Transcription
Hello and welcome to Feature of Mining 365. I'm Craig Guthrie, editor of Mining Magazine, and today we're here with Adrian Manises, director of Mayosh, to discuss workplace help, workplace health and safety, and in particular, critical control management systems. Hi Adrian, how you doing?
Hello Craig, I'm very well, thank you.
Great. So, when we talk about implementing a critical control management system, what are some of the key considerations?
Yeah, there's there's a few. First of all, a system has to be easy to use. The complexity has to be behind the scenes, not, um, not with the user. If it is complex, people will have trouble using it, and they, and it will fall apart, basically. Um, one of the other things that should be considered when implementing is, um, sometimes people have the attitude that it has to be absolutely perfect, and they won't start anything until all the ducks are in a line and they're, they're ready to go. Um, basically, what we believe is an incomplete bow tie is actually better than no bow tie at all, especially with critical control management. If you can avoid one serious incident, even through an incomplete bow tie, your, your, you are much, much better off. Um, basically, the other thing is it provides a, it's going to provide a structured framework for everyone to be able to participate. You want people to be able to be involved in the process. It, some people call it the voice for the people. You want people to be able to say, what are the things that they're concerned about? What are the things that are going to cause permanent disabling injuries or fatalities potentially? And, and what do they do to stop it? So it gives the, um, almost anyone in the organization the opportunity to be able to, um, to influence that process. And the other thing that I consider is a key consideration is the system should fit in with everyday processes. It shouldn't add to your existing workload, and people are busy enough already. They don't want to be adding extra things and employing more people just to do these tasks, and it's not necessary. So the system should be able to just fit in with what you do already, with some minor modifications, of course.
And understand that you have a CCM framework that supports the critical control management. How does that work?
Okay, so, um, basically, what we do is we use a bow tie diagram, and I'm just going to share my screen, um, so you can see that on, on, on there. Um, essentially, what we're doing is we're using a framework which allows you to identify your, your material unwanted events, the hazards associated with those, and you can simply, literally, just type straight into these boxes, add your causes, add your controls, um, as well as your consequences and mitigated controls. So those familiar with the bow tie diagram would be aware that there's a cause, there's usually controls that prevent the unwanted event from occurring, the event. If the event occurs, then there's mitigating controls, and then that hopefully lessens the impact if, um, if the event actually has occurred. So if we look at a, say, a completed bow tie, for example, um, what you'll see is again, the causes, the controls, the event, what the mitigating controls, and then the consequences. Now, the framework that we've put in place is not just a pretty diagram, which you see with a lot of bow ties. So a lot of people just look at these and then they put them into a filing cabinet, never to be seen again, once they've developed them. So what we're looking at here is an ongoing process that people can use in their workforce. So you can identify by simply clicking on buttons, um, what are there any control issues? And you can see at the moment, if there were any, that'd be highlighted. So that's not. You can also show what are the critical controls. The other aspect behind it is each of these boxes isn't just a box on the screen. Each of these boxes represents a whole lot of, basically, a document within the system. So each, each of these things, whether it's a control, whether it's the actual event itself, have a workflow behind them. So if I click on that link there, what you'll see is it opens up, basically, the unwanted event in a separate window, and then basically, it'll have a series of information about the actual event itself. So you'll be able to see what the controls are in place. If I scroll down through there, you can see what the preventative controls are, what the medicating controls are, and so forth. So these documents that fit behind the diagram, basically, they can have workflow to make sure that there's an event owner or a critical risk owner, someone who reviews it on a regular basis. It can have, it can have processes where it can basically say this needs to be reviewed on an annual or whatever basis it needs to be. So as you click on each of these items, you can actually, in fact, as you create each of these items, it creates that back-end document, and then you can modify that document as, as required. The, um, the framework, I guess, allows you to have this bow tie diagram on the screen, be it a complete one like this, or an empty one that I had before, which allows you to have workshops and put it onto a board, allow people to brainstorm what are the controls, what are the, um, what are the causes, consequences, and so forth.
Well, it looks like a cool piece of software. And, and how does it, um, once these controls have been established, how does it sort of verify them on an ongoing basis?
