SKILLS DEVELOPMENT FEATURE (SA MINING)

June 2011

Wade Walker’s big heart

Electrical and Instrumentation company, Wade Walker, a wholly owned subsidiary of Murray & Roberts since 2009 is genuinely committed to skills development and training; and has a safety culture so well entrenched in its employees that it has not recorded an occupational fatality since the company was founded 30 years ago. The company has been through a leadership transition, but is paying no less attention to retaining all the ‘necessary’ requirements to ensure its safety record and service delivery remains unchanged, MD Tim Wakefield and HR manager Colin Caister tell Laura Cornish.

Having worked within the Murray & Roberts Cementation business for over 20 years, Wakefield (who joined Wade Walker in April 2010) sees an opportunity for the company to bridge and maximise on synergies by engaging across the group’s companies, particularly in areas of employee career development and leadership training.

“Enhancing the existing Wade Walker skill set to fill a growing marketplace void is one of the opportunities which will see Wade Walker grow,” says Wakefield – a mechanical engineer by profession.

The company currently employs 78 permanent staff and manages around 600 limited duration contract employees, many drawn from communities local to their job site. The challenge of rapidly up skilling the locals in a short term contracting environment is one frequently met by Wade Walker’s site leadership.

“The need to empower our employees has always been strongly rooted within the Wade Walker family, where on the job coaching, training and skills development are considered ‘a part of the job’ to instill the right culture and ethics in our workforce,” says Caister.

Having ‘officially’ commenced with a programme in 2005 aimed at developing and uplifting its own employees – in terms of supervisory skills, construction knowledge and safety approaches, today most of Wade Walker’s historically previously disadvantaged South Africans (HPDSAs) are skilled specialists and foremen, mainly in the fields of electrical and instrumentation work, boiler-making, welding and construction planning.

“Our commitment and actions towards developing our staff and training them definitely exceeds the basic stipulated requirements,” Caister adds.

Wade Walker provides its staff with a career path, which in turn has resulted in a very small staff turnover – even now as it starts to recover from the aftermath of a hard-hitting recession.

Every employee is provided with the opportunity to progress upwards in the company, and develop themselves as valuable contributors to meet business goals and thereby contribute to sustainability of the industry.

“We strive to engender loyalty, and loyalty enhances safety, productivity and quality,” Wakefield pronounces.

Wade Walker trains its sub-contractors in terms of safety systems and site disciplines – but intends to bring more of their construction skill permanently in-house as well. This will enhance the company’s sustainability in the face of a lack of industry training, and thereby reap the rewards of such an investment for mutual benefit of all stakeholders.

While the company’s forefront values include habitual behavioural and safety compliance and superior technical skill levels through a training-focus, it is not without challenges.

“Today you are recognized in the first instance as qualified, in any field, with a piece of paper as proof of your skill level. Often the piece of paper is merely an indication of potential and not competence. As a company we are proud to know that our employees’ skills are real, and not just qualified by a document. In fact in a number of cases we have the reverse situation where we are driving the process of recognising real site skills by assisting our employees to get formal accreditation so that they can take up their rightful places in our industry,” Wakefield points out.

Since joining the company, Wakefield has also driven the adoption of performance contracts and formal career development plans for more senior employees, in full alignment with the Murray & Roberts leadership model. The benefits are many – from a client perspective the depth of knowledge in the company is retained through proper succession planning, the values of the organisation and culture outlive individuals and employee turnover remains low.

Wade Walker is completing or currently underway with a number of projects, although Wakefield wants to increase this as well.

In consortium with Actom the company is the final stages of commissioning small power and lighting at all the northern stations, emergency shafts and tunnel for the Gautrain.

Other clients include Adamus Resources Nzema gold project in Ghana; Debswana’s Morupule colliery and Jwaneng cut 8 expansion in Botswana; Aquarius Platinum’s Kroondal mine; Goldfields’ South Deep gold mine (power for tailings - handling of backfill); De Beers Voorspoed diamond mine; Xtrata’s Mototolo (E&I underground); Impala 16 shaft; Areva Trekkopje uranium mine and Foskor (materials handling application).