BHP – Iron Ore – Drinking Water Quality Management Standard Review
Head Office:
Perth, Australia
Industry:
Mining
Company Size:
65,000 employees (Worldwide)
Western Australia Iron Ore operations involve a complex integrated system of seven mines, more than 1,000 kilometres of rail and two separate port facilities.
Scope Of Work:
Over a number of years Ecosafe have supported BHP in the development of a water quality management system to support their iron ore operations in Western Australia. This has included the completion of water quality related site based assessments and development of various management plans covering raw water, drinking water, and legionella management to ensure safe water is supplied throughout all their assets. Ecosafe also supported the development of detailed monitoring programs and provided daily results interpretation and reporting to ensure appropriate actions were taken to ensure ongoing supply of safe water to their sites. Employees of Ecosafe were also seconded to BHP for periods of time to provide in-house support to the BHP Non-Process Infrastructure (NPI) team to ensure they had the necessary skill set to implement their water quality management program whilst they grew their own water quality management team internally. Ecosafe continues to provide support to the BHP NPI team with specific projects and investigations as needed.
Project Outcome:
Specialist expertise has been provided by Ecosafe to support and guide BHP as they have developed a robust and comprehensive water quality management system to adequately manage risks associated with water supplies to their West Australian iron ore assets. Ecosafe for a number of years provided water quality monitoring results interpretation and reporting to ensure that BHP were able to identify potentially unsafe conditions in water supplies and take suitable action to prevent harm to users and consumers of that water. A number of specialised investigations completed by Ecosafe have ensured that BHP have been able to develop suitable risk mitigation initiatives to demonstrate to all stakeholders how water can be used safely on site.
