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The recent occurrence of several major failures of tailings storage facilities (TSF) has caused the mining industry to focus on significantly improving the engineering and management (design, construction, operation, and monitoring) of these structures to reduce their environmental impact. This effort is led by the Mining Association of Canada, which mandates the application of risk assessment in tailings management. Due to the very complex nature of TSF, such as phased design and construction, continuous operation, and evolving guidelines and practices over many years, the application of traditional risk assessment tools has limitations. A risk assessment tool specifically developed for TSF management is presented. This tool is based on the work of Silva et al. (2008) that relates the annual probability of failure to the factor of safety and the level of engineering. This relationship was modified to reflect current practice. The annual probability of failure was then combined with a consequence rating to produce a rational and quantifiable evaluation of risk. The risk assessment tool provides detailed information on the level of practice of a structure, the corresponding annual probability of failure as well as the associated risk. Validation of the tool included application to a recent well-documented failure.

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The broad terminology around sustainability is an excellent catalyst for discussing the technical and social impacts of projects in an engineering classroom and for improving decisions made in team-based designprojects. When an exploratory hands-on methodology is applied, the introduction of the various aspects associated with sustainability allows instructors to engage students to SEE (identify) Social, Economic, and Environmental impacts and quantify the relevancy of generic criteria to specific projects. The P5TM Impact Analysis tool (GPM Global) was used to identify relevant criteria for ranking design projects. Whereas the methodology is reproducible, the decisions made by students can vary when there is no clear answer. With a range in results, the instructors can then have the students perform additional analyses to reflect on the complexity of ranking alternatives and to view the results based on various circumstances. The outcome is that the students gain a broader understanding of how SEEing different perspectives matters and addsvalue to the decision making process.