Maintaining the safety of workers is the number one priority on a mine site, and having the right procedures, software and education is crucial in ensuring every worker goes home safely.
Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Western Australia was established in 1991, and not only is it a renowned university known for its industry-relevant teaching, but it also conducts world-class research focusing on its WA communities, businesses and government organisations.
ECU has recently conducted a number of research projects exploring key issues in safety in the mining and resources sector, including sleep deprivation for fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers and workplace fatalities on mine sites.
FIFO is incredibly common in the mining industry as it is often more convenient to have someone fly to a remote job site to complete their work than for them to relocate.
In addition to that, with mining operations running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, FIFO rostered shifts are often disruptive and make it near impossible to have healthy sleeping patterns.
ECU adjunct associate professor Ian Dunican holds a PhD in sleep and performance and has spent many years working with elite athletes to optimise their sleep, recovery and performance.
Dunican conducted an ECU study that looked at how FIFO roster design impacts the sleep of workers, that is the biggest study in the world looking at FIFO sleep habits, the prevalence of sleep disorders, and is the first study that has looked at biomathematical modelling to work out the risks.
“They were undertaking a roster of two weeks on, one week off, commonly known as a ‘two and one’ roster, which is seven day shifts, followed by seven night shifts, and a period of seven days off,” Dunican tells Safe to Work.
The worker’s sleep was tracked with wearable Actigraphy technology throughout the duration of the study, and information was collected, using the Berlin Questionnaire for Sleep Apnoea, on the prevalence of potential sleep disorders, such as obstructed sleep apnoea (OSA), shift work disorder and insomnia.
“What we found in this study is that regardless of days on, night shift or days off, the people in this study weren’t achieving the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep,” Dunican says.
“We found that the least amount of sleep people were getting was on night shift with an average of five and a half hours of sleep after working a 12-hour night shift, six and a half hours after working day shift and a little under seven hours on their days off.”
The prevalence of sleep disorders reported was extremely high; it was a lot higher than the general population.
Sixty per cent of the FIFO workers in the study were highlighted as potentially having a sleep disorder. However, it also found that for every one-year increase in age, the odds ratio for OSA increased by 6 per cent, and for every unit increase in BMI, the odds risk for OSA increased by 19 per cent.
The research recommended key improvements be considered; changing roster design, allowing more sleep opportunities for the workers, providing them with risk activity monitors to help measure their own sleep, and providing education around fatigue management.
For Dunican, the first step for mining organisations should be to put together a risk reduction plan within the organisation, focussing on shifting roster design, sleep disorders, attention to commuting and so on.
“Lots of improvements have happened in the area of fatigue risk management in the last 20 years; we now have lots of technologies available, we know more about sleep disorders, we have people flying in from different states, we’ve got a changing demographic, and we just know a lot more now than we did back then,” Dunican says.
“I think it’s time for a bit of revision to provide people with a risk management framework in line with how occupational health and safety is going as opposed to a set of guidelines or rules.”
INX Software is a trusted leader of environment, health and safety solutions driving the creation of safer, smarter and sustainable workplaces across high-risk and complex operations including mining, utilities and oil & gas.
INX Software enables health, safety and environmental professionals to manage risk, achieve compliance and enhance operational efficiencies across workforce mobilisation and travel logistics, workplace health and safety, environmental and statutory compliance, training and competency management.
InFlight by INX Software is a bespoke FIFO travel and accommodation management system, that can be adapted to a company’s needs.
“If the company decides to change the roster, and not to do a two and one roster and go for something that is more flexible then we can add that to that as well,” INX Software marketing manager Celine Ronce says.
“To make sure the workers can access a normal life, there’s a lot of possibilities to adapt. Our software is here to help the companies to adjust to the changing environment and to make sure that they can provide for their workers in the best way possible.”
Another study recently conducted at ECU looking at fatality risk management in WA’s mining industry was conducted by Tanya Jenke, who is currently pursuing her PhD research in the field of Occupational Health and Safety at ECU.
The study was conducted in two phases; the first phase was a questionnaire that asked participants to write their organisations effectiveness at fatality prevention, and the second phase was an analysis of the DMIRS fatality register over the past 17 years.
The research utilised Professor Michael Quinlan’s 2014 book Ten Pathways to Death and Disaster, which identified a series of ten common catastrophic incident risk factors contributing to major incidents in mining and other high hazard industries.
“Our aim for the mining industry was to prioritise or really highlight where there might be some deficiencies within a mining organisation when looking at ways to prevent fatalities utilising the Quinlan study,” Jenke tells Safe to Work.
“Once we could identify some of the commonalities that contributed to fatalities, then we can potentially stop fatalities from happening, given fatalities are still occurring in the mining industry and they are still occurring generally in the workforce.”
Jenke recommends that the Quinlan questionnaire be provided as a benchmarking tool for organisations to audit their own systems to find out how they are doing in regard to the Quinlan pathways.
Two of the co-authors of the study work at the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS), an example of collaboration between academia and industry and government regulators.
“It’s an opportunity for us to all work together to see what we can collectively do – not just as organisations or not just as advisors, but to make sure that we’re setting organisations up for the most amount of success when it comes to fatality prevention,” Jenke says.
Being able to manage the safety of workers to prevent fatalities is of utmost importance and there are lots of new technologies coming out that assist mining organisations in controlling those risks.
Sitepass by INX Software is a single platform to manage contractors, employees, volunteers and visitors, with complete transparency over workplace risk, safety and compliance.
“Sitepass main activity is to make sure the company knows who is coming on-site, if they need any accreditations or any requirements to go on-site, and also to make sure that they can inform everybody about emergencies, rules or any information related to the site,” Ronce says.
Everybody who is using Sitepass has their own profile, with pictures and all their documentation, and the leadership team has access to the information.
“If you need to apply for different sites, you can do that through Sitepass,” Ronce says.
“Let’s say today you are going to Rio Tinto, you can apply for that through Sitepass, and tomorrow if you go to BHP, you can do that as well.”
INX Software has another health and safety product called InControl, which is designed to make sure that everybody is kept safe on-site.
“With InControl you can inform your managers about any safety risk. You can take a photo with your phone and send the issue to the right person to make sure that it is taken care of,” Ronce tells Safe to Work.
“If there is an incident on-site, you can report it with InControl and it will be escalated to the safety advisor, so they can take the right step to mitigate the risk and improve the safety processes to make sure that the same issue does not happen again.”
Both Jenke and Dunican have new studies in the pipeline that are continuing to look at workplace safety on mine sites.
Jenke’s next study will look at the impacts of COVID-19 on safety performance, for which she is currently looking for participants to complete a survey.
Dunican is currently writing up his next paper for publication, which is a randomised control trial on the back of his FIFO sleep study, where they have tested three different interventions to provide solutions.
The first is providing sleep education to shift workers, the second is providing wrist actigraphy technology, that will give the worker biological feedback via the app, and the third is a combination of both.
Edith Cowan University continues to conduct important research on the mining industry that is aiming to create a safer working environment and prevent workplace fatalities and health risks.