EHS

Boart Longyear’s Environmental, Health & Safety (“EHS”) program has matured into an industry-leading system that keeps our employees safer, limits environmental impacts and adds significant value to our business operations, customers and shareholders.

In 2012, although Boart Longyear staff worked a record number of hours (up 6% over 2011), injuries and reported incidents were down substantially and other EHS prevention indicators fell sharply.

For Boart Longyear, EHS is a priority at every level of our organisation, from the Boardroom to the drill platform. By engaging our employees consistently and continually around core EHS principles, we are driving a system in which these principles are applied to the workplace every day.

The company’s ISO-14001 and OHSAS-18001 certified EHS programs include a dedicated focus on design and manufacture which ensure our products deliver value to clients both in the services and products we provide. Examples include:

• Making safety personal by focusing efforts on those incident types that tend to injure industry personnel most frequently (ie hand and finger injuries) or which have the most potential for serious injury or death (driving). Our goal is for all our employees to return home safe, every day.
• Coupling the mandatory use of high-visibility gloves in high-risk environments with innovative development of tools for drill-rod handling that safeguard our employees’ hands.
• Installing remote-vehicle monitors in more than 500 vehicles that allow us to track driver performance and provide real-time feedback to drivers, their supervisors and senior management. This investment has led to a noticeable improvement in driving performance and measurable reductions in driving-related incidents, injuries and related costs.
• Transitioning to 100% water-based paints for the production of drilling products, which reduces emissions of volatile organic compounds and improves workplace health.
• Global tracking of a robust set of waste and utility metrics with a view to minimising waste and improving environmental resource utilisation, while adding a competitive advantage through reduced costs.

Boart Longyear has an enviable record with regard to EHS performance, among the best in the business. We want our clients to do business with us for our safe and environmentally sustainable value-added approach to our work. We also believe that our EHS culture provides superior value to our shareholders and other stakeholders.

Environmental Sustainability

FY 2012 marked the first full year of Boart Longyear’s global sustainability initiative. Following this work, sustainability has now been incorporated into our revised EHS Management System, EHS Standards and EHS risk assessment process. The Company’s sustainability strategy seeks to mitigate the impact our operations have on the following three areas:

Air Quality

Boart Longyear now tracks the operation of our drill fleet, support equipment and vehicles in addition to flight miles and process emissions. These data will help us calculate greenhouse gas emissions and set emission reduction goals. Fleet upgrades, restrictions on engine idling and reducing the use of volatile organic solvents and paints are among the steps we have taken to reduce air quality impacts.

Energy and Water Conservation

We are testing the use of pitless drilling methods on four continents to conserve water resources and limit the substantial costs associated with water haulage in arid regions. Energy efficiency improvements include relamping of shop floors, upgrading high-demand, high-load equipment and application of energy-management technologies. As well as reducing power and water consumption, these initiatives also improve profitability.

Waste and Hazardous Materials

Waste minimisation efforts in 2012 included the recycling of scrap metal and other materials worth millions of dollars. In 2013, the Company will reduce inventories of hazardous materials, and improve waste management. Collectively, these efforts are reducing environmental risk and operating costs.

Details on our Sustainability Program are available online at: www.boartlongyear.com/environment.