EDEEP—An Innovative Process for Improving the Safety of Mining Equipment

Abstract

Fifteen multi-national mining companies are currently members of the Earth Moving Equipment Safety Round Table (EMESRT). Formed in 2006, EMESRT engages with mining equipment manufacturers with the aim of accelerating improvements in the safe design of mining equipment. An initial stage in this process was to communicate industry understanding of the risks in the form of -design philosophies‖ that describe potential unwanted events in eight hazard categories. A technique for analysing risks associated with operation and maintenance tasks, the Operability and Maintainability Analysis Technique (OMAT), was subsequently developed and trialed. The next step is the EMESRT Design Evaluation for Equipment Procurement (EDEEP) process. The aims of requesting manufacturers to follow this process are to provide equipment purchasers with a common way of assessing how well the issues in the EMESRT Design Philosophies are addressed in the equipment design; and to provide manufacturers with additional information for use during equipment design. The process involves identifying priority tasks based on frequency and severity of the consequences of potential unwanted events identified in the EMESRT Design Philosophies; undertaking a task-based risk assessment of priority tasks in conjunction with site-based personnel; evaluating the effectiveness of control measures; and providing information about safe design features in a standardised format.

Applying a Human-Centred Process to Re-Design Equipment and Work Environments

“…A tool that is aligned with the ANSI standard and incorporates participatory ergonomics and risk assessment processes was initially developed and employed for equipment utilized in the minerals industry [18,19]. Being a task-based process, SiDE can help identify, comprehend and provide solutions to risks that users face when operating and maintaining equipment [3].…”

“…Regarding mine site equipment retrofits, SiDE could be utilized to examine site-specific risks related to new equipment, as a basis for new equipment purchase, to investigate equipment-related incidents, and to address residual risks during equipment operation or modification phases [18]. Such site-based use also allowed emergent interactions between the mining equipment and other aspects of the organisational system to be assessed after the equipment has been deployed [3].…”

“…Therefore, iteration and redesign are often of key importance. As noted by Burgess-Limerick [17,18], a risk-management framework is now frequently adopted to lead the application of human factors principles to workplace risks related to design. Such a process usually starts with understanding the broader context in which work activities take place.…”

“…Focusing on the mine site equipment redesign aspects, the process resulted in many changes being made to mobile mining equipment, such as haul trucks and bulldozers. To date, this has included re-designing equipment access/egress points for operators: this has been a high priority area due to equipment access/egress being a frequent cause injury and sometimes death due to the cabin height of the vehicles [18,19]. Similarly, site based redesigns have occurred to improve ease of maintenance-for example the positioning of air filters to locations where maintenance personnel do not need to reach for them or hold awkward postures during filter changing so maintainers accessing them have a reduced risk of injury [19].…”

“…These are then implemented, evaluated on a continuing basis and documented [18]. Within a participatory-ergonomics framework, the overall viewpoint is that obtaining end-user input can be vital to revealing design deficiencies and to identifying effective redesign solutions [3,17].…”