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Digging Up Some Great News


2019-01-14

Look around you these days and you’ll see development – buildings, roads, rail, bridges, tunnels. Victoria is in building boom and this development is underpinned by the quarrying industry. Quarrying produces the necessary materials for all this work – aggregates, bricks, and cement.

Box Hill Institute has scored a major coup by being selected as the trainer for 65 staff at Victoria’s Earth Resources Regulator (ERR) in 2019. This is a great result for Box Hill Institute and is due to the hard work of Diane Wilson, our Extractives and Industrial Sciences Project Manager, and her team of Ian Turnbull, Noel Pickering, Greg Walsh, and Adam Gordon.

As part of the government’s Extractive Resources Strategy, ERR will soon carry out onsite visits to ensure quarry operations meet standards and regulations.

Box Hill Institute currently delivers training from Certificate II to Advanced Diploma in Surface Extraction Operations, which prepare quarry operators, leading hands, managers and CEOs to run quarries of all sizes. We are the only public TAFE that teaches these courses and there are 535 quarries in Victoria.

Diane and her team train in environmental units, sustainability, legal compliance, water and stockpile management, site processing operations, people performance, manage budgets, manage major incidents and emergencies, feasibility studies, conduct business negotiations all aspects of running a quarry.

Following a meeting with the Institute of Quarrying Australia’s new CEO, Kylie Fahey, Box Hill Institute has also been selected as the preferred provider of nationally accredited quarrying courses required by state regulators to operate a quarry. This training will occur in all Australian states and will be delivered face-to-face and via a successful distance model where quarry managers can skype in the evening so as not to disrupt their work schedule.

Box Hill Institute values industry partnerships and the extractive industries team aims to work with industry and government partners that recognise the value of our quality training, ideas and expertise.

In Queensland, the government has mandated that quarry operators must have Certificate IV in Surface Extraction Operations or a Diploma of Surface Operations Management, depending on the size of the operations. If they don’t have these, they will be shut down. The requirement is expected to be adopted by regulators down the eastern seaboard with NSW next to follow.

 

Pictured: Ian Turnbull, Diane Wilson and Noel Pickering