Speaking at the NSW Mining Industry occupational health and safety conference in early September, Joy said the skills developed in the mining industry to investigate unwanted events could be used effectively to investigate success. The approach also offers another way of measuring the success of management systems.
Unwanted events at mine sites – ranging from minor disruptions to major catastrophes – are usually thoroughly investigated. The aim is to determine what happened and why so that the mine, and often the entire industry, can benefit from the lessons. Though, as Joy pointed out, “its learning value is often affected by perceived or real fear of punishment and/or litigation. In catastrophic events learning may be delayed for years by legal process.”
“Like unwanted events, unexpected successes are usually quite obvious,” he said. “However, unlike major unwanted events, we don’t tend to investigate, examining exactly what happened and why it happened in an attempt to retain and transfer learnings.”
To investigate the potential value of investigating unexpected success, the NSW Minerals Council commissioned a study at the Charbon bord and pillar operation near Lithgow in NSW.
The mine successfully introduced a monorail cable and hose handling system to their pillar extraction operation which has significantly reduced cable handling injuries and cable damage.
Prior to the monorail installation Charbon was experiencing unacceptable cable damage mainly due to cable crush under rib spall in their splits. The mineÂ’s deputy manager visited BHP BillitonÂ’s Tower colliery where a monorail had been successfully installed. The Charbon production workforce was closely involved and contributed to the design and implementation of the monorail.
Joy pointed out that the monorail technology was not the only major innovation. Rather the major success was in the ‘human factors strategy’ (or Change Management Process), adopted by the mine during the project. It included human factors such as visiting another site, involvement of users, and set up of surface mock up.
“We can learn from both their technical and systems success,” Joy said. “Some mines may gain from the use of monorail cable and hose handling systems. All mines can gain from the system success, the process of finding and implementing an effective innovation.”
Joy said the accident investigation skills already in many mines should also be used to optimise success.
“Learning from successes that our management systems are effective helps demonstrate the value of the systems. It also helps us ‘tune’ the systems for optimal result.”
