The Mining Man

We're very pleased to be partnering with Mining IQ to present a regular podcast series discussing a range of health, safety, risk and training topics relatd to the mining industry.  You can look forwardt to see a new topic each month.
  

Episode 3: Zero Harm and the Mining Industry

In the third episode of our mining safety podcast series we discuss the idea of "Zero Harm" - a phrase that has become the headline for safety throughout the mining industry. But is our quest for zero harm causing us to neglect the most important parts of safety in pursuit of achieving zero?

Can we really expect people to work day-in-day-out in a mining operation, dealing with all that the earth throws at them, without making a single mistake?

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A transcript of the interview is below, and we'd love to hear your feedback or thoughts in the comments section. 

 

Interview Transcript

Click here to listen to the podcast

In this Monday with the Mining Man Podcast series, Mining IQ interviews Jamie Ross, author and founder of the MiningMan blog, on the key issues surrounding the mining industry, in particular around occupational health and safety and the concept of “zero harm”.

Mining IQ: Do you think the industry can ever achieve zero harm?

Jamie Ross:  I think we all would like to think it is possible. We have the saying “Every accident is preventable”, and I’ve investigated enough to agree – we always find a cause for an incident and always find a way it could have been prevented. But just because “every accident is preventable”, doesn’t mean “every accident can be prevented”.

Accidents happen.

If we think about our lives outside work, we don’t even really aim for zero harm there. We accept that in the activities, hobbies and sports we do, that sooner or later we’ll probably get hurt doing it. We certainly don’t expect to have serious injuries or be killed, but we do know that with life comes some harm.

So I’m not sure we can set such a high bar in our work lives as hoping that every single person every single day will not be harmed in any way – statistically it seems just impossible.

Sure, we think – well if I can go one day without injury, surely I can do that tomorrow and the next day and…And surely if I can, the other guy can and so everyone can. But likelihood and risk doesn’t work like that. Just because you drove your car to work safely today and yesterday and the day before, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it every day for ever.

So I struggle with our industry setting a target which is higher than what we expect to achieve in our day to day lives, particularly given the ever-changing nature of a mining environment.


Mining IQ: So should we do away with aiming for zero harm?

Jamie Ross: Not necessarily. It does create a nice goal for us, even if we accept we’ll never achieve it. You have to have something to aim for. But having an unachievable goal isn’t really a goal at all. And especially not a goal that is so black and white. When we use the term zero, it really tells us that it is all or nothing. One single injury in the industry and the target is missed.

Plus I think it would be a brave CEO who decides to take away Zero Harm as the company motto and goal. If you take away zero harm, what do you replace it with – a little harm?!?


Mining IQ: It sounds like the industry needs to keep heading towards something that drives us to improve safety. But if not zero harm, then what?

Jamie Ross: I believe we need to go right back and look at our iceberg model. We had thought that by reducing near misses and minor injuries, we would naturally prevent major injuries and fatalities. But I don’t think this is necessarily true. Some injuries can only ever be minor injuries. There is really no likelihood for them to escalate to a fatality. A sprained ankle or paper cut for example. If I have a near miss of nearly catching my hand in a door, that had no possible way of escalating to a life-changing injury or fatality.

I think what we need to focus on are the serious injuries and fatalities. The types of injuries and accidents that change people’s live permanently. These are the ones which really matter.

We need to make sure we stay focussed on these types of risks, and reduce the incidence of them occurring down to zero. And by that I mean not just having zero of these serious types of injuries, but also having zero of the near misses and smaller injuries that could potentially have led to something far more serious. For example if a person is involved in a vehicle rollover but only sustains some first aid injuries and goes back to work – we should be treating that far more seriously than if a person strains their shoulder and becomes a statistic because they had to take time off work.

We’ve got to focus on what matters the most – and that is keeping people alive and not permanently affecting their lives and lifestyle. I worry that be putting so much focus on the zero part of zero harm, that we are putting too much effort into stopping the minor injuries which we’d be happy to accept in our home lives, and not enough effort into the big things.

So yes, I think we need to take a look at whether zero harm has passed its used by date as a goal or measure, and start to look for something that keeps us focussed on what is most important.