risk assessment
Mine water safety conversations default to tailings dams, but Dr Cherie McCullough spent an hour explaining why the larger risk is day to day exposure to as little as 1.
Mining companies already hold a wealth of safety intelligence, but the challenge is turning it into knowledge workers can recognise and act on before a near miss becomes an injury.
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.
