Death, Money and Facts for American Surface Mines

Good News
In 2008, the number of fatalities at U.S. surface mines dropped to a record low of 28. Great!

Bad News
28 American surface miners needlessly lost their lives. Not so great.

More Bad News
For that same year, MSHA slammed surface mines with a record $194 million in penalties. That’s 2.6 times the amount for the previous year.

Death
Last year (2008) was an all time low for surface mine deaths in the U.S. totaling only 28 lives. This statistic shows us that with the proper safety training we can reduce the number of deaths and injuries. At the same time, this also points out the loss of 28 surface miners which could have potentially been avoided with proper training.

Money
As surface mine operators subject to MSHA Part 46 regulations, you should be aware of the heavy fines for safety and health violations. In 2008 MSHA assessed 198,700 penalties for violations, compared to the 130,100 violations in the previous year. The dollar amount for all these penalties in 2008 was $194 million, compared to just $74.5 million in 2007. Penalties of this magnitude indicate that MSHA is being proactive in assessing mine safety and health and that remaining out of compliance poses huge financial risks for those willing to gamble.

Facts
According to MSHA, the root cause of the 28 U.S. surface mine deaths was attributed to:

• Inadequate training
• No risk assessment conducted
• Inadequate policies, procedures, and controls
• Not using personal protective equipment
• Lack of pre-operation checks
• Not maintaining equipment
• Failure to conduct examinations

Action
Record low deaths of surface miners and record high penalties for violations of safety and health go hand in hand. We see that MSHA has raised awareness in order to save lives by increasing enforcement and handing out $194 million in penalties.

At Convergence Training, we feel very strongly that we can help improve surface mine safety while keeping mine operators compliant with MSHA Part 46 training requirements. Everybody wins when miners get to go home to their families and mine operators lower their costs.

An Online LMS for Way Less Than a Trip to the Emergency Room

Convergence Training is bringing safety training tools to just about any business. Soon, pretty much any company will be able to train, track, report, and get important notifications anywhere at any time for way less than a trip to the ER.

Convergence WebExpress is our new Internet-based training delivery and management system. It’s an online learning management system, or LMS, without the expensive servers or sophisticated software. Keep reading to find out more.

Old School LMS
As veterans of complex technical LMS installations, we’ve known for years that a company’s fundamental training needs don’t change as they grow. They just get bigger. They just need more people trained more times in more places with reports sent to more people.

And while just about any organization could benefit from the features provided by many LMSs, the costs of these systems fall astronomically beyond the budgets of most small to medium sized enterprises. So in the past, you had to be big enough to justify the hardware and software investment.

We’re changing all that.

New School Web Tools – Convergence WebExpress
For less than 10% of the cost of the average emergency room visit, any company will be able to access our entire library of courses to train an employee for a full year. That’s all 28 Environmental, Health and Safety courses and our complete set of 27 Surface Miner Training topics.

You’ll get a scalable solution and cost structure that fits your budget with a versatile set of courses and centralized training management tools.

24/7 Training
Administer required training anytime, anywhere via the Internet. Since it’s online, we can update or add training content at any time. No more 80’s VHS tapes or scratched DVDs to deal with. No in-house IT resource costs. Just relevant, affordable, accessible, and effective training.

Call Us For A Demo
Give us a call or send us an email to get a free demo account set up. Kick the tires and make sure it’s right for your business. No strings attached.

1.888.634.7346 – Toll Free
info@thinkconvergence.com

View a WebExpress Training Plan

 

See the Administrative Interface

 

Check out a Compliance Report

MSHA DVD Site Launched

Earlier this week, we launched a new micro-site dedicated to our Surface Miner Training DVD. Our Surface Miner Training DVD boxed-set provides 8 hours of MSHA Part 46 compliancy training. When purchasing the DVD, you’ll get:

• Over 8 hours of training
• 27 training modules based on MSHA’s Part 46 requirements
• A quick and easy way to deliver required training
• Access to printable tests and answer guides
• Award winning training (1st Place at MSHA’s 2008 TRAM Conference)

Click here to visit our new site

Of course, our Surface Miner Training can also be packaged with Convergence Training Viewer, or it can be sold as a SCORM package that can be used in any SCORM conformant LMS.

Convergence Training Receives First Place at MSHA’s 2008 TRAM Conference

Convergence Training, a division of Capstone Technology, achieves First Place honors for Surface Miner Training software at MSHA’s Training Resources Applied to Mining (TRAM) Conference hosted by the National Mine Health and Safety Academy in Beaver, West Virginia.

The TRAM contest is part of an annual conference spotlighting the importance and effectiveness of safety training for our nation’s miners. It provides an opportunity for mine safety trainers and others responsible for administering safety programs to gain valuable exposure to the latest training materials and  technologies. With support from the Joseph A. Holmes Safety Association and the State Grants Training Program, both public and private organizations come together to exchange ideas, present safety training material, and exhibit products and services.

Convergence Training’s Surface Miner Training software has attracted industry attention since its recent release this summer. Unlike other existing MSHA-related training, this product couples advanced, computer-modeled content with functional, intuitive administrative tools for MSHA’s Part 46 compliance.

“Our goal with Surface Miner Training is to improve mine safety by setting new industry standards for training quality and compliancy tools,” said Randy Kohltfarber, Director of Product Development for Convergence Training. “We feel that being recognized with this award is an early step toward that goal.”

In addition to Surface Miner Training, Convergence Training has just released Convergence Training Viewer, a free software platform for accessing and viewing a library of digital health and safety training media in compliance with OSHA and MSHA regulations.