Health and Safety

Health and safety (H&S) excellence is one of our core principles and essential to our business. We take a proactive approach to safety and seek to prevent, minimize and manage H&S risks for our employees, contractors and the communities where we operate. Our goal is zero harm.

As of June 30, 2024, 203,383 work hours were completed at Thacker Pass without a lost time incident. A lost time incident refers to an injury resulting in a disability or an employee missing work due to the injury. This accomplishment is not easy and is a testament to the dedication of every single employee to working safely. Our number one goal is to ensure all work in the office and at the worksite is performed safely, including driving to and from those locations. Read our Safety Policy here.

‘Work Safe Home Safe’ Program

Together, Lithium Americas and Bechtel, our engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) contractor, have established a H&S program called ‘Work Safe Home Safe’ based on workplace safety being everyone’s responsibility, including adopting consistent methods to analyze hazards to prevent workplace injuries.

All workers must analyze potential hazards at the beginning of every workday, when new tasks begin and when conditions change, such as weather, footing or changing to new equipment, tools or materials.

Work Safe Home Safe is based on industry standards published by OSHA, MSHA and the international certification process for ISO 45001: 2018 Occupational Health and Safety Management System and is tailored to construction activities.

SafeStart Training

We are proud to partner with SafeStart, the most successful advanced safety awareness and skills development program in the world. SafeStart has been proven to reduce injuries as much as 70% in a short time frame in over 3,000 companies in 60+ countries. The program aims to help people avoid unintentional mistakes that lead to injury, helping them understand when they are most likely to make an injury causing error and what to do to prevent the error in the first place. By providing human error prevention training, SafeStart improves overall workplace safety behaviors, reduces injury, and instills a strong and consistent safety culture.

SHARP Certified

In March 2024, the LAC’s Lithium Technical Development Center was accepted into Nevada SCATS (an OSHA sister agency) Safety and Health Recognition Program (SHARP) for achievements in worksite safety and health.

Learn more about the certification in our blog post.