Deanna McMaster, Partner and
Rhian O’Sullivan, Special Counsel, MinterEllison
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Evan Greenaway – Superintendent CHPP, Anglo American Capcoal
Anthony Duck – Operations Manager, Dust-A-Side Australia Pty Ltd
ABSTRACT
No matter the industry, whether it’s mining, rail, shipping or agriculture, dealing with dust is unavoidable.
Massive sites with high yields across any industry will have multiple dust generation points. Controlling dust generated during the transport of materials via conveyors and trucks on haul roads presents a unique set of challenges to mining operations.
In situations where there are multiple dust generation points, it’s rarely enough for a site to just wet all material and expect the dust to be controlled throughout each stage of processing.
In this Anglo open cut site and coal handling and processing plant a two-pronged approach incorporating both Dust Prevention and Dust Suppression is being used to control not only the dust you see, but the microscopic dust that you can’t see – the dust that creates health and environmental concerns, and regulatory issues.
While we continue to test its success, we believe this “smart”, flexible, integrated system, combining technology and well-developed products with attention-to-detail management can ultimately reduce dust exposure to people, equipment and environments.
The expertise exists to implement total dust control solutions in any situation. The key is to find the right type of solution for each specific dust generation point.
Dr Joel Spencer – Chief Executive Officer, The Institute for Drone Technology
ABSTRACT
The mining industry has been one of the great adopters of drone technology. The combination of clear use cases, the legal ability to operate drones around mines, the development of easily deployable systems, and the character of mine locations and the kinds of work undertaken, has seen drone use increase rapidly. Safety, cost efficiency and the ability more accurately capture actionable data (and new data) has underpinned this growth.
However, as in other industries, the deployment of drones in larger numbers has lead to a number of challenges for the safe operation of drone technology. Operating 50 drones safely is very different to operating 5 drones safely. We have been working with clients and partners in a number of industries, including in mining, to develop standardised safe management and training systems around the use of drone technology at scale. This presentation gives an overview of what this work has covered and where it is going in the future.
Prof Ismet Canbulat – Professor and Chair of Rock Mechanics, The University of New South Wales
ABSTRACT
There is an increasing trend to use multimedia visuals as tools in training to enhance learning process, which help to better present the concepts and contents. In 2017 ACARP initiated a project to develop new advanced videos to update the geotechnical awareness and training video (i.e., Black Gold) for open cut coal mines utilising the latest technology in animation and visualisation.
The benefits of these videos are:
• They are powerful as they empower employees and improve productivity and safety
• They are cost-effective; when developed, they can be used by all operations and mines
• They save time in training, providing more learning in less time
• They can be deployed quickly and efficiently
• They offer a consistent experience
• They are flexible (i.e., deploy, stop, rewind, forward etc)
• They give more time to geotechnical engineers to fulfil their other day-to-day duties
Two distinct modulus, one for the operators and supervisors and the other one for the technical service teams, have been developed in the project.
These videos focus on the following aspects:
1. Operational hazard identification and control
2. Mining practices and associated impact on geotechnical aspects
3. Geotechnical processes and systems
4. Role of geotechnical engineers
5. Equipment capabilities
This presentation summarises the development of Geotechnical Hazard Awareness and Training Videos for the open cut coal mining industry.
Philippa Dodshon – PhD Student and Researcher, Sustainable Minerals Institute
ABSTRACT
Serious incidents continue to occur in high risk industries such as mining. Irrespective of work undertaken the majority of incidents seem to be repeats of previous similar incidents. The ICMM reported the main reasons we are continuing to see fatalities, serious injuries, and high potential incidents is due to risks not being properly identified, controls not being put into place, or controls not being effectively implemented or maintained. The ICMM developed a critical control risk management (CCRM) program that focuses on identifying and managing those controls critical to preventing catastrophic and fatal events.
Many companies in the mining industry are currently implementing this process. An important aspect of any risk management program is investigating and learning from events in order to improve the control of hazards. However incorporating or embedding the CCRM approach is not explored or explained in the ICMM guideline documents.
This presentation describes an investigation process that enables practitioners to identify ways organisations can further enhance the effectiveness of their risk controls. It specifically enhances an organisations ability to assess the effectiveness of human (the acts) and organisational (the systems) risk controls after an incident occurs. It will also discuss findings from pilot case studies done with several mining companies and sponsored by the MCA.
Cristian Sylvestre – Managing Director, HabitSafe
ABSTRACT
Queensland Mines and Energy initiated in March 2008, a review of the role of human factors in mining incidents and accidents in Queensland.
What followed was the largest independent and most comprehensive study of a portion of mining incidents across all classes of mining in Queensland.
This presentation will recount the findings of the study and what lessons for leadership are present. It will explore the presence of human factors, the most abundant factor and the role leadership played in these incidents. It will also explore the strengths and weaknesses of the data set, so a balanced view is presented.
