Genevieve Hey
Director/Principal Consultant, Genevieve Hey Consulting Pty Ltd
A mines’ safety and health management system must provide protocols for physical and psychological impairment; but what does this mean? A protocol, like a standard operating procedure, governs behaviour and the performance of tasks; therefore, it should be underpinned by a sound risk management process that identifies and controls hazards within the given context. Unfortunately, studies show that industry more readily applies risk management processes to physical rather than psychological hazards; nevertheless, both must be considered for health and safety obligations to be fully discharged.
To complicate matters further, the analysis of psychological risk differs from that of physical risk due to its complexity.
Psychological risk factors are multi-causal, not directly observable and their severity is largely determined by individual perception. With this in mind, how is psychological risk quantified without bias and in a way that facilitates its systematic analysis? Additionally, how are protocols that reflect a mines’ unique psychosocial risk profile developed?
This paper provides the answer by discussing two workplace psychosocial risk assessment tools that are freely available online and grounded in evidence-based psychological research. Furthermore, these tools can be easily applied at your mine by your own Human Resource or Health and Safety specialists.
Mark Holmes
Chairman, Circadian Australia
Until recently, key decisions on fitness for duty in the mining industry relied on subjective self-assessment by individual workers and subjective assessments made by Supervisors and Health and Safety Professionals.
Circadian Australia’s holistic approach to enhancing Sleep Quality, Sleep Quantity, Alertness, Safety, Health, Wellbeing and the Sustainable Resilience of workers in the Mining Industry, combines scientifically validated Fatigue Science Readiband™ Real-Time and Predictive Alertness Actigraphy data with Awareness, Education, Training, and confidential sleep coaching for individuals.
By collecting and analysing scientifically validated, objective, sleep and alertness data we help mining industry workers to take the guesswork out of measuring and managing sleep, fatigue and human performance and to visualise their alertness levels for the day and/or night ahead so they can operate and perform at their very best by knowing how circadian disruption, shift work and extended hours are impacting sleep quality, sleep quantity, their real-time and predictive alertness.
Developed with proprietary algorithms from the US Army Research Lab, the Readiband™ is the only validated system than can understand the cumulative effects of sleep and translate them into an objective, predictive measure of one’s alertness (fatigue).
Graham Houldsworth
Principal Advisor – Strategy and Compliance, Glencore Copper Assets
Andrew Russell
Managing Director, Actrua Performance Cultures
Over the course of the past two and a half years Glencore’s North Queensland Copper Operations have developed and implemented a new generation of integrated safety programs that combine behavioural and system based approaches. Initially a project designed to align best practices in the group and to re-invigorate a focus on behavioural based safety programs, a series of iterations has achieved a suite of integrated and aligned pre-start meetings, leadership development programs and common language for the entire workforce.
Partnering with Performance Culture partner, Actrua, a model of co-creation and joint facilitation has allowed passionate employees to develop and own programs that are consistently applied and tailored to the cultural nuances of a large and complex operation spanning multiple geographies.
This presentation aims to showcase the program that has been developed, to share the processes undertaken during development and provide insight into the changes in strategic direction and thinking that were required to make the program a success.
David Howell
Tailings and Water Coordinator, Rio Tinto Weipa Operations
Luke Pendrigh
Tailings and Water Electrician, Rio Tinto Weipa Operations
During normal operation at the Water Treatment Plant the inlet screen in the Bio Reactor blocks with debris, sludge and fecal matter. The cleaning of the inlet screen was a laborious task that exposed maintainers to raw sewage and repeated manual handling risks. The crew came up with an engineering control that completely prevented the inlet screen from blocking, eliminating the need to remove and clean the screen. With this new system functioning the crew have removed a great deal of frustration and reduced the handling of this inlet screen to planned maintenance intervals and significantly reducing the crew’s exposure to the biological risk.
In continuing with the desire from industry to share in key learnings from site-related incidents and following on from the themes of previous conferences, this session will be an open forum from people (within the industry) who will be talking about key issues and challenges faced at times on their site.
This session will be a grass roots session without “spin”. A simple presentation outlining what occurred and what changes have been implemented to ensure that things are being done differently. It is for you to consider the relevance to your site and determine if you have a similar exposure, and the controls in place to reasonably preclude a similar event.
