Danger! Miners and tools at work are a serious mix
It goes without saying, every employee should feel safe in the workplace. Though ideal, this concept is not always realized given that breaches in safety still transpire, directly affecting business revenue. Yet for mining companies, the “cost” of incidents goes well beyond the bottom line. It can negatively influence ecosystems, project productions and most importantly, staff security.
For coal mining, precautionary operations are integral due to heavy and dangerous equipment used to excavate coal.
Underground coal mining is especially hazardous since risks like mine ventilation, collapse and explosions can occur. Avoiding these dangers and preventing injuries are a must.
The industry certainly recognizes employee well-being comes first. A recent Ventyx Mining Executive Insights survey reports that most mining executives identify workplace safety as their most important concern.
Despite its significance, approaches to safety within the industry have remained the same for decades: keeping track of a worker’s whereabouts could mean hanging an ID tag on a pegboard; unless a new regulation is put in place, response plans may be irregularly updated; training videos may substitute hands-on learning, and though some corporations control risk data, all too often this information is used for historical reporting rather than predictive assessment.
The good news is process improvements and breakthrough technologies such as analytics and location awareness, visualization, and gaming simulation are altering safety measures to help enterprises reach a world of zero incidents.
Smarter Safety
Innovations are changing how coal mining companies worldwide can explore, excavate, produce, refine and distribute resources in a more sustainable way. More tools like intrinsically safe (IS) power supply cables, which inhibit methane gas from mixing with air should an electrical spark occur; and automation systems like programmable logic controllers (PLCs), which send and receive information from control panels to direct equipment, are implemented to better handle machinery during surface and underground coal mining operations.
But mining safety requires more than just technology. Improvements in processes, skill development and acquisition of knowledge are also required.
For instance in Canada, coal mining receives some of the highest standards for health and safety compared to the rest of the world due to technological advances that work in tandem with rigorous training and operating practices Integrating valuable data assets with a formal plan that modifies worker behaviour, provides incentives for the right action, and redesigns processes to accommodate greater safety can help organizations better understand potential perils while reducing mining mishaps. As a whole, the coal mining industry can benefit from the following safety practices:
Knowing precisely where people and assets are located
To deter potential safety incidents from occurring, organizations should identify where employees and machinery are physically positioned. Location information is essential for coal mining – it ensures unapproved recruits are restricted from unsafe areas and helps find individuals trapped from a mine explosion. Traditionally, location technology involved kiosks and gates, alerting staff if authorized individuals passed a certain checkpoint. But this information is no longer enough.
Today, location awareness technologies use tracking and sensor tags to help detect people within metres of their positions. Combined with smarter visualization analytic tools, these technologies can work with the reams of data that come from safety systems to remotely locate employees while tracking authorization levels and their proximity to dangerous areas. Location awareness technology allows operators to better analyze behavioural patterns in real time and spot safety risks before an incident occurs.
Keeping an eye on operations
Visual and video technologies present new ways for organizations to observe, process, analyze and take action. Applying analytics to visualization tools can further uncover information to enhance safety practices. Technical advances like visual analytics provide real-time data, helping staff observe trends and analyze events captured by security systems; videos turn environmental awareness into intelligence for jobsite monitoring, and visualization can integrate with location tracking devices to provide graphical views of where employees are situated. If potential issues arise, visualization can flag safety personnel.
Analyzing safety and acting on events
Analytical devices, techniques and models provide a systemic approach into how companies can manage these large quantities of datasets. Safety analytics provides greater access to the instrumentation of assets, machines, people and inventories, helping organizations understand which decisions will generate safer or less safe operations. Proactive, analytical-driven computing enables staff to respond to events instantaneously, avoid incidents before they occur, and automate smart actions for a harm-free workday.
New technologies can offer improved opportunities for incident avoidance like proactive, event-driven computing systems. In the oil and gas industry, an important component to safety is the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. Combined with data acquisition tools, SCADA gathers and analyzes real-time data to monitor and control oil and gas refining. These systems are able to feedback information on temperature, pressure and rotating equipment in pipelines, and signal workers if circumstances become insecure.
Understanding how people interact with each other
In the heat of a crisis, people within an organization need to effectively and efficiently take action. Recognizing employee networks and seamlessly corresponding with different levels of hierarchies are the stepping stones for creating proficient collaboration which lead to successful emergency solutions.
Advances in tools and techniques can enable organizations to analyze details of human relationships on many levels. Through process data mining and social network analysis, workers can examine basic performance metrics and incorporate this knowledge into understanding the relations between various staff – how work is handed over, when teams work effectively together, where duplication of activity occurs and how external workers enter the mix. Variances in employee procedures that may cause future safety failures can be identified ahead of time. This insight allows management to invest in training that is consistent and effective among multiple groups.
Training people to adopt safer practices
No matter how much technology is utilized or how innovative it may be, there is no greater risk in the coal mine than lack of knowledge and skills. Workers have to manage equipment, heavy machinery and sometimes hazardous materials each and every day. Knowledge in proper machine handling will affect whether or not these tools are used safely. For seasoned workers, this may not be an issue; however, new employees may be untrained, inexperienced or careless – all factors for increasing safety risks.
The challenge for companies here is to create programs that offer experience without putting employees in danger. In this case, serious gaming should be considered. Compared to other forms of interactive educational methods like videos or webcasts, games are a highly interactive medium held within a safe, simulated environment. Game-based learning technology enables organizations to deliver sophisticated business and technical education to employees while encouraging cooperative team learning.
A New Era of Safety
As technology continues to evolve, so too should safety practices. New tools and techniques give organizations the foundation to progress initiatives that consciously fine-tunes job processes and employee behaviour, leading to smarter safety procedures. Continuous innovation is key to eliminating risk. With analytics and related technologies and practices, pursuing a world of zero incidents is not just a lofty dream, but an obtainable goal.
* Natural Resources, Solutions Executive, IBM
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