Learning from incidents, including near misses
As part of our annual business planning process, Xstrata’s commodity businesses analyse the root causes of incidents resulting in injury, in order to develop appropriate programmes to understand, address and eliminate the underlying causes. We also track and evaluate high potential risk incidents (HPRIs) which we define as an unplanned event that may or may not (a ‘near miss’) have caused minor property or environmental damage and/or a minor injury but had the potential to cause a much more serious incident (see Fact box below). HPRIs provide us with the opportunity to examine complex failure paths under non-crisis conditions and ascertain why control frameworks did not work as intended.
Since the beginning of 2003, we have worked on developing a reporting culture where HPRIs (including incidents that did not result in any injury or damage) are readily reported. This has been crucial in providing the business with learning opportunities. In particular, this approach has provided management with a leading indicator of the effectiveness of safety controls and facilitated the early implementation of improvements to prevent future incidents. For example, in 2010, Xstrata Nickel rolled out a programme that requires any HPRIs that are related to a major hazard to trigger the review and resubmission of the major hazard management plan for the particular hazard in question.
All incidents are fully investigated and are discussed by the Group Executive Committee on a monthly basis. Lessons learned are shared across the Group at monthly commodity business executive meetings and through the Group-wide circulation of good practices. Transparent reporting and proactive knowledge sharing across the Group are strongly encouraged by the Board and Executive Committee to maximise our understanding of the valuable lessons from HPRIs.
As in previous years, surface mobile equipment incidents were the most prevalent cause of HPRIs. For two types of underground incidents, we saw increases relative to 2009: underground ground control (from 8 incidents to 15) and underground mobile equipment (from 4 incidents to 13). In part, this reflects a greater exposure to underground hazards with some of our largest projects entering the construction phase. It also tells us where we need to do more to get these two sources of safety risk fully under control.
In absolute terms, nearly 75% of all incidents are accounted for by just eight types. These are: surface mobile equipment, underground mobile equipment, fixed plant equipment and structures, slinging and lifting (moving heavy loads using cranes, hoists, slings, pulleys, etc), underground ground controls, working at heights, electricity, and light vehicles. In 2009 and 2008, 85% of all incidents were accounted for by 11 separate incident types – this reduction is reflective of our target investment into key safety risk areas.
Within the aggregated set of company-wide HPRI statistics, each of our commodity businesses also tracks and reviews its own HPRI statistics, allowing them to target and prioritise their safety risk reduction efforts accordingly. For example, load shifting became a top-three principal hazard in Xstrata Nickel during 2010 in terms of the number of HPRIs reported. As a result, Xstrata Nickel enlisted third party expertise to audit its operations and provide support to sites as they identified and implemented additional measures to reduce the risks associated with load shifting activities.
We also recognise that HPRI reporting frequency, both in total and per principal hazard, reflects to some degree the level and type of activity occurring at our operations (i.e. the level of exposure). For example, during the construction phase on a major project such as our Xstrata Nickel Koniambo project in New Caledonia, there may be more load shifting activity within a space of 12 to 18 months than across many years of the operational phase of the mine and smelter.