CASE STUDY
GroundHog LMS Helps Cementation Americas Standardize training, elevate safety, saving 100 man hours annually, and providing ROI within one year
Cementation Americas, an underground mine contracting and engineering company, provides development and production services for mining clients around the world. Cementation Americas is a two-time recipient of the Sentinels of Safety Award from the National Mining Association (NMA), which is given to the nation’s safest mines with a minimum of 4,000 injury-free hours. Cementation Americas Eagle Mine has gone 8 years without a lost-time incident. The company is wholeheartedly committed to the ultimate goal of zero harm within their operations.
In support of their mission, they set out to streamline the way they manage the safety training and operator training for their staff, wanting to ‘educate’ their people. Starting at Eagle Mine, a sulfite-based ore body owned by Lundin Mining Corporation, they implemented the GroundHog Learning Management System (LMS).
Already having found success with GroundHog’s Short Interval Control (SIC), they selected GroundHog’s LMS product to digitize and streamline the way they approach their training programs, wanting to empower their staff and further solidify their commitment to safety. LMS is now the integral platform for their annual refresher, new miner, experienced miner training for 127 team members at the Eagle Mine. Since the publication of this case study, all Cementation Americas projects have implemented LMS, including 10 teams, and 300+ personnel at operations in Mexico, Utah, Michigan, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, and Louisiana. The corporate office has implemented it for HR trainings company-wide.
COMPANY
OBJECTIVE:
To elevate safety by digitizing their training and certification programs
OUTCOME:
ROI within one year; One full week of time each year, saved for each Safety Trainer; $100k savings in paper and printing costs
CHALLENGE
With a large staff, and an arduous paper process, Cementation Americas wanted to streamline the way they managed training, certifications and the process surrounding it. Training documentation was kept in various silos, and stacks of boxes with outdated paper records. Communication was segmented, and it was clear that to continue to maximize safety for their staff, they needed to upgrade the way they managed their process and documentation. Starting with 127 staff on-site at the Eagle Mine, the annual refresher alone took 3-4 days, taking groups of 30 at a time. The training team would spend days managing the paperwork before and after the training, scanning documents, and updating their matrix spreadsheet with certifications and training records.
Supervisors and operation managers had an arduous time making sure the right operators were trained for equipment, and tracking training and certifications, not only for safety, but for compliance. The annual refresher was the biggest challenge, easily taking up a full week for each trainer, and estimated thousands of dollars in paper.
SOLUTION
The team at Cementation Americas selected GroundHog’s end-to-end Learning Management System (LMS) safety training platform to streamline the way they manage their training programs, starting with the Eagle Mine. They are always working hard to stay ahead of regulatory and operational safety requirements, and their number one priority is ensuring the safety of their biggest asset – their team. LMS has enabled them to streamline the way they monitor certifications, manage training programs, and optimize scheduling, in one easy-to-use, purpose-built cloud-based system.
With some targeted system training by GroundHog staff, the Cementation America team found that the database setup was seamless, and they were able to immediately begin uploading training documents to standardize materials both at the Eagle Mine, as well as 9 other operations around the country and Mexico.
They selected LMS because of its ability to provide their safety trainers with:
- Streamlined training tools
- Optimized planning and scheduling
- Accurate record keeping
- Enhanced tracking resources
- Accurate staff compliance tracking
- Centralized training documentation
- Real-time notifications
RESULTS
At the Eagle Mine’s annual refresher training in June, immediate value was found when the need for paper sign-in and printed training materials was eliminated. 127 trainees signed into the class through LMS on mobile devices, accessed all materials digitally, and their employee profiles were automatically updated. The Safety Trainer saved 4-5 days by not having to process paper documents before training, and enter results into a spreadsheet afterwards, and the company saved thousands of dollars in paper. Cementation Americas has since rolled out LMS at all their US-based sites, as well as Mexico, and they are now benefiting from.
- All training and regulatory paperwork is digitized, streamlined cross-site
- Improved communication, reduced effort cross-site at 10 locations
- ROI in under a year
- Total number of manhours saved for trainers – one week per trainer, annually
- Total resources eliminated – $150k saved in paper and printing costs at all 10 sites
Other benefits that Cementation Americas has cited
- They have developed a cross-departmental ‘system’ for documentation and compliance
- Supervisors can reference who has taken which course, at a glance
- Operations can look up equipment piece to see all of people who are signed off
- Each staff member has a QR code for quick-scan and lookup of certifications and training
- Alerts are received when personnel are due for refreshers
- Have eliminated using an arduous spreadsheet as training matrix
- They can document audiograms in profile for advanced notes
- The HR department now uses it for their training
- Staff says LMS is easy to navigate, easy to use
Ken Groves
Health & Safety Superintendent,
Cementation USA, Eagle Mine
“Groundhog is an elegant solution to safety documentation and production documentation. The training documentation and the ability to add one-stop-shop for an entire training package is amazing for safety professionals. Its been amazing and I can’t say enough about it. It’s saved us a tremendous amount of time that we can reinvest our efforts in things that allow us to be forward-thinkers and innovators.”
