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11
CONSTRUCTION WORLD
JULY
2016
ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY
Sonette Smit, managing director
and senior environmental
consultant, at Greenmined Envi-
ronmental, believes this is both
an appropriate and cost saving stance to
have taken as when it comes to applications
for authorisations, environmental audits
and other related activities, all work done
in-house at a mine or quarry will need to be
reviewed by an independent environmental
assessment practitioner, in any event.
Changes in legislation have seen the regu-
lations surrounding the Environmental Act,
the Water Act and the Minerals and Petroleum
Resources Development Act combined into a
single system. While this is advantageous for
mines and quarries, the distinct lack of under-
standing around the requirements has made
this quite daunting for individuals within
these operations.
Smit says that in the past mine and
quarry managers would have appointed
either an in-house person or a consultant to
handle the requisite applications. “Today,
even where an in-house person prepares
the applications for authorisation, organisa-
tions will have to employ the services of an
independent consultant to review these. The
external review is to ensure the integrity of
the information being supplied,” she explains.
Impact of cut backs
Cut backs, due to the pressure under which
the mining sector has been operating, have
also meant that, in many instances, the
infrastructure which supported an in-house
environmental department or officer has
been significantly reduced. In some cases the
environmental aspects of the operation have
even been incorporated into the function of
the safety department or officer.
“All this has created an increased demand
for a skilled independent environmental
consultancy with practitioners that can bring
complete partiality to the table. This impar-
tiality, coupled with our broad spectrum of
applications knowledge and in-depth under-
standing of the duties as well as the rights of
the applicant or licence holder, ensures our
customer base of a level of proficiency not
readily available elsewhere,” Smit says.
This depth of knowledge and experience
includes that of all departmental processes
and even though the application process has
been dramatically simplified, Smit believes
that it is ever more critical for organisations to
use the services of practitioners that are able
to seamlessly follow the requisite processes
through the One Environmental System.
A differentiator
An important differentiator that Greenmined
Environmental offers its client base is access
to an in-house legal advisor. “This assists with
the processes according to the legislation
time frame, and having this level of expertise
on hand is a real advantage as should there
be any legal issues on a client site then we
are able to offer a legal service directly
from our consultancy,” Smit says. “This can
translate into a major cost saving in terms of
time, which is of the essence in such applica-
tions, and is obviously also a saving in bottom
line costs.”
Another service offering that is seeing a
steady increase in demand is that of occu-
COMPLIANCE
MADE SIMPLE
There is a considerable move away from the continued use of
in-house people to do applications for authorisation and other
environmental aspects within the mining sector.
>
An important differentiator that Greenmined Environmental offers its client base, is access to in-house
legal advisor, Jemma Bowles.
The Greenmined Environmental team, from left: Sonette Smit, managing director; Daryn Price, office
administrator; Murchellin Saal, project consultant and Jemma Bowles, legal advisor.
pational hygiene. With the focus on uplifting
levels of occupational hygiene and the need
to comply with the requirements of the Mine
Health and Safety Act operators are reviewing
current programmes to ensure that these are
in line with the mandatory codes of practice
applicable to individual sites.
“We are able to conduct a full audit
on occupational hygiene monitoring
programmes and this includes aspects such
as personnel exposure to noise, airborne
pollutants, the thermal environment and
ergonomics. We are able to assess both the
physical and chemical stresses and provide
comprehensive feedback,” Smit says.
Such programme audits will determine
any gaps in the management and monitoring
system, and then identify appropriate correc-
tive action to address any non-conformances.
Greenmined Environmental is able to make
recommendations in terms of implementing
the corrective action and then monitoring the
programme going forward.