Yeah, that's a, that's an important part of it. And in fact, if you don't do the verifications, there's probably not a lot of point in actually having the bow tie there in the first place and doing this process. So what you need to be doing is you need to be basically verifying or do control verifications to make sure that each of these things are working. So the verifications could come from an inspection, a question on inspection, it might even come from an observation module, or it could even come from an external system, like an integrated system, if need be. So what, what I've got on the screen at the moment is I've, is I've, I've got my mobile in front of me, and I'm, I'm in the process of doing an inspection on the mobile. So through this process, what we've got is we've got a series of questions, and I'm only going to answer maybe one or two of these at most. So in, in the, you can define through the smart inspections module, you can define the question, you can put some pictures in there, um, you can put in whatever answers you want, and you can also color code those answers as well. So in this particular case, this is a question that relates to a critical control. So if I answer the question in a certain way, what's going to happen is it's going to trigger certain things in the system to alert people and to identify where things are broken down. So in this particular case, our tags applied to each energy isolating device. I'm going to say no. So what's happened here is the tag is missing, and someone could get seriously injured. I'm going to put in some details. So I'm going to say, tag missing. And I can go through and complete the rest of the questions and so forth, as required. These can be questions can display depending upon the answers to previous questions, etc. Okay, so when I finish this particular process, I'll just click on finish and click on complete. So let's assume that I've actually completed the inspection. Now, just by simply answering that question, what's actually occurred is, um, I've verified a control. In this case, it's a control failure. So I'm going to move the mobile away for a moment, and then I'm going to go back to the bow tie diagram. Okay, so in this particular case, it's actually this bow tie diagram that was impacted. I'm just going to refresh the bow tie diagram. And once I've done, once I've done that, we can then look at the bow tie and we can see whether there are any control issues. So when I click on control issue, you can now see that that's actually highlighted that we've got a control issue. Now, at the same time, there was an email that was sent out to various different people to say that there's a control issue. There was also an action created and assigned to a particular person to let them know that they have to do something about the fact that a control failed. Um, and I can now see that that's failed. I can drill down to that particular item and I can see more information about the actual, um, control and what actually happened. So once that opens, I can then go through, I can look at the control history. So I'm going to scroll down. I'll expand the control history. And you'll also notice on the side here, it's highlighting in red that we've got a failure or not effective control. We can see here that a tag was not attached to a particular type of equipment, and a non-conformance was recorded. So straight away, it's basically updated the system, updated the statuses, sent emails, and basically made sure that people were aware that there were issues.
Thanks, Adrian. A great, uh, practical demonstration there, and it looks really customizable and extendable, the system. Um, one question that comes to my mind, particularly in regards to these procedural-based things, is reporting. So what kind of reporting functions do you offer?
Yeah, there's a few. There's quite a few different reporting options that are available. Um, first of all, you can go into, um, you can go into the critical control module, and from there, you can see the, um, the verifications that have been done. So if I, if I go into a verification dashboard, what this will do is it'll show me verifications for both passes and fails. So I can see, and when I look at a verification document, I can actually see, um, the critical control name, I can see whether it's passed or failed, um, and I can see a whole series of other information as well. So if I click on that, what I'll see is details about what the date was, who verified it, potentially the equipment number, and whatever other information you want to collect. So it's collecting a lot of information, not just when something fails, but also when something passes as well. So that's very, very useful information that you can push into the dashboard. So the dashboard, I'll just bring onto the screen for a moment. So, um, there we go. So with the dashboard, this is where you'd apply more reporting. So you can build your own reports, you can build your own, what we call widgets, to show a variety of information. So in these cases here, I'm, I've got other things further down the screen looking at my equipment number and whatever else I want to look at it by. But in this particular case, I might, I'm seeing by each different event, the number of verifications we've done, and I can drill down to that, and I can also filter as well. So I'm not interested in looking at the passes at the moment, I'm interested in looking at the failures. So what I can do now is I can basically drill down further. So I want to find out what's happening here. So I simply click on that particular link, and what that then does is it, it drills down further into the system. So I can now see these were the verifications for those fails. And if I wanted to look at it further, I could even click on these individual items and then see the verification document, and then drill down further and link to the inspection where it actually failed. So I can drill down to whatever level I want to. So the senior management level, I'll just want to look at a higher level at a, um, when an operational person will want to look at, okay, I want to see the detail, what happened with those fails, and so forth. What we also find is management also want to look at, um, are they doing enough verifications? So some of the companies we look at are doing like tens of thousands of verifications, just purely to normal inspections and other processes within the system. What they want to see is, well, why have they only done a few on this one down here, for example? Are they, have we dropped the ball? Are we not doing those questions? So we're not completing them? They're asking questions about, are there any, if there's not any fails at all, are they treating this process as a tick and flick exercise? So what starts to happen is people start to look at the reports and they start to think about, are we doing this process properly? And what are the outcomes? What are the fails? Why are they happening? And then they can obviously go back and also update the controls and find out if they're not meeting the appropriate performance standards. So the report, the reporting is very, very important. We, a lot of companies that use the system, their CEOs actually look at these graphs because they eagerly want to see where their exposure is and how they can minimize it before they do have a major event that is potentially a fatality.
Yeah, the, the, um, the ability to, to use the data analysis from such a granular to a macro level seems, seems really useful. Um, it seems really extendable and customizable to me, but I guess every mine site's different. Some, some people might be thinking, can I use this on my own site, my own, um, sort of processing plan, for example? What would you say to them?
