In the course of industrial , mining and construction photography, we tend to gather a fair bit of personal protective equipment (PPE) as we go. This all indicates part of the lengths companies go to to ensure their worker’s safety but over a few years it results in us accumulating a bit of a PPE mountain.

So we decided, rather than having a general pile which was getting out of control, we needed to do a proper sort. The image below shows the extent of the problem!

One of the things with PPE is that different operations require different types of safety equipment. Just as an example, when it comes to hardhats, there are a few different kinds and requirements. You get a fairly standard short peaked hardhat for general surface operations and factories. Then for underground they are usually more substantial and of course have a fitting on the front to accommodate a cap lamp. Then again at smelters they require special materials to make them fireproof, or at least resistant to the possibility of flying furnace materials. Then at new mine projects there is shaft sinking where you are working at the bottom of a vertical shaft which may be anything up to two kilometers deep so the hardhats are more substantial and have very wide brims. Also some may have fittings for external earmuffs and/or chinstraps for working at heights. And that’s just hardhats! Multiply this by all the number of different protective items and you can see how the molehill turned into the mountain.

Organisation was needed. So we got stuck in and assigned a full studio cabinet to the task. We eventually figured out a system where we have a section each for Joe, Bryan and myself.

This has helped a lot right away where we no longer have to go through everything figuring out what sizes fit who. There’s still a big “spares” section but at least on a day to day basis we’ve cut down a lot on the required pre-shoot checklist time when it comes to PPE.
Over the years, safety has become more and more important to our industrial and mining clients and as such we need to keep abreast of not only the equipment but also of ever improving measures and protocols.

Geoff Brown is an experienced professional when it comes to professional mining and industrial photography. Contact Planet KB if you would like to know more.