IM 2020 September 20 | Page 90

REMOTE SITE SERVICES over three years, the contracts involve three individual unincorporated joint ventures agreements with Sodexo and 100% owned Aboriginal businesses Palyku Enterprises Pty Ltd, Karlka Facilities Management Pty Ltd and Kariyarra Hospitality Services Pty Ltd. Fortescue Chief Executive Officer, Elizabeth Gaines, said: “Fortescue’s Aboriginal procurement initiative and approach to providing opportunities to Aboriginal people has empowered our Native Title partners by building the capability and capacity of Aboriginal businesses. “These contracts are awarded on merit. Each of our business partners have competitively demonstrated their commercial ability to deliver the contracted services and by working within a joint venture, the Aboriginal businesses have the support and opportunity to increase their active participation and build long term sustainability.” Across the three Fortescue sites, Sodexo will provide a range of village services, including accommodation services management to approximately 3,000 workers in a typical week, catering services – serving up to 8,500 meals daily, industrial cleaning, retail, health and wellbeing, transport and airport management services, as well as trade-based maintenance services delivery at Hamilton, Sodexo said. Compass creates a SafeSphere Compass Group is also a major player in mining site services, primarily through its division ESS Support Services Worldwide which provides support services to people and businesses operating in isolated and remote locations such as the Pilbara iron ore hub in WA. Its services include catering, cleaning, village operations and facilities management. Key mines using ESS also include Glencore’s Collinsville and Hail Creek coal mines in Queensland, and various other sites including South32’s GEMCO manganese mine in Northern Territory. A new Compass framework SafeSphere™ supports organisations in getting employees, guests and clients back to enjoying food in the workplace safely and with minimal anxiety. It is described as “an adaptable and customisable program of food, safety and hygiene solutions to provide assurance and confidence in the workplace developed with independent health, safety and audit specialists to specifically deal with consumer anxiety.” “One of the biggest barriers to employees return to work is employee anxiety, with research showing 44% reporting feeling anxious about the prospect of going back to work because of the health risks posed by COVID-19 to them and those close to them. Nearly half of employees are concerned that their employers will bring them back to work before it’s safe. The same number worry about the future of the company they work for and their job specifically,” Mark van Dyck, Regional Managing Director of Compass Group Asia Pacific says.“Employers need to address anxiety and these other concerns when bringing people back to work otherwise they won’t return to pre-COVID productivity and engagement. We designed SafeSphere to help address these issues.” It is a trademarked framework developed in association with 14 independent, health, safety and audit specialists across the region that offers assurance on the safety of all interactions with food in the work environment. It uses an operating model with a set of certifiable standards. While each country has a set of minimum standards in place for operation, SafeSphere ensures a higher level of consistency and comfort with an already established auditable verification and validation process. SafeSphere is divided into key four areas: Human Health & Hygiene, Healthy Spaces & Places, Food Reimagined and Digital Touch. Solutions under these areas address key anxieties consumers are feeling related to eating outside of their homes, including around social distancing, the hygiene and health of people preparing food and the spaces it is consumed in. For example, before beginning a shift, the Compass team undergo a double verification of their health before they can start work, but are also reducing the need for close contact enabling people to pre-order meals and food, access packaged ‘Grab & Go’ meal solutions or use low touch pick-up or delivery-at-work meal options. And it is deploying cashless transaction capabilities across all relevant client sites. SafeSphere also has the latest in digital tools to relieve anxiety about social distancing including people density tracking to ensure distancing compliance. “We developed SafeSphere so it can be adapted in every market whilst providing a baseline level of assurance, making it a complimentary tool for local teams as they return to the workplace.” ISS launches Pure Space ISS is headquartered in Denmark but in Australia counts among its mining clients BHP, BMA, OZ Minerals, Roy Hill, Citic Pacific and Wesfarmers Curragh. It has launched ‘Pure Space’ – a new product offering disinfection cleaning of workplaces focused on breaking the chain of infection between people. The procedure is an add-on to daily working area cleaning services. “Companies need to re-establish the physical connection between people and places by bringing employees back to work environments that meet a higher standard of hygiene and disinfection control. Companies want to restore the emotional connection of employees by building confidence in the safety of the workplace,” says ISS Group COO, Troels Bjerg. Research indicates that a virus applied to a high-contact surface, such as a doorknob or a tabletop, can infect 40-60% of the people in a workplace within two to four hours. Pure Space maximises hygiene and effectively removes all microorganisms that are typical sources of cross-infection. The cleaning focuses on high-touch surfaces – areas that human hands touch often. With Pure Space, surfaces are free of microorganisms and results are tested and evidenced with advanced technology. All ISS cleaning professionals working with Pure Space are fully trained and certified. Pure Space is effective and eliminates all sources of infection on surfaces and has been verified by third party verifier, Norske Veritas. “ISS has a responsibility to help society break the chain of infection. To do that we have developed Pure Space with our scientific knowledge of large-scale cleaning, disinfection and workplace experience. We have developed the product within a few weeks utilising our experts from all over the world. ISS and our people are dedicated to making our customers’ employees reconnect with the places they work, in the aftermath of the corona pandemic,” says Troels Bjerg. “We’ve taken inspiration from the years of experience we have working in clean room environments, hospitals and healthcare organisations with zero tolerance of any breaches in hygiene and disinfection protocols. With Pure Space, we are taking our knowledge and methods of fulfilling those requirements and transferring them to the office environment.” Standard cleaning products tend to focus on visible cleanliness and task frequency – for example, how often the floors are cleaned or how clean they look – but not place as much emphasis on cleaning high-touch surface areas and making ISS says companies including mines need to reestablish the physical connection between people and places by bringing employees back to work environments that meet a higher standard of hygiene and disinfection control 88 International Mining | SEPTEMBER 2020