Project Proposal Plan for Mining Company - Report Example

PROJECT PROPOSAL PLAN FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF MINING AND PETROLEUM, WESTERN AUSTRALIA Contents Executive summary 4 Introduction 5 Purpose of this document 5 References 5 Definitions 5 Governance 6 Project customer 6 Project sponsor 6 Project manager 6 Governance structure 6 Stakeholders 7 Project purpose 7 Background 7 Outcomes and benefits 8 Links with the department’s objectives 8 Scope of project 8 In scope 9 Out of scope 9 Related projects 9 Constraints 9 Urgency 10 Assumptions 10 Project procurement 10 Impacts 11 Internal 11 External 11 Risks and issues 11 Risks 11 Issues 12 Key findings and recommendations 12 Plan for conducting the concept phase 12 Schedule 13 Resource requirements 13 Cost estimate and budget 13 Procurement 13 Communication and reporting 13 Success criteria 14 References 15 Bibliography 15 Project proposal appendices 16 Appendix A – Timing Scope & Schedule 16 Appendix B – Procurement plan 17 Executive summary This report is a project proposal on how to examine the main issues and causes of accidents on mines in Western Australia. Hence, this document designs the best way and manner through which the process could be practicalised in order to come up with the best way of conducting the project. The research proposes that the project sponsor is the Western Australian government and the project customer is the Department of Mining and Petroleum which is the custodian of the laws and regulations related to health and safety of miners. The project manager will use 7 project team members and work within a small budget of about $100,000. This includes costs of work that will cover expert support, field work costs and other equipment. The project will be carried out in an 8 week period and the deliverable will be a project recommendation on how to make the existing law more proactive and meaningful in making mining entities more prone to dealing with risks. Introduction This sub-section of the project will outline the fundamental purpose and framework within which the project will be propounded and implemented. It will lay down the preamble and previous documents that are relevant to the project at hand. Purpose of this document The purpose of this document is to propose a project management plan for the reduction of accidents and fatalities in mines in Western Australia. This will be done by examining the 42 fatalities that occurred in the mines in the region from 2001 to 2010 (Department of Mining and Petroleum, 2011; Safe Work Australia, 2012)and other accidents that have occurred, in order to reduce these incidents by 50% in the next decade. To this end, the deliverable will be a document that provides the solution to incidents and promotes improved methods and processes for attaining health and safety in the current mining boom. References This project will include the examination of Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE) documents, Australian health and safety rules as well as other reports presented on various fatalities and accidents by the police and other experts. Definitions TERM DEFINITION DMP Department of Mining and Petroleum OHS Occupational Health and Safety Governance This project is being prepared for the Australian government. However, there are some specific stakeholders that the plan will target directly and this is outlined below. Project customer The fundamental customer is the Department of Mining and Petroleum, Australia. This is the authority directly responsible for mobilising work in mines throughout the country. Hence, the Department is directly commissioning the group to carry out their activities in order to meet the demands and expectations. Project sponsor The project is sponsored directly by the Australian government. Hence, payments and other important bills are to be directly invoiced to the Australian Ministry of Finance which will pay for the services without reservation. Project manager The project manager is Political Project Group [PPG]. This is our firm and we are the main entity that is meant to carry out the actual field work, coordination, planning and cooperation throughout the activity. Governance structure The project manager will be fundamentally responsible for the day-to-day affairs of the project. And this will include the gathering of data and information, coordination and other matters. Milestones in the project will involve sending various levels of deliverables to the Project customer’s representative. The Project sponsor will be responsible for funding the project and the final deliverable will be sent to the project customer in the form of the final report. The project customer will have two levels of representations, the first will be directly in the project and they will have a representative in the project. Secondly, the project customer will also have an agent that will receive reports from the project manager. This agent will not be directly involved in the project but he will play the role of supervisor in the entire project and in the activities. Stakeholders A project stakeholder is a party that affects or is affected by the project (Morris & Pinto, 2012; Young, 2007). In this project, the main stakeholders include: 1. The Department of Mining and Petroleum; 2. The Australian Mining Safety Regulators; 3. Australian Safety Pressure Groups; 4. Mining companies with high levels of fatalities; 5. Geographical areas with high levels of mining fatalities. Project purpose The purpose of this project is to outline the main