1687 WHAT DO INCIDENTS TELL US ABOUT CRITICAL CONTROLS? *M.E. Hassall1 1Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre (MISHC) Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland, Australia (*Presenting author: m.hassall1@uq.edu.au) ABSTRACT In 2013 the International Council of Mining and Metals (ICMM) found that the industry’s fatalities occur because “people not properly identifying risks, controls not being in place, or the controls not being effectively implemented or maintained” (ICMM, 2013). To address this issue, they commissioned research that resulted in the ICMM’s Critical Control Management: Good Practice Guide (ICMM, 2015). The ICMM states that the core principles for effective critical control management include knowing what the true critical controls are, clearly defining the performance criteria of these controls, monitoring and verifying the controls are effective at preventing fatalities and tracking how the controls have performed. Since 2015, many mining operations have sought to implement the ICMM critical control management approach to varying degrees. Tracking control performance has been done with monitoring and verification data. It can also be done using incident analysis information. This paper will demonstrate how tracking can be done with incident analysis and discuss insights that can be derived from such an analysis. Insights produced include how evidence-based analysis can inform the selection of what is critical and help to define key components of performance specifications. The presentation will conclude with further insights into how to improve implementation of the ICMM critical control approach that is derived from the incident analysis and over a decade of assisting companies implement and improve their management of fatal risks. KEYWORDS Risk, Critical control, Safety, Health, Data, Intelligence 1. INTRODUCTION The mining industry involves humans performing high risk work. To ensure the health and safety of workers, operations are required to identify hazards, assess the risks of those hazards and implement risk treatments that either eliminate or substitute the hazard or implement controls that manage the hazard to prevent unsafe situations occurring and mitigate unsafe situations to prevent occupational injuries and illnesses. However, over time the mining industry has continued to have workplace fatalities. In 2014 this prompted the International Council of Mining and Metals (ICMM) to investigate. Their findings determined that fatalities occurred because “people not properly identifying risks, controls not being in place, or the controls not being effectively implemented or maintained” (ICMM, 2013). In 2014 the ICMM commissioned research on how to improve the control of fatal mining risks. This work resulted in the publication of the ICMM’s Critical Control Management: Good Practice Guide (ICMM, 2015). Since its publication, many mining, and other high-risk sectors, companies have endeavored to implement the critical control approach with mixed results. Significant improvements were recorded as
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