A major dragline shutdown can put hundreds of people to work on one machine, with massive components to move, tight timeframes and plenty that can change once the work begins. Richglen Maintenance Services found itself managing two when major shutdowns unexpectedly overlapped, putting months of planning to the test.
Richglen provides maintenance, electrical and project services, with shutdown crews working on draglines, shovels and wash plants across the Bowen Basin. Two of its recent major shutdowns involved draglines at separate sites. When one job ran around ten days longer than planned, it overlapped with the start of another major shutdown.
“You can plan these jobs down to the smallest detail, but you can’t plan for everything. Things change once the work gets underway and you have to be able to adapt,” said Managing Director Matt Borg.
“We can be talking to the client 18 months out and doing preliminary work. Then at least two months before the shutdown we’re planning it with the supervisors. They’re developing the methodologies for how we do the work, so when the crews arrive they’ve got a clear plan they can follow.
“As large as draglines are, they’re still one piece of machinery and we might have up to 80 people on a shift. You’ve got to make sure people aren’t working above each other and you really need to plan that schedule and plan for safety outcomes.”
Each shutdown brings together mechanical, structural and electrical work, along with specialist subcontractors for jobs such as cranage and machining. The length of a shutdown varies depending on the maintenance required. Major shutdowns can run for six to eight weeks, while shorter annual outages may run for three or four weeks.
“Draglines have gearboxes and all that sort of stuff in them and from a structural point of view these machines basically shake themselves to pieces, so there’s a lot of cracking,” said Shutdowns Operations Manager John Emerson.
“You don’t really know until you shut the machine down and start to open it up just how bad things are.
“You might have planned to shut a machine down for four weeks, then you open it up and there’s actually six weeks of work in there. Then it’s working with the client to say, okay, can we have an extra two weeks or what’s your priority?
“Every day there’s something else popping up or changing throughout a shutdown, so our teams out there on the ground have to be nimble.”
Matt said there is a lot of time pressure on these jobs because the machines are generally operating 24/7, so shutting one down has a huge production impact.
“We work within the hour, not within the day. If it’s meant to be handed back at 7am on a Tuesday and it goes back at 3pm, then we’re that many hours late.
“It’s about building a culture where people don’t feel that pressure of, ‘I’ve got to be finished by seven o’clock.’ We constantly remind our people that they have the right to stop a job, and if that causes a delay, it causes a delay. If it’s done safe that’s still a good outcome.”
When it comes to working on these machines, the risks are significant.
“We do a lot of hazardous hot work in confined spaces, so we have plenty of controls and procedures in place and allocated people to oversee those spaces,” said John.
“Another one would be lifting and cranage. We’re moving components out of these machines that can weigh up to 65 tonne so you’re managing that as well as working at heights. The boom point is 60-odd metres on these machines and sometimes personnel are working outside the handrails.
“You’ve got to make sure you’re doing it safely. You can’t just throw another ten bodies in there and hope for the best.”
Around 200 people were involved at the peak of one shutdown and about 150 at the start of the second. Across both jobs, Richglen completed 66,700 recordable injury-free work hours, contributing to more than 300,000 recordable injury-free hours across the business in 2026 and more than 900 days without a lost time injury.
Richglen was also recently recognised at the 2026 Resource Industry Network Awards, winning the Safety Foremost Award after taking out the Champion Culture Award in 2025.
“I really am a big believer that the two awards go hand in hand,” said Matt.
“The 900 days LTI free and the 300,000 work hours injury free are great, but they’re statistics and they can change at any time.
“Any injury, even one stitch in a finger, is a recordable injury, but as a business the risks we’re really focused on are the ones that could lead to a fatality – confined space, heavy lifting, working at heights, mobile equipment and electrocution.
“We have critical controls that we’ve identified within the business and each of our managers and I go out once a month and do a verification to make sure those controls are in place.
“When we do have an incident or an injury, the culture within the business is to actually learn from that, not blame that person for doing the wrong thing. It’s really looking behind the scenes and investigating it and making sure we’re putting good things in place that will stop it in the future.
“When you start to build that culture within your team where workmates are looking out for workmates and people are having those hard conversations, it just becomes the way they work.”
