Case Study: Impala Platinum Refineries

Operations located: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Canada
Listed: London Stock Exchange (LSE) & Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)
Industry: Mining
Number of employees: Refineries division of Impala Platinum Ltd – 950 employees
Impala Platinum Ltd, including Rustenburg mines – 48 000 employees
Implemented IsoMetrix software solutions: Environment, Health and Safety (EHS)

As one of the world’s leading producers of platinum group metals and with extensive business operations throughout Southern Africa and internationally, Impala Platinum could ill-afford to use outdated methods of storing and retrieving safety and environmental data and information.

After implementing IsoMetrix’s EHS solution, Implats was able to improve its ground-level data collection from its system end-users, and dramatically reduce the amount of time needed to pull required information from its system. The user-friendliness of the software combined with useful features like the intuitive and visually appealing dashboards have only enhanced the overall user-experience for the organization.

“IsoMetrix has definitely met my expectations when it comes to our EHS software. In fact, it was our company’s experience using IsoMetrix’s Environmental Management solution that encouraged us to purchase their EHS solution for our safety requirements, as we were targeting ISO 45001 certification. It’s great to see that they have a continuous improvement approach to their software development.”

 – Carina Burger, Safety and Environmental Manager at Impala Platinum Refineries

As one of the world’s leading producers of platinum group metals, Impala Platinum has extensive business operations throughout Southern Africa and internationally. Due to the size and scope of the organization, there is a large amount of environmental, health and safety (EHS) data that the company needs to capture and store.

Inefficient storage methods coupled with the sheer volume of data meant that Impala Platinum’s Safety & Environmental Manager at the Refineries division Carina Burger found it challenging to extract useful EHS data from the company’s systems when required.

Company policy dictated that all incidents and audits needed to be loaded into the system, but Carina was unable to extract useful information, statistics, and relevant trends from it in an efficient manner. Reporting was a tiresome manual exercise consisting of tasks such as printing out datasheets, manually counting incidents, and inputting relevant data on spreadsheets.

The Refineries’ main objective when initially engaging with IsoMetrix was to collect data more efficiently at site-level and to host this data within a centralized and user-friendly software system that produce the required reports. Not only were EHS standards becoming ever more prevalent within the global mining industry, but reporting on ESG requirements was becoming increasingly important and expected by both investors and the general public. By implementing IsoMetrix, Implats improved its ability to store, recall and extract data where and when required. It also made demonstrating compliance with the ISO 14001 Environmental Management, and ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety standards easier.

Challenge No. 1

The Refineries, a division of Impala, was facing a difficult challenge in extracting useful information, statistics, and relevant trends from its stored data.

Solution 

Implementing IsoMetrix’s EHS software eliminated dispersed data silos throughout the organization and provided Carina with one centralized location for all her safety- related information.

Not only was information now centralized, but the user-friendly layout and nature of the software made it easy to view and extract relevant EHS data where necessary.

Carina is now easily able to track her progress towards her safety targets, manage her EHS processes, analyze trends and identify areas of interest, and organize information to easily generate reports in her required formats.

Challenge No. 2

Collecting ground-level data from various sites in order to identify problems and make more informed decisions with regards to health and safety was difficult.

Solution

A company may have the world’s best centralized EHS software system, but it is futile if it is not populated with good-quality raw data. Carina is reliant on her end-users such as individual site managers to load their incident reports, photos, videos, and any other supporting documentation in an organized way that supports her efforts to manage the EHS company function effectively.

Checks such as mandatory fields improve accountability and data quality by ensuring end-users upload their findings in a structured and comprehensive manner. In addition, the user-friendliness of the system means that end-users can navigate the system easily with minimal training, guidance, and oversight from Carina, saving her valuable time.

“Our Rustenburg site recently asked me for a summary of all property damages which occurred over the last two years. Previously this type of request would have taken me a week to find, collate, and extract the relevant information such as incident descriptions, remedial actions taken, etc. With IsoMetrix’s EHS software, however, using actions such as filtering, it took me five minutes to get the information I needed.”

– Carina Burger, Safety and Environmental Manager at Impala Platinum Refineries

An easy-to-use system requiring minimal IT support

The admins at Implats appreciate their ability to manage user permissions, such as enabling or blocking user access to capabilities or sites easily within the system. They can also set basic configurations like setting data capture fields as mandatory and eliminating unnecessary ones without needing a technical specialist improving management agility and speed. 

Crucial insights at-a-glance

The ability to easily view large volumes of data, identify trends, and track progress toward safety-related goals. “Information such as the number of slips, trips, and falls that occurred over the past two years can be pulled quickly upon request,” Carina gave as an example. “When we have more information in our faces, the more we report, the more we speak about it, the more action there is.” 

The team can draw comparisons easily and pinpoint weak links very early. With ISO reviews every six months, Carina and her team can easily demonstrate compliance throughout their operations to maintain certifications.

Success-minded customer support

Over the years Carina and her team have worked with IsoMetrix, they have consistently found the customer success and support teams to be responsive, efficient, and solution-oriented when needs arise. “We do get the feeling they care about us reaching our goals for a safer and sustainable workplace,” Carina shared, “it’s one of the standout reasons why we’ve stayed partners with IsoMetrix for so many years.”

“It’s great how simple and easy-to-use the IsoMetrix software is, and it really helps in terms of collecting ground level safety data from people on-site. Because the system is intuitive, training is easy.”

– Carina Burger, Safety and Environmental Manager at Impala Platinum Refineries

Since the initial implementation in 2018, Implats and IsoMetrix have continued to grow together with new technology advances and broader usage throughout the company. “You see better environmental performance as adoption grows,” Carina shared. From bringing on IsoMetrix to support environmental compliance, Implats now manages safety and quality with IsoMetrix as well. The Implats team also employs IsoMetrix to track community engagements such as correspondence with regulators and community complaints to support social licenses to operate and overall social sustainability.  

Navigation enhancements, granular user security features, and more sophisticated workflows have made it so Carina and her team have more confidence in user management and data quality and can observe and act faster to field information. “The Action Manager is the heartbeat of the system for us,” Carina included. “Every person can see the actions they need to take to ensure tasks and initiatives continue moving forward without gaps. They are motivated to take their incomplete actions down to zero.”