Safeguarding Mine Lifelines: Sinosteel WISDRI Conducts In-Depth Safety Diagnostics of Shaft Hoisting Systems

To implement the spirit of the National Mine Safety Administration's notice on organizing special rectification of mine hoisting systems and to put work safety month requirements into practice across on-site risk control and hazard investigation, Sinosteel Wuhan Safety & Environmental Protection Research Institute Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Sinosteel International, rapidly assembled a dedicated task force. The team travelled to 14 key domestic mines to carry out special safety diagnostics of shaft hoisting systems.

The task force comprised senior and mid-level technical specialists in mining, electromechanical systems, special equipment and safety standardization. Drawing on its proprietary hazard determination database, the team compiled a checklist of 172 items across 23 categories and conducted item-by-item benchmarking and root-cause analysis of 47 complete shaft hoisting equipment sets and 129 hoisting steel wire ropes. The diagnostics covered 14 mining enterprises under China Baowu, China National Gold and Shandong Changyi.

The diagnostics identified four systemic shortcomings prevalent across the industry: equipment ageing accounting for 32%, formalistic operation and maintenance practices for 41%, outdated institutional systems for 18%, and non-standard personnel operations for 9%. Adhering to a mine-specific approach, the task force tailored differentiated remediation plans for each mine and delivered 26 on-site training sessions on hoisting system safety management, reaching nearly 800 mine management and frontline personnel.