrical coordinator to determine if the length of the cable has changed. After discussions, it looks like they have added another cable inline, which is why the miners are offline.

I head back to my office to discuss other options for comms to the miners with the Electrical Engineering Manager as the cable length will continue to be an issue. We come up with a few options however, we would like to continue using our current communication system. I quickly send off an email to Nautitech, the OEM of the communication system, for advice on our issues before it’s time for my next meeting.

8.00 AM

I now need to attend the PCS/Automation/IM teams meeting. During this meeting we discuss PCS and Automation issues with the onsite and BCO IM team. It is mostly discussions of how to improve our networking onsite. A chairman takes meeting minutes, reviews actions from the previous week and assigns new actions which have been raised in this meeting. These minutes are sent out to all the meeting participants. The meeting has ended and now it is time to attend another meeting.

9.15 AM

I now attend the Engineering and Maintenance Team Morning Meeting. During this meeting the team reviews safety incidents from the previous 24 hours. Each team member then reviews their previous 24 hours and states any variances to their plan. They then share their plan for the next 24 hours. This meeting isn’t all serious and a few jokes are always thrown around.

10.00 AM

There’s a quick break between meetings but now it’s time to head to the site morning meeting. A representative for each department presents at this meeting. The representative, normally the superintendent however as a graduate you will get thrown in to present occasionally, summaries and presents whether the team met their plan for the previous 24 hours and states any variances. They then share the plan for the next 24 hours. This meeting gives the senior leadership team the opportunity to ask each department questions and assign actions where needed. The meeting ends by giving the site an opportunity to celebrate success. Today a shout out was given to the longwall team who achieved a great number of shears after just coming out of some tough roof conditions.

10.30 AM

With the morning meetings over, it is now time to get back into some work. I quickly check my emails again, but I haven’t received any important replies. I keep working on options for development comms until lunch.

12.00 PM

It’s now time to have lunch. I get my lunch from the fridge and head back to my desk where I eat and have a chat to the guys in my office. I continue to do a bit of work as I eat as well.

12.45 PM

Now that lunch is over, I now move on to the Nitrogen Plant. We have a hired Nitrogen Plant onsite and I have been tasked with getting comms to it so the site can monitor whether the compressor units are healthy and other information such as flow rate. At the moment I am mostly just communicating with the hiring company and the OEM to determine what information can be pulled from the PLC and how we can monitor the compressor units.

I then head across the road to the PCS office where I discuss the options to get comms to the plant. I have a lengthy discussion with the PCS guys and they set me in the right direction for the next stages to get comms to the plant. I head back to my office where I raise a purchase requisition for the material required and labour to install fibre to the plant.

3.00 PM

After a fair bit of work on the Nitrogen Plant I move on to the Diesel Plant to break up the day. This is a new project I was given earlier in the week. I have been given a scope of what the monitoring system needs to do so I spent the rest of the day researching possible ideas to meet the scope requirements.

5.30 PM

It’s the end of the day and I head off back to camp.

6.00 PM

I arrive back at camp and get ready for the gym.

6.15 PM

I arrive at the gym. I try to go to the gym every afternoon, sometimes with a gym partner sometimes solo. Today is back and bis. I spent about an hour and a half here. I see and chat with a few people from work during this time. Staying active is very important and a good stress reliever.

7.30 PM

Once I’ve finished at the gym, I go for a 5km run around the town.

8.00 PM

Now I’ve finished exercising I head to the mess to grab dinner and lunch for the following day. Today I got grilled chicken and rice and some veggies. For lunch, I got some sandwiches and an assortment of snacks. It’s important to grab enough food for the next day as you’re out on site without access to food.

9.00 PM

It’s now time for bed. As we work long hours it’s important to get plenty of rest. I aim for close to 8 hours a night