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Reducing injury risks associated with underground coal mining equipment in Australia

This initiative forms part of Xstrata’s strategy to eliminate injuries and occupational illnesses by identifying and controlling the root cause. Musculo-skeletal injuries and occupational illnesses including sprains, strains and long-term degenerative injuries are a particular problem in areas with an ageing workforce.

Xstrata Coal NSW was driven to find improvements to the ergonomic design of underground mining equipment as little progress has been made in this area during the past three decades, despite the advances made for open-cut mining equipment. Xstrata partnered with ACARP, the Australian coal industry’s research programme, and the findings were made available to all Australian coal mines. The project ran for approximately two years and completed in 2007.

An initial analysis of several years’ worth of incident statistics and their associated mining tasks highlighted those practices which had led to the highest risk of injury and longer-term occupational health issues. The analysis identified activities within the continuous miner development unit presented the greatest risk of injury, including roof bolting, cable handling, operation of shuttle cars and load haul dump vehicles.

Following this identification, teams including employees and supervisors, assessed the risks of several related items of equipment to examine how their design could be modified to reduce risks and improve safety. The initiative also looked at the ergonomics of new machinery to ensure that injury risks were fully understood and taken into account at the design stage.

The project led to the publication of a handbook of guidelines detailing best practice specifications to be used when designing, ordering and manufacturing new machinery, distributed to both coal mining companies and equipment suppliers and manufacturers. As well as acting as a risk assessment tool for underground coal mining equipment, the handbook assists companies and manufacturers to document the effectiveness of current control processes, determine where additional measures may be required and enables the identification of modifications to existing equipment to create a safer work environment. The guidelines have been made available to all Australian coal mines and the risk assessment tool is being implemented by other Xstrata operations.

Xstrata Coal has used the guidelines as a framework to upgrade machinery tender specifications for new machinery. For existing machinery, operations have implemented a programme to modify equipment that has a high level of identified ergonomic risk. Xstrata Coal has regularly met its medium-term target of reducing occupational injuries and illnesses by 20% per annum over the past seven years and this initiative provides a means of continuing to sustain improvements in reducing injury and illness rates.

Xstrata Coal gained a number of industry innovation awards in recognition of its work, and the project received the 2007 ACARP award for the Best Underground Equipment Safety Project. ACARP said: “This project significantly raised awareness of both mines and manufacturers of the shortcomings inherent in the design of current equipment.”

Dave Mellows, Group Safety Manager, Xstrata Coal NSW, said the level of expectation and ergonomic standards within the industry had improved as a result of this work.

“The risk assessment tool has given us a framework to assess the fundamental design and ergonomics of underground mining equipment. There are hundreds of tasks that we perform where equipment design has an impact. Using the risk assessment tool, our sites can prioritise and progressively work through these ‘fixes’,” he said.