Boart Longyear's crews at McArthur River reached 14 years LTI-free this year and that achievement has been recognised by the Saskatchewan Mining Association (SMA) with a safety achievement award at the SMA annual general meeting banquet and awards held on March 2, 2018 in Saskatoon.

The SMA also recognised Boart Longyear as the mining contractor with the best safety statistics in 2017. The SMA uses reported statistics for safety incidents including first aid medical consultant frequency, medical incident frequency, modified work days severity, lost time injury, and days lost severity to base the recognition.

"This is a significant accomplishment for Boart Longyear, and it's another example of the good outcomes that can result from the efforts of operational and safety teams living and breathing our safety culture," said Denis Despres, chief operating officer. "We are very proud of our Canadian team's dedication to safety and congratulate them on this prestigious accomplishment.

"On a site level," Despres added, "we value the everyday procedures from standardised pre-start information meetings that focus on daily job tasks and associated hazards and risks, and the daily team and individual-based field level risk assessments. It is everyone's responsibility to work safely."

The company has approximately 640 field employees working on drilling projects like surface and underground exploration, production work, sonic, large diameter rotary, RC and mud rotary drilling.