Mining companies must make sure they get value from new technologies

TORONTO - July 10, 2013 - PRLog -- There are many technologies that could help improve mine safety, but some of them have not really been proven in a mining environment, according to Craig Ross, Vice President, Safety, Health and Risk, Barrick Gold.

A speaker at the upcoming marcus evans Health and Safety Excellence in Mining Conference, Ross said that Barrick Gold is currently testing some technologies in a working environment to understand if they work and what resources are required.

Ross advised: “Mining companies must consider the costs and resources they need to put into technologies, and what maintenance will be necessary to sustain them. For a piece of technology to change people’s behaviors and improve operational safety, companies must manage what they apply. The management piece is the most critical part. Without it, the technology will fail. You cannot simply bolt a proximity detection device on a truck and expect it to fix anything. If the alarm starts beeping, will the operator know what to do? What if there are false alarms and he stops paying attention to them? The technologies in the market today are not perfect, so we have to be extremely careful with what we buy and make sure we get value out of them.”

Risk management has been the industry buzzword over the last decade, so many companies are performing formal risk assessments, Ross said. However, the question that he puts forward is whether they are focusing on the right areas. Do they simply react to accidents or also look for what failed in their risk management system? Recognizing warnings is the most important part, then stopping and re-thinking the plan. Ross has found that around 70 percent of the time there is a warning before an accident.  

“Theoretically, we all know what the risks are in our operations and have controls in place to mitigate them, but accidents still reoccur. For example, fall from heights is still one of the leading causes of fatalities in our industry, although we all have controls in place. The numbers have decreased over the years, but our controls have failed us. The question is how come? What is the weakness in our system that is allowing those controls to fail?”

When Barrick Gold does a risk assessment, it assesses the likelihood of particular events, giving them a risk ranking, but it also considers the risk of the actual control failing. That is an even more important component, according to Ross.

“I am trying to shift our focus from worrying about the probabilities and consequences of accidents, to worrying about the potential of our controls failing. That is what causes accidents. Every control must be monitored to ensure they continue doing what is expected of them. You need to determine what type and frequency of monitoring is needed, depending on how critical the control is. The key is to put in place effective controls that are less resource intensive.”

The marcus evans Health and Safety Excellence in Mining Conference will take place at the Hilton Toronto, in Toronto, Canada, July 24-25, 2013. For more information, visit the event website.

For all enquiries contact: Michele Westergaard, Senior Marketing Manager, 312-540-3000 ext. 6625 or michelew@marcusevansch.com.