Yeah, absolutely. So basically, the system is fully configurable. So, um, every single form that you see in the system, and every single report, you can actually build yourself. So if you've got specific information that you want to capture, you can basically add that field into the system. So in the example here, we were actually capturing equipment number inside the verifications. You might be capturing some other information. You can, you can choose what you want to capture. The inspection that I showed you is an inspection that, you know, you can build yourself. It's very, very straightforward, and you can build the rules yourself as well. The rules that basically tell the system that something is a question on a form is very, is a verification. So basically, whether it's workflow, whether it's access to the system and who can access it, where, whether it's the information that you capture, the whole thing is configurable. We start off with a basic build of the system, but our customers then go through and change it, and they can change it on an ongoing basis, right to an advanced level. And it's not rocket science, it's no programming, it's all just configuration, checkboxes, and radio buttons.
Great. And I think that one thing that stands out to me is that it must impact on a lot of people's, a lot of different roles in terms of workflow. So in terms of implementing this across a project or even an organization, how do you sort of get from the ground zero? How do you start with it?
Right, okay. So, um, there's a, there's a few different things that you do to get started. First of all, um, you identify your unwanted events. So it shouldn't be every single unwanted event, it should be the critical ones, the ones that will cause fatalities or permanent disabling injuries. So it's not a massive number, and in most organizations, they usually have less than 20. So, but they've got to identify those. And the way you identify those is you look at what's happened in your industry, what are the report, what are the reports of fatalities in your industry and similar industries. You can look at the, um, to get started, you can look at the ICM guides, which are at the ICM guide, which was a guide produced that actually goes through the exact methodology of what you should be doing. Um, there's various different reports, there's a Brady report on critical control management, and there's quite a few consultants out there as well. Once you've identified your critical risks, you can then identify your preventative controls and your mitigating controls. And the way people typically get started is they get the dashboard up, uh, sorry, the, um, the bow tie diagram up, and they put that up with all the key stakeholders and they identify each of those items. And then once they've identified those, um, basically, they then build their inspection questions and then they just link in the rules to say, well, if it's this question, update the system to say we've verified it, or update the, um, the status of a particular critical control. So, um, it's, it's a pretty forward, sort of straightforward process to get going. Some customers just start with the bow tie, and then they link in the other things later, but it, and that's a quick way of getting going without having to do all the various different rules. But, uh, other organizations just keep going straight away, and they have something up and going in some cases within days or a few weeks.
Okay. And I guess that, I know that leads to another question. And there's some companies might have some CCM systems already in place or similar systems. Um, can you integrate with those in any way?
Yeah, absolutely. We've got a, we've got a very comprehensive API, um, which basically can be accessed from other systems. So the sorts of systems that you might access it from. So at the moment, we showed you say inspections, and we used our inspections, which, um, which you can use, but you could be using other, if you've got other products within your organization or other systems within your organizations that you wanted to actually integrate with, this, you could, you could do that through the API. So for example, you might have a maintenance system, as an example. The maintenance system might be to check the brakes on vehicles, for example, and that's part of a check that's done as a standard sort of maintenance routine. So when they put that into their maintenance system, the maintenance system could talk directly to the CCM module within Mayosh and then basically update just what you saw that I did there. Um, so the, the changes don't have to come from a module that belongs to Mayosh, they can come from other places, as long as the system can consume APIs, and almost all systems can do that these days.
Great. Now, as I said, um, yeah, miners have a lot of dashboards and and solutions that they have to to read every day. So what would you say to, do you have a message for anybody considering implementing a system like this?
Yeah, um, first of all, um, ease of use. System is the most important thing. Something that's not going to impact an organization, the people within the organization, and their day-to-day tasks to any significant degree. Something that's not going to add that extra work amount of work. If it's simple, they'll use it. And if they're engaged in the process, if they're involved in the process, they will also use it, and they will rigorously do those inspections and willingly do those inspections. So if people have said, look, this is what allows me to come home safely from work, and this is a control that I do when I do this piece of work, when it comes to the inspections, they'll have buy-in. They'll actually, they've got their voice, they've got their voice into the process. Um, if it's something that's done far away from management, not just by management or a particular small group of people, then you may not get as much buy-in to the system, and then it may become a tick-and-flick exercise where people aren't really engaged in the process. So, a ease of use, allowing participation in the process, is a, a key message. Um, and the other one that I mentioned before as well is just get going. It doesn't have to be perfect. You know, use that information. And in response to your query about the, um, the dashboards as well, it's another integration point. Some people want to integrate the data that come from here into their existing dashboards. Um, so if they've got systems already, they can do that too. So they can push the data from here or pull the data from here, and then view that in another system. So, um, it's very, very flexible to be able to do that, and it's part of the implementation process.
Thanks, Adrian. Thanks a lot for demonstrating the system to us today and for your answers as well.
You're very welcome. Thank you for the opportunity.