Who are you and what do you do?

Andrew Taylor – Training Coordinator

When did you start in the mining industry and what was your first job?

I started in mining in 2012 as a fly in fly out apprentice boilermaker.

How different is your job now to what you wanted to be when you were a kid?

I always just made the most of the opportunities that I had in front of me, and I’ve been lucky to work in lots of different roles. It’s been great to join the training team after a long time working in operations underground, but I don’t think I would have pictured myself in this role when I was a kid!

What’s a usual day at work entail?

Days start early and I do anything and everything training related. The office is busy so there are always lots of questions to answer, as well as doing planning and strategy.

What’s the best thing about your job?

I love being in a position to influence things positively for our underground and surface crews, there’s lots of opportunity to play around in systems and work on improvements.

The worst thing?

Seeing people leaving the area, or the industry, is always disappointing.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome?

Making the move away from the crew, and working underground, to come to a surface-based role was a challenge.

What has been your proudest achievement?

Implementing a new training strategy for site, developing something new   which we had never had before has been a huge achievement.

What’s something about your job that would surprise people to know?

Probably that I don’t get a lot of time to do face to face training.

What do you do in your downtime?

Go to the gym.

The mining industry gets more than its fair share of criticism. What is your view of our industry and the impact it has?

I grew up in the area before mining became more prominent and the change in the prosperity, the main streets, and the job opportunities has been great for the region.