ICAM Australia doesn’t just find out how accidents occur – it digs deeper to find out why they happened in the first place.
Mining remains a complex and high-risk industry where the consequences of even small oversights can be severe. To create safer and more resilient operations, many companies are turning to ICAM Australia for a structured approach to uncovering the deeper, systemic factors that lead to incidents.
ICAM Australia client relationship manager Robert Gillespie told Safe to Work the company’s methodology is designed to identify the drivers behind events.
“ICAM doesn’t just look at what happened – it looks at why it happened,” Gillespie said. “That includes organisational issues, environmental conditions, individual actions, team dynamics, and failures in existing defences.”
By focusing on the full context of incidents, ICAM empowers miners to implement long-term solutions that strengthen safety and operational reliability.
One of the most powerful shifts ICAM brings to operations is cultural. Its systems-focused, blame-free approach helps reduce finger-pointing and encourages constructive dialogue.
“After an incident, there’s often a lot of pressure to find someone to blame,” Gillespie said. “ICAM challenges that by showing how systems and structures influence people’s actions. It fosters cross-functional learning instead of siloed responses.”
By guiding teams through structured reviews and collaborative discussions, ICAM has improved communication between operations, safety and management. Its emphasis on shared learning helps mitigate similar incidents and promotes more targeted, accountable safety actions.
As mining becomes increasingly digitised, ICAM has adapted to meet the needs of a new kind of incident: cybersecurity breaches.
The ICAM framework now supports investigations into digital disruptions that impact data security and operational continuity.
“In a mine, a security breach isn’t just an IT issue, it’s an operational risk,” Gillespie said. “ICAM allows teams to examine the same categories – organisational, task-related, human factors and failed defences – through a cybersecurity lens.”
This flexibility helps to ensure mining operations can apply consistent investigative principles, regardless of whether the threat is on the ground or in the cloud.
ICAM’s strength also lies in driving ongoing improvement through the analysis of near misses and low-severity hazards.
By treating these events with the same seriousness as major incidents, companies can spot warning signs earlier. This proactive approach helps embed safety into day-to-day operations, ensuring lessons are captured and acted on, even when nothing goes dramatically wrong.
Artificial intelligence (AI), which is beginning to shape the way safety professionals analyse data, represents a new frontier in that digital approach.
With the ability to identify patterns across massive data sets, AI presents exciting opportunities for predictive safety. However, Gillespie said this power must be used responsibly.
“AI can spot trends faster, but it can also introduce new risks, like bias or over-reliance on automated systems,” he said. “ICAM provides a disciplined framework to interpret those insights.”
Rather than replacing human judgment, ICAM encourages safety leaders to use AI as a support tool – enhancing but not undermining the human thinking.
ICAM Australia continues to refine its programs and delivery to meet the evolving needs of the mining sector.
This feature appeared in the July–August edition of Safe to Work.