Kuzbassrazrezugol formulated the first national professional standard for workers in the coal industry. It is the profession of “Bulldozer Operator in Mining Works”.

Kuzbassrazrezugol is leading the development of professional standards for open-pit mining in Russia – this is one of the missions given by the President of the Russian Federation after his meeting with the leaders of the country’s coal regions in August 2019. The methodological support of this work is provided by UMMC. Subsequently, on the basis of these professional standards, unique qualification criteria for workers of all companies in the sector will be developed, after which the educational institutions of the sector will update their curricula.

The eight largest coal mining companies of the country, which are members of the sector working group created on the basis of the association “All-Russian Sectoral Union of Coal Industry Employers”, took part in the public discussions on the project.

The discussion took place in an online format. Kuzbassrazrezugol had been using this format long before the restrictions due to the epidemiological situation, said the head of the Department of Work Organization of the Coal Company and tutor of the Working Group for the Development of National Occupational Standards, Diana Scherbakova. According to her, operational meetings with colleagues from other regions had been held online for a long time.

“That’s why they work on the creation of the professional standards was carried out strictly within the set deadlines. The model of the standard is ready, it still needs to be validated by the Russian Union of Coal Industry Workers (Rosugleprofsoyuz). The Kemerovo Territorial Committee of the Union has already passed a favorable judgment on our work”, – she said.

The participants of the sector working group have already started to work out the following professional standard – “Excavator operator in mining works”. According to initial estimates, it should be ready for approval already in autumn 2020. After that, the working group will move on to the development of the occupational standard “Mining Engineer”, which will cover a very wide spectrum of technical and engineering occupations – from master miner to coal company manager. This work will be carried out in cooperation with the specialists of St. Petersburg Mining School.

The high level of competence of mining workers is a priority for Kuzbassrazrezugol. In 2018 the company was ranked first in the All-Russian competition “The introduction of professional standards in the company’s activity” in the category “Best production company in the field of introducing professional standards”.

Kuzbassrazrezugol Coal Company is a part of Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC) chaired by Iskander Makhmudov and is specialized in opencast coal mining. For now, the company exploits 16 coal deposits and about 70% of the extracted coal is produced abroad. The development strategy of Kuzbassrazrezugol is aimed at further improving the quality and competitiveness of products and gradually increasing the extraction volumes up to 60 million tons of coal in 2035. In order to achieve this, the company regularly modernizes its production processes. In the last five years, the company has invested almost 53 billion rubles into its technical modernization. Today the company’s enterprises operate more than 1 600 units of modern specialized vehicles for coal mining and transportation.

At the same time, the company is constantly striving to reduce the impact of its activity on the environment: in 2019 alone the company has allocated more than 400 million rubles for the implementation of environmental measures. The program of reducing the negative impact on the environment also includes the switch to cleaner fuel.