SG-SST in mining: what the management system requires at a mine in Colombia

The Occupational Health and Safety Management System, the SG-SST, is mandatory for every employer, and the regulation requires it to be adapted to each company. At a mine that means starting from the real hazards of the work, such as ground support, ventilation or the handling of explosives, and not from a template designed for an office.

The SG-SST is built on elements the regulation defines and that are reviewed periodically:

• Policy: signed by the legal representative and reviewed every year.
• Initial assessment: sets priorities from the company's status against the standards.
• Hazard matrix: covers all activities, routine or not, and is updated at least once a year.
• Annual work plan: gathers the actions arising from the assessment and the matrix.
• Event investigation: establishes the causes of each incident or accident and whether they follow a pattern.

The minimum standards regulation has reduced tables for small companies, but only when they are classified in risk class I, II or III. The extraction of coal, gold, emeralds and construction materials is in risk class V, and with class IV or V a mine with ten workers or fewer meets the same 60 standards as a large company. It is worth checking the affiliation code, because some related activities have a different risk class. Since 2020 the system runs by calendar year, from January to December.

Underground and open-pit mining each have their own safety regulation. The SG-SST incorporates what the regulation applicable to your mine requires, so that the company does not run two separate schemes.

We design the SG-SST from your mining method, workforce, equipment and working faces. We carry out the initial assessment, the hazard matrix, the policy and the annual plan, then support implementation at the mine and train staff in the hazards of their work. If an accident occurs, we investigate its causes and keep the statistics used to prioritize corrective actions.