(85a) Improving PHA Outcomes to Better Manage Critical Controls in Mining Industry - from PHA to Verification in the Field

The presentation will tell the story about how Rio Tinto has implemented its Critical Controls Management practice, challenges faced and recent improvements. It covers how Rio Tinto has evolved practices from simple Bow Ties to more traditional PHA techniques such as HAZID, HAZOP, LOPA and Bow Ties to identify critical controls. It also covers how critical controls are managed in the field.

Critical controls is the term used in the mining industry to define equipment or activities that are critical to manage process safety risks, it is synonymous to Safety Critical Elements in the Oil and Gas industry.

In the mining and metals industry, Process Safety is relatively new compared with other industries such as chemicals or oil and gas that are more mature. This industry presents also its own challenges with a wide variety of processes ranging from mining to metal processing, handling of molten materials and an heavy reliance on human to perform tasks.

Managing critical controls is key to avoid accidents, for which starting with a robust Process Hazards Analysis is imperative. Initially, Bow Ties were used together with the methodology provided by the International Council for Mining and Metals (ICMM) to identify risk scenarios and critical controls. This has shown limitations and changes have been implemented to introduce more traditional techniques (HAZID, HAZOP, LOPA) better suited for our processes. Rio Tinto has also refined its approach to identify critical controls moving from the ICMM guidance to the definition use for Independent Protection Layers leading to a spectacular change in our approach to risk management.

Critical controls identified are verified in the field by several layers of individuals to allow understanding how effective are these controls in managing risk and reporting performance. While these activities are mostly manual at the moment, efforts are currently in place to explore a single IT solution.