Purpose

The 2023 Mine Health & Safety Recognition Awards have been established to recognize health and safety achievements made by individuals and companies in Colorado’s mining industry during the 2023 calendar year. Awards are based on the nominee’s specific contribution to mine health and safety.

Eligibility

Nominees for the award can include any person, team or company involved in mining or the minerals industry. Consideration for nominations based on an individual person’s years of employment and safety, must prove continuous safety performance without lost-time injury over a period of thirty or more years. Individuals may also receive recognition for other outstanding safety achievement not based on years of service.

Criteria

CMA and DRMS will award the individuals, teams, and companies who, over the past year, demonstrated improved safety achievement, program safety technology, impactful safety training and best practice in the field of mine health and safety.

Awards will be given in categories of:  

• Innovative safety technology
• Impactful safety training and best practices
• Individual with 30+ years of continuous safety performance
• Total Incidate Rate (Application must include 2023 MSHA Report supporting the nomination. Report may be submitted after the deadline if not yet available)

Required Supplemental Document(s)

• 2022 MSHA Report if applying for best company Total Incident Rate (TRIR)
• Testimonial from crew member or supervisor if nominating individual or team for safety performance, training and technology
• Two project related photographs (High resolution—files that are a minimum of 1MB usually qualify)
  • One photo of individual or team
  • One photo of operation to be used at the awards ceremony (if selected for award)

Judging

Judges from the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining & Safety will assess applications based on project description, project planning, organization, implementation, and evaluation.

The best 2023 company Total Incident Rate records among the nominations may receive an award in the categories of large coal mine, small coal mine, large non-coal mine, small non-coal mine. Each nomination for total incident rate must include your 2023 total incident rate statistics and calculations to be considered for this category. Submit: Total Hours Worked, Total Reportable Injuries and Total Reportable Illnesses for 2023. This report should include contractors if the contractors are under the immediate supervision of a company supervisor. A small mine is defined as 1-49 employees and a large mine has 50 or more employees.

Entry

Entries must cover the time period of January 1 - December 31, 2023. 

Submissions

All nominations must be submitted by May 15, 2024

Awards Presentation

Awards will be presented during the Reclamation & Safety Awards Luncheon at CMA's 126th National Western Mining Conference & Exhibition on June 19^th, 2024, in Grand Junction. Photos of the winning entries will be used at the Awards Presentation and will be retained by the Division as a record of entries.

Click here to see past award winners!