An alarming drop in company leaders participating in health and safety related activities has been noted by surface mining industry association, ASPASA, which it sees as a significant threat to miners’ wellbeing.
In every mine the senior leader of each unit and the company’s directors are ultimately responsible for providing the leadership, systems and processes for the prevention of fatalities. The actions of senior leaders are fundamental to the elimination of accidents.
This has prompted the association to release special guidelines for its members to encourage a return to the fundamentals of health, safety and environmental management. “We appeal to companies and top management to be involved. This is a guideline to help all in the industry and each company will have to adapt the guidelines to suit their own requirements,” says ASPASA director, Nico Pienaar.
He explains that the guidelines provide resources for senior leaders to use in their drive to prevent fatalities through their personal actions and the processes and activities they have in place. The following guidelines have been made available for all mines to use regardless of their affiliation and in the interest of safety:
Behavioural requirements
- Create and communicate a deliverable vision for fatality elimination
- Challenge your own knowledge and that of others on the causes and prevention of fatalities; seek out expertise and share learnings from others
- Set an example for others to follow that shows you genuinely care, and that is consistent, unambiguous, and relentless in approach
- Consistently demonstrate that fatalities are unacceptable and hold people at all levels accountable for prevention
- Talk about fatalities as people and make clear your personal commitment to prevention
- Be credible; follow through and do what you say you will do
- Engage in inspections and safety discussions at all levels; focus on fatal risks What should I ensure is in place?
Careful planning
- Strategies and plans that specifically encompass the prevention of fatalities
- Measurable indicators of fatality prevention that are regularly reviewed
- A system for providing ongoing education about fatality prevention
- A mechanism to identify and learn from mistakes that regularly and openly share the lessons learnt
- Defined, measurable fatality prevention actions for all senior levels that are communicated to the workforce
- A mechanism for all levels of the organisation to be engaged in the identification of hazards and the elimination, control, and mitigation of fatal risk
- Business initiatives that include an assessment of the contribution to fatality prevention
Actionable initiatives
- Personally understand the fatal risk profile of your business and engage in discussions around potentially fatal occurrences
- Focus on operational details; during site visits and operational discussions question and verify whether the critical controls to prevent fatalities are in place
- Participate in high potential incident investigations and reviews and lead discussion of high potential events at your meetings
- Question whether the focus of behavioural observation processes also addresses fatality prevention. Ensure that “root causes” of all high potential events are truly understood, and that they are fully addressed
- Respond to potentially fatal events as you would an actual fatal event. What should I ensure is in place?
- A shifted focus at all levels of the organisation from low consequence injuries to high potential events
Eliminating risks
- Comprehensive fatal risk assessment procedures, including the identification of critical controls and performance standards
- A system that encourages full and accurate reporting without fear of consequence
- Leading practice for Management of Change processes
- Systems that capture and classify events that have high potential, even if there is no injury or damage
- Quality investigation, analysis and communication about the causal factors and control of actual and high potential events
- A mechanism for those who report directly to you to demonstrate their continuous commitment to reducing the exposure to fatal risk
Creating trust
- Transparent criteria and processes for determining the consequences of non-compliance with fatal risk critical controls
- Maintain a sense of constant vulnerability; never assume fatalities will not occur
- Challenge the assumptions of others around their understanding and management of fatal risks
- Make no assumptions on critical issues; conduct ad-hoc tests on critical controls and seek expert advice
- Accept no excuses for departure from the operating disciplines associated with fatal risks
- Explore the preparedness of operations to respond to abnormal conditions
Future consequences
- Consider the consequences of strategic decisions on the probability of fatalities What should I ensure is in place?
- A system for ongoing education of all leaders in the origins of human error, and ways to reduce its occurrence and impact
- The right people, especially leaders, are in the right jobs – with the competencies, intellect, passion, and experience for leading fatality prevention
- Multi-layer barriers to fatal events
- Use of the hierarchy of controls; a continuous process to increase systematic fatal risk controls
- A verification process to validate that critical controls exist and are providing the intended benefit to our employees
Preventing accidents
Investigations of fatal incidents around the world have demonstrated that in order to achieve safe and fatality-free production the following nine elements are essential:
- Maintaining a sense of vulnerability as complacency built on past success blinds us to warning signs
- Ensuring continuous improvement in environment, equipment, strategy and systems
- Applying the hierarchy of controls to eliminate the risk and reduce the chance of human error
- Increasing the focus on high potential near fatal events
- Recognising the person as fatal accidents are not just statistics
- Maintaining operating disciplines to combat the gradual shift to unsafe behaviours
- Maintaining alertness to increased and unexpected risks during abnormal operating conditions
- Addressing culture and leadership through objective assessment and, where required, improvement plans
- Providing courageous leadership in leading change and holding each individual in the business accountable for safe and fatality-free production.
Good Morning
Great Article, Thanks
One point that I feel needs to added is fatigue management. This is an important point as where you have fatigue there will be a lack of vigilance and thus a lack of maintaining the operational disciplines and levels of alertness.
Having working in facilities such as Dubai International Airport installing Baggage Handling and Sortation Equipment this point is of critical importance in high pressure environments which can easily lead to fatal accidents. At the beginning of a shift it is important to ascertain if the team working have had adequate rest prior to starting the shift and then to make a decision on allowing to continue or not.
It is to be noted that fatal risk is not the only risk that needs to be controlled as these will be a lot less prevalent than the other disabling and serious types of injuries that may be caused when interacting with these types of machinery. Serious and Disabling injuries can have the effect of making the injured individual less or even unable to function normally and thus may cause them to be unable to work and this leads to their dependents suffering in the longer run.
Leading Occupational Health and Safety is best done by setting a positive example, not only by showing you care, but by being there showing an interest in the work being performed and when in the hazardous zones wearing the required safety equipment. Furthermore, when devising the Risk Assessments it is better to workshop these and to have all the stakeholders and interested parties on hand to agree to the control measures in the workshop.
It is important to give the authority to personnel and to enable them to stop an unsafe act or condition without fear of reprisal and then proceeding to make the identified deficiency safe by taking the appropriate steps to do so. Remember, all personnel have experiences and knowledge and this needs to be shared with aim of making the operation safer. This needs to happen cooperatively as this fosters buy in and in the process cooperation and ownership.
Where there is the presence of what is commonly known as the Unsafe Risk Taker, these individuals need to be identified, retrained and if not ultimately compliant then they need to be removed as they will negatively affect your safety culture in your operation and will lead to a deterioration of the procedural requirements in the operation in question.
Good Point on the point of complacency and the feeling that accidents will not occur. This is exactly where this will happen. When complacency creeps in the whole safety structure will erode systematically and bit by bit it will be run down to nothing. And that is where things go wrong and usually with dire consequences.
Anyway, a well written article and great effort at making things safer. Thanks!
Kind Regards
Anthony Carr