MSHA Team Meeting
09/26/2006
10:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Attendees:
Joseph Breighner
Allison Czapracki
Latanger Gray
Rashmi Jain
Abigail Jones
Dr. Dabbagh – Faculty Advisor
Paul Bizich Jr. - Supervisory Mine Safety & Health Specialist - MSHA
Don Conrad - Mine Safety & Health Specialist, Educational Field Services - MSHA
Items Discussed:
- Introductions
- Bizich: many miners access the MSHA website from home. They have the initiative to further their careers and take on more responsibility.
- Conrad: Miners also use the MSHA website to verify the training they receive on the job
- Conrad: A lot of larger mines have laptops on section. May be beneficial to look into prospect of putting training on CD for use on the job.
- When production isn’t aligned with safety, people tend to think of them as two separate aspects. In fact, safety, production and maintenance are all included in JTAs.
- In the eyes of coal mining companies, production is always the first priority. To MSHA, safety is the first priority.
- A foreman will be looking for defects in the roof, including faults, fissures, rolls, and kettle bottoms.
- Conrad recommended that the pre-assessment should have a 95% pass rate to allow exemption from a module
- Conrad: Section foremen need to know the laws
- Bizich and Conrad approved of Fatalgram Analysis as shown in the project prototypes
- Brainstorming from Conrad: Supervisors need to know geology, supports, cable bolts, working of mines
- Conrad: mine gasses section of Colorado Examination would make a good basis for the pre-shift, on-shift, production, and other sections of the training
- Interconnectedness (links within modules) are an asset to the program
Break for lunch at 12:55 p.m. – Resumed meeting at 1:30 p.m.
- Review of Section Foreman Duties in Word form
- Conrad believes training should be for miners with three years of experience aspiring to become section foremen
- The JTAs are OTJ aids and teaching outlines for experience supervisors to train new supervisors they are not course content
- MSHA’s guide to guarding – PDF sent to minesafety@googlegroups.com
- Dust control can be a lesson, with float dust and other dust control
- Gasses, testing, and ventilation can all be part of the same lesson
- Don has content for coal dust lesson
- For tomorrow: team will analyze JTAs and collect questions for Bizich and Conrad
