risk assessment
A series of recent mine safety incidents in New South Wales and Queensland has reinforced ongoing concerns about worker safety in both underground and surface coal operations.
In mining, some of the biggest risks don’t come from broken equipment or unstable ground - they come from the way our brains are wired.
It’s a hard truth that mining professionals might not want to hear: much of what we call safety work - the forms, the checklists, the risk matrices, the “take fives”- doesn’t actually keep people safe.
When it comes to critical minerals in emerging nations, geology is often the easy part - what makes or breaks a project is navigating the politics, markets, and risks that sit behind the orebody.
When it comes to tailings management, the mining industry is no stranger to technical standards, risk registers, or operational frameworks.
The mining industry’s next leap won’t be powered by bigger trucks or more data, but by intelligent systems built to adapt, anticipate and thrive in uncertainty.
GV Price, senior staff consultant with KCB Australia, has spent a career helping mines grapple with the nuances of geotechnical standards.
Pepe Moreno, principal consultant and director of Tailex, isn’t one to blindly follow the crowd.
A catastrophic tyre explosion that seriously injured two quarry workers was caused by a structural failure in the sidewall of a truck tyre and a series of systemic safety lapses, according to a detailed investigation released by the NSW Resources Regulator.
For decades, mine planning has leaned heavily on deterministic models - tools that simplify the earth into a single version of the truth.
