In the 10 years from 1998 to 2008 the annual number of fatalities in the Australian mining industry has plateaued (MCA, 2007-08 and abc.net.au website)._x000D_
Despite significant efforts to eliminate fatalities, this is not a comfortable statistic in this very public performance indicator.GHD has been working with the mining and minerals processing industry to identify the key risks that lead to fatalities utilising a semi quantitative risk assessment technique (SQRA), initially developed to assist Major Hazards Facilities prepare Safety Cases (OH&S, 2007-08) in response to the Longford Incident in 1998 (Dawson and Brooks, 1999).Workshop cross functional teams are assembled from the sites and led by the GHD facilitators to identify the incident types that can have fatal consequences, the causes of those incidents and the controls that are utilised (or could be utilised) to reduce the risk. The risks for each incident type are quantified to produce a risk profile for the facility and the critical controls - the controls that have the greatest impact at reducing the risk of fatality - are selected. These controls are assessed for their adequacy and improvement actions are identified. Prioritisation of the actions is achieved by re-estimating the incident risk profiles.A review has been undertaken using a small sample from the more than 100 individual studies that GHD has completed at mining and minerals processing sites. The five most significant risks reported by sites are:1. Fall from Heights,2._x000D_
Vehicle/ Vehicle and Vehicle/Pedestrian interactions,3._x000D_
Entanglement,4. Molten Metals and Materials, and5._x000D_
Electricity.The most significant reductions in risk identified were found to be by implementing engineering controls. Examples include:1._x000D_
Chutes to contain splashes and spills of molten materials,2. Redesigning instrument and equipment layouts to take personnel away form high risk areas,3. Designing remotely operated equipment to remove personnel away from high risk areas,4. Proper fire fighting equipment provisions such as deluges around flammable materials, and5. Adequate risk assessment to ensure equipment is designed to handle the real situations and not a design case to meet an arbitrary specification.All of these cases and many of the actions identified in the studies could have been handled through better design and construction early in the life of a project rather than retrospectively fitted after operations have begun._x000D_
FORMAL CITATION:Cann, N, Casey, S, Mills, R and Ross, J, 2011. Reducing mining and mineral processing plant fatality rates, in Proceedings MetPlant 2011, pp 27-38 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).