Importantly, the paper will present how to move forward with these findings and offer research supported steps leaders can take to reduce the impact of the most prevalent human factors.
Glenda Abraham – Chief Engagement Officer, Mine Super
ABSTRACT
In addition to the substantial personal costs, poor financial wellness is a major drag on Australian businesses, costing an estimated $33 billion per annum. According to Workplace Super Specialists of Australia’s ‘Workplace Financial Wellness Index’, employees who lack financial wellness tend to be more stressed, as observed by more than three in five employers (63.3%). A significant number of employers also noted presenteeism (43.3%), low morale (30%), and absenteeism (16.7%) as other consequences of poor financial wellness. This data clearly shows a connection between tired, disengaged and distracted employees and an increase in work health safety incidents.
This presentation will help you integrate a financial wellness program as part of a holistic approach to employee wellbeing and a component of a healthy workplace.
Paul Shorthouse – Senior Training Officer, Simtars
ABSTRACT
Queensland legislation requires all coal mines, mineral mines and quarries to have an induction process. These inductions, including the current Standard 11 mine induction, address a wide range of topics including risk management, vehicle interaction, fire-fighting and a generic isolation procedure. The underpinning knowledge that is required and crammed into two days only allows for a brief amount of time to focus on the main points and not given the attention and time they require. This makes the induction more of a ‘tick in the box’ exercise rather than a valuable strategy aimed at training the worker to stop and think about what is required to safely accomplish the task they are about to perform.
This talk will ponder the following questions: Is the current induction process effective? What metrics should we be using to gauge its effectiveness? How can the delivery of the course be improved to increase knowledge retention and improve the decision making choices of mining personnel? Are meaningful inductions even more important with the casualisation of the workforce? What additional training could decrease the amount of injuries, accidents, high potential incidents and equipment damage?
Prof Robin Burgess-Limerick – Professor of Human Factors, The University of Queensland
ABSTRACT
Operators of earth-moving equipment at surface mines are exposed to whole-body vibration. Prolonged exposure to high amplitude whole-body vibration accumulates to cause adverse health effects, particularly back disorders. The potential for instantaneous high impact loading also exists and these high impacts (jolts and jars) experienced by earth-moving equipment operators may cause acute injury. ACARP project C23022 successfully demonstrated the use of an iOS application (WBV) as a cost-effective means of measuring whole-body vibration.
An extension of this work is underway which enables continuous communication of the accelerations to which equipment operators are exposed to a central server to facilitate the management of both whole-body vibration and instantaneous impacts. The server software will undertake further analysis and provide an alert in the event that a high amplitude impact on the operator is detected, or when the daily vibration dose approaches the upper limit of the ISO2631.1 Health Guidance Caution Zone. The vibration data will also be combined with GPS data to allow further analysis of the sources of elevated whole-body vibration levels and high impact incidents.
David Chatto – Head of REMSAFE
ABSTRACT
Isolation of machinery is an everyday occurrence on mine sites, and practices have improved considerably over time. This presentation will explore some of the key advances in isolation
practices over many decades.
Up-to-date isolation-related incident data from Queensland will be presented and examined. It will be suggested that improvement has at best plateaued and that a shift is required in our approach to isolation practices – in particular: a focus on higher-order controls.
Human factors will be identified as the leading ongoing cause of isolation-related incidents. Highly effective, currently available treatment options will be discussed. In particular,
autonomous isolation (often called ‘remote isolation’), will be put forward as a key method of driving step-change improvement in this area. Using James Reason’s model of human error (slips,
lapses, mistakes and violations), it will be shown that autonomous isolation is highly effective in treating all forms of human error.
Case studies will be presented to demonstrate the benefits of autonomous isolation and a recent technical advancement will be introduced to demonstrate the continuing evolution of isolation.
Roseanne Baxter – Occupational Therapist, Encompass Therapy
Holly Whitelaw – Data Collection Officer, Glencore Coal Assets Australia
ABSTRACT
Dozer operation at surface mining operations has traditionally been considered one of the higher risk tasks undertaken in the surface coal mining industry due to exposure to significant levels of whole-body vibration. As per Australian Standard AS2760.1, SafeWork Australia promotes the practice of regular monitoring of whole-body vibration levels and encourages employers to minimise workers’ exposure levels to below levels associated with increased risk of health affects. Although not legally binding, these limits are considered benchmarks in industry monitoring reports.
Recent published Australian research has shown a large spread of exposure levels, some of which exceeded recognised limits for likely health effects. A research project has been undertaken to gather whole-body vibration data matched to video and operator survey to investigate which tasks and in what ground conditions are dozer operators at a surface mining operation exposed to the higher levels of whole-body vibration. This provides rationale for prioritisation of allocation of controls targeted at the tasks and/or ground conditions associated with higher wholebody vibration readings.
Discussion regarding the range of data analysis methods currently referred to in research and industry reporting is advocated to improve consistency of reporting and understanding of results.