causes of high levels of fatalities in Australian mines and provide important checks and balances to reduce these fatalities and present improved and enhanced mining practices. Background The mining sector is considered as a “mainstream” sector in relation to the OHS rules and hence, there is a lot of regulations that have been developed in order to deal with the needs of the mining sector (Gunningham, 2007). Fundamentally, corporate entities like mines are tasked with the obligation of ensuring that health and safety are covered significantly on their sites (Tomasic, Bottomley, & McQueen, 2013). Hence, they do their best to ensure that the right checks are put in place to prevent accidents. In spite of this, there are events and situations whereby firms fail to carry out the proper and appropriate risk assessments and these errors occur in relation to the OHS supervisors and this leads to accidents and issues on the field. Therefore, there is the need to come up with a proactive approach and system by engaging with stakeholders in order to come up with a plan that can be utilised to reduce accidents and fatalities in order to safeguard life and properties. Outcomes and benefits The outcome of the project will be a report on the deficiencies in the current health and safety regulatory network in the mines of Australia and a presentation of a set of recommendations on how to improve the existing system in order to enhance health and safety and reduce fatalities on the ground. Links with the department’s objectives The Australian DMP has the obligation to review and analyse the safety standards on mine fields in Australia by means of two Acts, the first is the Mine Safety and Inspection Act [1994] and the Mines Safety and Inspection Regulation Act [1995]. These different Acts come together to give the DMP the obligation to ensure that health and safety is safeguarded through inspections and other statutory obligations and rules that mining companies need to follow and pursue. Scope of project In scope The project will revolve around two main items: 1. The laws relating to health and safety in mining sectors; 2. Risks and dominant causes of fatalities in mines in Australia Within this scope, we will examine the laws and regulations and integrate the realities of the circumstances and issues relating to the realities of situations and circumstances that relate to mining accidents that actually occurred in the ten-year period. The project team will find ways and means of examining and evaluating these incidents and evaluate the reasons why existing laws failed to deal with the risks and what could have been done to avert the issues and risks. Out of scope The project will not consider risks that are not within the scope of the 42 deaths that occurred in mines in Australia over the past decade. Thus, possible risks and postulated issues will not be handled by the project team. Rather, the focus will be on the incidents and matters that were not handled by the laws and the regulations. Related projects The main related projects are committee findings and committee reports on the various investigations conducted into the fatalities that occurred in the various mines of Australia. This will include amongst other things, the reports and detailed findings that were put together by the various investigators who studied these cases. Constraints The main constraints include the inability to discover some relevant matters and factors that were not unearthed during the fatalities and accidents that occurred in the past. Secondly, issues relating to future risks and other risks that could affect the health of miners are not likely to be documented and studied. Hence, the deliverable of the findings are somewhat going to be limited to only historical data and failures. Urgency The project will be conducted over an 8-week period. And this will include the preparation of a field work that will including visiting some of the mines to go through a walkthrough test in order to identify the issues and matters of safety. This will be followed by critical report analysis and evaluations in order to draft the reports necessary for the project sponsor. Assumptions The fundamental assumption is that most of the accidents that occurred in the period under review could have been dealt with if the mine owners and mining authorities had relevant rules and regulations that were sufficient in order to draw logical conclusions about the findings. These findings will give room for the creation of laws and regulations that will enable the authorities to find the right solutions to issues and matters. The following need assumptions are made: 1. The project will be done by a multi-skilled team of 7 members; 2. A funding of $100,000 will be made available for the project by the project sponsor; 3. Mines and mining department authorities will cooperate fully with the project team. Project procurement The main procurement of this project includes the following: 1. Expert help and consultancy in areas of risk and accident; 2. Safety clothing during inspections; 3. Transportation; 4. Equipment for ballistic and post-mortem type of tests 5. Interview resources and stationery. Impacts The project will affect mines in which deaths occurred in no more than a single day. And this will include the examination and evaluation of the affairs of mines and other department officials and supervisors. Hence, work might not be interrupted, save for the work of responsible persons who might need to improve the project activities. Internal The DMP of Australia will