Facilitator: Damien Wynn, General Manager and Senior Site Executive, AngloAmerican - Grasstree Mine
Sharing their Experiences:
Grader Fatality Incident and Tree Felling Multiple Injury Incident
Paul Stephan, General Manager and SSE, Anglo American Moranbah North Mine
North Goonyella Spontaneous Combustion Event
Peter Baker, Senior Vice President, Underground Operations, Peabody Australia
Drill Rig Incident at Bulgar Open Cut, New South Wales
Jeff Kelly, Operations Manager, Glencore
Bobby Irving
Queensland Territory Manager, Bolle Safety
Bollé was founded in 1888 in Oyonnax, France. As an Industry leader with innovative products, the Bollé family has grown from the small workshop beginnings to become the leading global manufacturer of quality eyewear. Today, more than 100 years later, Bollé protective eyewear is distributed and worn in all parts of the globe. Glasses, goggles and face shields for industry, always more efficient, more protective and more comfortable. Think Innovative Vision, think Bolle Safety.
Jenny Krasny
Senior Customer Safety & Fatigue Consultant, Caterpillar Inc.- Caterpillar Safety Services
Sleep deprivation, abnormal sleeping patterns, long commute times, and highly repetitive, sustained and monotonous tasks are common predictors of fatigue across the mining industry. Fatigue is a reality that our industry faces, and while all would agree that it is a critical risk that must be managed, understanding the severity of that risk and developing the associated controls has been a challenge… until recently. Using wearable devices, the condition of our operators, employees and managers can be assessed easily and accurately, enabling solutions for fatigue mitigation and management to come to the fore. The dilemma, however, is that solutions developed for one operation do not always apply to other operations due to the unique differences in rosters, sleeping conditions, commute times and a multitude of other variables.
Having worked across four continents, supporting various mining operations identify, mitigate and manage their fatigue risk, Jenny Krasny will present to you not only the state of fatigue in our industry, but also some of the unique and innovative solutions customers are adopting to manage fatigue risk.
Nikky LaBranche
Industry Fellow, Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre, Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland
David Cliff
Professor of OHS in Mining, Minerals Industry – Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre, Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland
NIKKY LaBRANCHE – Nikky is a resources sector professional with mining engineering and health and safety research experience spanning three continents. She is currently an Industry Fellow with the Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre undertaking a strategic gap analysis of particulates in the resources sector. Her research interests also include incident management practices and accident/injury analysis and investigation.
Nikky is currently Chair of the AusIMM Southern Queensland Branch and a Board Member of the AusIMM Health and Safety Society. She holds an MBA and both an RPEQ and Professional Engineer credentials in the US.
DAVID CLIFF – David has over 30 years in the resources sector in Australia. His experience spans both research and consulting settings as the manager of both the Occupational Hygiene Environment and Chemistry Centre and the Mining Research Centre at SIMTARS, Occupational Health and Safety Advisor to the Queensland Resources Council and Professor of OHS in Mining and Professor of Risk and Knowledge Transfer at the University of Queensland.
David has provided OHS advice particularly in the areas of OHS risk management, governance and education and training. He has provided this specialist support to governments, unions and companies.
Rod Lansdowne
Outbye Electrical Coordinator
The Problem
A recent incident report identified a “Near Miss” at an underpass intersection between the 2nd main travel routes of the mine, involving a loader and a man transporter. Safety meetings with crews identified that with the LED strip lighting underground, it made it difficult to identify vehicles entering the main headings from blind corners, and suggestions were made to remove strip lighting from around the underpass intersections to allow identification of vehicles at the intersection (via headlights on the vehicles).
The Solution
After further consultation, it was decided not to remove the current lighting from the intersection but to find a solution that would work within all the current controls under the Mine Transport Rules. Work was already being trialled on using coloured LED indication for belt monitoring purposes, and testing began on using the same string of LED to use an amber light to give an indication of movement from around the blind corner. An ultrasonic system was chosen, as a way of removing human behaviour, and testing to confirm functionality, so that either vehicle or pedestrian would activate the warning lights. A trial was put in place at 30ct underpass to test overall functionality and allow feedback from the workforce as to what changes were required prior to implementing through out the mine.
Benefits/Effects
By adding an autonomous warning system, it gives a visual warning to vehicles/pedestrians in the travel roads of movement around the blind corner. Being autonomous, there is no reliance on people’s behaviours or attitude.
Transferability
Already looking at using the same system to change existing block lights on site to ultrasonic, replacing existing drift lighting with the same LED strips, use of LED strips to indicate gas levels at TG machine doors.
Innovation
Combined current technologies to achieve working system.
Approximate Cost – $2600 for single control box and lighting