With the industry still reeling over the tragic deaths of two miners at Yancoal’s Austar mine last year, safety is a theme at this year’s conference, which has been running since 1998 and now deals with both underground and open cut coal mining technological and safety developments.

NSW chief inspector Rob Regan and outgoing Queensland chief inspector of coal mines Andrew Clough outlined their states’ respective industry safety frameworks in key note addresses at the conference this morning.

Following a series of coal mine disasters in the 1980s and early 1990s in Australia, a trend to move away from prescriptive to risk based legislative frameworks for mine safety gathered significant momentum, Clough said.

“Two mine safety Acts built on the risk based approach were introduced in 1999, which have led to arguably the best safety performance in a mining jurisdiction in the world,” he said.

“The approach relies on a single integrated safety management system for each mine, anticipation of hazards, and control of risk and prevention of incidents.”

Regan reiterated the NSW Acts and regulations place requirements on mine operators to establish implement and apply health and safety management plans to control all the prescribed major hazards that arise at their mine.

“They must also prepare such plans for any particular major hazard that is peculiar to their mine. No mining can take place until such plans are implemented,” he said.

“Once mining commences it is the inspector’s function to apply his powers to drive implementation and application of these plans as well as compliance with the legislation in general.”

Regan described the approach of the New South Wales Mine Safety operations branch on achieving safe work outcomes by controlling the physical work environment in mines through competent people, fit for purpose plant and equipment, and safe systems of work.

“The Inspectorate’s aim is to ensure that the mining industry operates at best practice in engineering safety and health standards,” Regan said.

“It is the expectation that industry operators will take responsibility for leading safety efforts by implementing and continuously improving safe systems of work.

“It is expected that mine workers will take on responsibility for contributing to improvements in safety and health and for complying with the safe systems of work. Various initiatives and regulations are in place to ensure the above aims and objectives are met.”

There will be around 45 papers hosted by Coal 2015 – mostly from Australia but also from Czech Republic, India, Iran, Japan, USA and China, conference convenor Naj Aziz told International Coal News.

“It has been running since 1998 and in more recent times it has seen authors present on a wide variety of topics,” he said of the conference which is held at the University of Wollongong.

“The availability of the past papers on line has provided the industry the latest on new innovations, cutting edge research and ongoing technologies in different aspects of coal mining operation.

“The present strategies adopted are relevant to efficient mining operations, as well as contributing to the professional development of the mine employees.

“There are 545 papers on line here, which are papers published in the whole proceedings since 1998. All these papers have attracted around 469,416 downloads since hosting on line in 2008.”