It is no secret that operational safety is a concern for any big mining operation,nationally or internationally.
According to Statista: Last year (2021) the South African mining sector had recorded 74 fatalities, a significant increase over the 60 fatalities reported in 2020, which, in turn, was a disturbing rise in comparison to the 51 fatalities recorded in 2019.
Mining industry pain points
In pursuit of the zero-harm agenda, health and safety precautions are a top priority in mining operations locally and internationally. However, there are still ongoing issues with safety, and a mining operation has many moving parts that need monitoring. Human error is also always a factor that should be taken into account.
Solving safety issues
Many Mineware clients currently manage risk within separate non-integrated Excel file programmes to simulate such functionality through the use of risk analysis and risk assessment methods set up within these files. These are, however, not fully integrated into day to day operations, thus not allowing the effective overall management of risk. Although industry related systems do exist for bowtie management of safety risk, none of the currently existing systems is integrated into a full end to end risk management system like the one offered by Mineware Consulting.
In response to this, the Mineware Syncromine risk management module is a comprehensive developed Health & Safety Management system that assists in the identification, analysis, prevention management and mitigation of hazards and associated risk that threaten the viability, efficiency and overall safety of employees within any organisation .
The benefit of the Syncromine Risk model is founded in its comprehensive Closed Loop Control Structure. This enables the continuous management and monitoring of full organisational risk, on and through all levels of the module.
Functionality
To achieve this, a holistic risk-based approach is required in order to identify all hazards and risks and to ensure the continuous improvement of the overall risk management, while always ensuring and aligning to a client’s operational accountabilities, policies, safety management principles and processes.
In order to facilitate this, the Syncromine Risk Management Module is designed to align to a client’s bespoke business frameworks and structures, thereby creating an overall comprehensive risk management cycle through the following layers and functionalities:
- Baseline Risk Assessment – This assessment forms the foundation of the overall risk management of your operation.
- Issue-based Risk Assessment – Risk assessment done on this level, to review and enhance the risk based on a specific “Issue to be addressed”. (Alignment can be made from Incidents / Incident Management Modules if needed)
- Task-Based Risk Assessment – Risk review on any operational task. Outputs of this level further align to the training of resources, through automated creation of Standard Operating Procedures and Training content. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Checklists are also automatically created, from task-based risk assessments, through Mineware’s OCR form capture technology, thereby enabling continuous risk management and monitoring and adherence to critical task steps and associated risk management mitigations, as captured in the task-based risk assessment.
- Integrated Bowtie Analysis Tool – This tool enables the visualisation and management of the risks identified in the Baseline assessments, and is then used to create a clear differentiation between proactive and reactive risk management on these risks, through the management of Controls identified as effective barriers to threats and consequences. These are associated with the unwanted event, in review. (Direct management, monitoring , verification and improvement planning on identified Golden Controls)
- Integration to legal and regulatory guidelines, enable the alignment of these to risks identified (Reporting enables the review on compliance to these legal & regulatory guidelines and align to focus to areas of concern)
- Integration to external platforms, like SharePoint, to integrate and reference Management control documents ( COP, Managerial instructions, Procedures etc. ).
- Reporting and Data Insight capturing on all levels ensure effective safety performance monitoring and improvement measurement through the Syncromine Risk Management Module Reporting or any integrated BI platform.
This multifaceted yet uncomplicated system design is scalable to any operational need and can easily be integrated into multiple platforms and legacy systems to facilitate full integration within any operation.
Mineware Consulting remains committed to addressing the mining industry’s biggest pain-points, including operational health and safety, through the implementation of targeted software modules.