need to change their ways of dealing with risks and this will also give the impetus for the modification of existing laws on health and safety in mines. External The way mines operate are likely to change and be modified because they are going to have to adjust the way they safeguard the lives of their workers through their integration of various arrangements and processes. Risks and issues There are risks which are unforseen issues and possibilities and issues which are mainly relevant challenges in project management (Kendrick, 2012; Roberts, 2010). Risks The main risks are financial and this is because for more critical and analytical procedures to be conducted, there might be the need for more expert consultancy as well as more evaluations. However, with the amount of $100,000 designated for this, there will be the possibility of a cost overrun. There is also the risk that there could be the failure to identify relevant issues and matters and this is going to mean that the results will fail to predict actual matters and actual situations that need important changes and modifications. Hence, there is the risk and issue of not covering the right scope of the project in the most appropriate way and manner. Issues An important issue that the project team will have to be mindful of relates to the safety of the project team members in the investigation and analysis. This will mean there will be the need for more care to be taken to safeguard these project team members on the field. Key findings and recommendations So far, it is identified that most of the issues and problems that relate to the death of people in Australian mines come with the poor risk appraisal and risk management. Therefore, there is the need for this study to focus on how to get the law to be more proactive in getting people to examine risks and analyse risks more thoroughly. Therefore the research and preliminary findings show that there must be important guidelines and attempts to find ways of dealing with this through the modification of the existing laws. However, the project must take reasonable care to identify the main loopholes and issues in the DMP in order to adjust them and make it imperative for these mines to do the right things in order to come up with the best way of safeguarding the lives of people who work on the different mines. Plan for conducting the concept phase This section of the study will show how the project will be conducted and how the resources are going to be allotted. Schedule The project will be conducted in an 8-week period. This is elaborated in Appendix A below. Resource requirements The resources necessary include the following: 1. Field work equipment; 2. Measuring equipment on the field; 3. Stationery and interview resources; 4. Safety clothing 5. Transportation 6. Expert consultation fees. Cost estimate and budget Item Costs AUD Fieldwork equipment 27,000 Measurement equipment 13,000 Stationery and Interview resources 10,000 Safety Clothing 10,000 Transportation 5,000 Expert Consultation fees 35,000 TOTAL COST 100,000 Procurement The detailed procurement plan is presented in Appendix B. This includes the need to acquire goods and services from one single supplier through tendering. Communication and reporting Communication will be centralised with the project manager who will be in charge of coordination and collaboration. This will mean all team members will have to present their reports and memos after completing every task. Communication will include various group updates in different times of the project. This will be done through meetings after activities. Before activities, there will be a brainstorming section where the different project team members will come up with their views and opinions on how things should be done in every situation and context. Success criteria Success criteria include connecting every incident with a given legal loophole and situation. This will mean every incident investigated will be mapped with a given reason or cause and this will include a detailed explanation and an overall tallying of these different components in order to come up with an aggregation of the different issues in order to summarise them and propose an improvement to the current legal requirement that are placed on the various stakeholders. References Bibliography Department of Mining and Petroleum. (2011). Industry Performance. Melbourne: DMP Publishing. Gunningham, N. (2007). Mine Safety: Law Regulation Policy. Sydney: Federation Press. Kendrick, T. (2012). Identifying and Managing Project Risks. New York: AMACOM. Morris, P., & Pinto, J. K. (2012). The Wiley Guide to Project, Program and Portfolio Management. Hoboken, NJ.: John Wiley and Sons Publishing. Roberts, P. (2010). Effective Project Management: Identifying and Managing Risk Plans. London: Kogan Page. Safe Work Australia. (2012). Key Work Health and Safety Statistics, Australia. Canberra: Communication, IT and Knowledge Management. Tomasic, R., Bottomley, S., & McQueen, R. (2013). Corporations Law in Law. Sydney: Federation Press. Young, T. (2007). The Handbook of Project Management. London: Kogan Page. Project proposal appendices Appendix A – Timing Scope & Schedule 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Preliminary Works Preparation of Field Work Conduct of Fieldwork and Interviews Draft Deliverable Final Deliverable Appendix B – Procurement plan Due to the size of the procurement, a single-source procurement model will be used in the project. However, an appropriate supplier will be chosen through a tender. Read More