Teamwork and the Chilean Mine Rescue

If you’ve ever doubted the importance of teamwork and collaboration, just look to the Chilean mine rescue. “A Life-Saving Synchronized Event” details the roles of each member of the greeting team. It is a calm and methodical process taking place to meet each miner. As the writer Tsu Dho Nimh explains:

I have seen rescues, trained for rescue work, and participated in rescues; this team is world-class. It’s the biggest news story of the day, maybe the year, and they are as calm and methodical as if they were directing traffic on a village side street.

While trapped in the mine, the miners were a cohesive team. They created a structured system where each took on roles for the group.

The Chilean mine rescue also offers a broader picture of global collaboration. Chile was supported with the help of the international community to save the miners. Some examples:

• Yamazaki Nabisco Co. supplied candy designed for astronauts at the request of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.
• Gunze Ltd. offered two sets of T-shirts and boxer briefs made from odor-eating fibers to each of the miners.
• Goldwin Inc. provided odor-fighting underwear, shipping products that it co-developed with JAXA.
• Oakley donated the sunglasses that provide them with protection from ultraviolet light.
• South African construction giant Murray & Roberts supplied a drill and six South African engineers are part of the international team of engineers, geologists, and mining experts who worked around the clock to secure the release of the trapped miners. Murray & Roberts Holdings Ltd., South Africa’s second- largest construction company by market value, and its Chilean affiliates provided a large-diameter drilling machine called the Strata 950 for use in the rescue. The 40-ton machine, which was already in Chile, was one of at least three devices used to bore into the earth as rescuers tried to reach the miners.
• Aries Central California Video in East Central Fresno designed a camera that was lowered nearly a mile into the ground sending back shots of the miners. The cameras are designed to inspect water wells and boreholes and reach a depth of more than 5-thousand feet.
• One of Canada’s largest oil drillers Precision Drilling Corp. was asked to move its only drilling rig in the South American nation more than 1,000 kilometres to the mine site. Their role was to build a backup rescue shaft.
• Winning the three-way race to reach the 33 miners trapped in Chile, drillers from Kansas City-based Layne Christensen Co. broke through. Working as a team, Layne and Geotec drilled a 5-inch hole nearly 2,300 feet, reamed it to 12 inches and finally to 26 inches in diameter — large enough to accommodate the “Phoenix” rescue capsule. Americans Jeff Hart, field supervisor with Layne Christensen Co., and James Stefanic, operations manager with Geotec Boyles Bros., could be called heroes. They were called in to Chile as part of a special team to oversee and drill the rescue shaft. Geotec and its equipment manufacturers — Center Rock Inc. made the drill bit and Schramm Inc. made the truck-mounted drill.
• UPS, the US shipping company, brought a 13-ton drilling tool from Pennsylvania in less than 48 hours. United Parcel Service Inc. sent seven shipments with more than 50,000 pounds (22,680 kilograms) of mining equipment “that required creative logistics with multiple flights and trucks.”
• Zephyr Technologies, the Annapolis, Maryland-based maker of the remote monitors of vital signs that miners will wear during their ascent, has workers on the scene.
• NASA offered expert advice on medical, nutritional and behavioral health issues. The NASA team also provided suggestions regarding the rescue cages that were specially-designed to pull the trapped miners out of the shaft that was dug over 2,000 feet into the Earth. A team of NASA doctors and engineers recommended that Chilean authorities regulate the day-and-night sleep patterns of the miners, boost their Vitamin D intake and phase in an exercise program as their nutrition improves. The NASA team has been in Chile to help rescuers develop plans for maintaining the health of miners. The NASA team, said regulating sleep patterns requires establishing a “lighted community area” that is always lit and a “dark sleeping area” that is always shuttered. Regulating the time the miners eat and exercise would help them get in a pattern, NASA experts said. The miners’ vital signs were closely monitored throughout the ride, given a high-calorie liquid diet donated by NASA, designed to prevent nausea from any rotation of the capsule as it travels through curves in the 28-inch-diameter escape hole.
• The miners got support from a group of former rugby players who survived more than two months of isolation in the Andes four decades ago. Ramon Sabella, Pedro Alcorta, Jose Inciarte and Gustavo Servino were among 16 Uruguayans who survived a plane crash in the snow-covered peaks and waited 72 days to be rescued. Some were forced to eat the flesh of friends killed in the crash to stay alive.
• Jeff Hart was drilling water wells for the U.S. Army’s forward operating bases in Afghanistan when he got the call to fly to Chile. He spent the next 33 days on his feet, operating the drill that finally provided a way out for the 33 trapped miners.
• An Australian drilling consultant Kelvin Brown, of Perth, flew to Chile to help direct precision drilling to a refuge chamber.

I’m sure many more people, companies and organizations from around the world have helped in this rescue mission. And without the collaboration and support from these and others, today may not have happened. So when you have a mission of your own, why not collaborate with others to reach a solution. It just might help.