Developed by the Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre of the University of Queensland, the soon to be released latest revision of the National Mining Industry Risk Assessment Guidelines have been endorsed by major mining companies including MIM, Anglo Coal, WMC and QMC.

The new guidelines include a system known as SQRA, a sophisticated form of semi-quantitative risk assessment, based on a risk assessment model developed by Melbourne-based risk management consultants Qest Consulting Group.

Although the original guidelines included some reference to semi quantitative risk assessment, the QEST SQRA system is more “analytically robust” than the original method because it ranks and fully justifies relative risks.

Representatives said the guidelines would not promote a false sense of security, which is one of the Qualitative RA system’s most serious shortcomings.

QEST SQRA has already being implemented, with the help of QEST consultants, by several major Australian mining companies, and has been used by several companies to help obtain a licence under the Victorian Government Major Hazardous Facility regulations.

It has also proved very successful in major hazard sites elsewhere and in a number of recent studies in the minerals industry, particularly from the point of view of employee involvement and participation.

QEST SQRA incorporates the use of qualitative risk assessment and quantitative risk assessment systems.

Qualitative risk assessment is strong in team involvement but weak in robustness because of the crudity of the measures used. On the other hand, quantitative risk assessment is a very robust and detailed study of risks but tends to be remotely executed away from the actual operations and thus often has little buy-in from the workforce.