Wednesday, 1 June 2016
Lou Caruana
A QUEENSLAND University professor who assisted in the Pike River disaster inquiry, Dr David Cliff, is developing an innovative template model to co-ordinate the control of coal mine safety hazards.
The main objective of this project is to design, develop and operate RISKGATE (www.riskgate.org) built to coal industry requirements, according to ACARP which is providing $4.2 million of funding for the project.
This would be populated with knowledge obtained from mining industry experts through a series of workshops.
“Broad participation from the mining industry has been the key factor underlying RISKGATE success,” ACARP said.
“RISKGATE, and the RISKGATE team was recognised with the AUSIMM 2015 Jim Torlach Health and Safety Award in Perth on April 18, 2015.”
Project activities for 2015 included completion of careful review to synchronise language across all eighteen modules; minor updates to a number of topics in the light of recent research findings such as the ACARP funded lightning project; and specific technical review of the collisions/vehicle interactions topic to incorporate relevant developments.
The final work component of the current project is to prototype a topic into the control effectiveness model, so that potential future revision and expansion of RISKGATE can be evaluated.
“Various templates have been received from industry monitors and work is progressing to synthesise these into a single prototype model,” ACARP said.
“Discussions are ongoing with a number of organisations about the potential application of the RISKGATE model to other areas of mining, beyond health and safety and beyond mining.”
