Accident and incident data

The Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety is committed to working with industry to reduce serious accidents and incidents, and provide tangible support in achieving a positive cultural change.

To support this commitment, the department has compiled a list of resources available to industry which highlight the importance of optimising the collection and use of occupational safety and health data.

Industry is required to lodge a variety of information with the department regarding incidents and workforce numbers.

The industry data and results of selected investigations are subsequently released as:

• annual safety performance reports
• quarterly performance snapshots
• monthly safety and health snapshots
• summaries for industry awareness
• mining fatality summaries
• significant incident reports and safety bulletins
• additional reports and surveys.

The department produces these resources to help industry identify trends in safety performance and start making the necessary changes. When combined with site or operational statistics, these tools can assist mining operations in improving their safety performance and moving towards a resilient safety culture.

Safety performance reports are published annually and cover the accident and injury statistics for the financial year.

They include information on:

• fatal accidents
• serious injuries
• lost time injuries
• workers’ compensation premiums
• injuries by commodities
• disabling injuries

for mining activities, and some statistics for exploration activities.

Mining incidents reported to Resources Safety since January 2010 have been edited and made available to the public as summaries for industry awareness. This resource is updated regularly and can be interrogated, viewed and the results exported to a Microsoft Excel file for analysis via the Safety Regulation System (SRS).

The following hazard registers have been created for use by mining operations, using information from completed Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS) investigations:

• Hazard register for Western Australian mining fatalities (Fatalities register). This register also includes precautions detailed in the Coroner’s findings.
• Hazard register for serious injury or other serious incident investigations in Western Australian mining (Serious injury and incidents register).

The analysis of accidents and incidents presented in the register will be updated annually.

The hazard registers enable sites to:

• identify hazards with the potential to cause fatalities or serious injuries
• demonstrate how hazards can impact different occupation groups
• identify the activities and tasks being undertaken at the time a fatality, serious injury or other serious incident occurred
• identify potential precautions or preventative measures.

Its use should assist in the prevention of similar incidents by raising awareness of the circumstances and hazards associated with these incidents, as well as identifying precautions or preventative measures that could avert an incident.

Mining operations should use the hazard registers to identify and review hazards relevant to their site that are associated with fatalities, serious injury or other serious incidents in Western Australia. This information can then be used in site-specific hazard registers and incorporated into the site’s safe systems of work. This process can assist management to focus on these hazards and how to address them.

Workers can also consult the hazard registers to raise individual awareness around hazard identification, incidents associated with their occupation, and tasks they may undertake that potentially expose them to risk.

To share the learnings from investigations, the department issues a variety of safety alerts.

Significant incident reports - information about single incidents, accidents or fatalities
Safety bulletins - information about trends or clusters in reported accidents and incidents from a State, national or international perspective.

These snapshots can be used by employers and workers to assist in the development and promotion of safe work practices on mining operations.

• Quarterly performance snapshots focus on injury and incident data provided to the department by the minerals sector for a three-month period.
• Monthly safety and health snapshots address key topics in the minerals sector that have been identified by the department as areas of concern.

Each year, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) hosts World Day for Safety and Health at Work. ILO has a suite of resources available for industry use including fact sheets, toolboxes, in addition to resources from previous years.

Injury Alarm is a new piece of technology that analyses data to work out how likely incidents and injuries are likely to be. Its aim is to assist organisations recognise risks to prevent an incident happening. It has been developed in consultation with industry and is based on the work and research of Dr Marcus Cattani. A free lite-version of Injury Alarm is available to industry.

OHS Body of Knowledge is a collective knowledge resource developed to provide a sound basis for OHS professionals to understand the causation and control of work-related fatality, injury, disease and ill health. This knowledge can be described in terms of key concepts and language and the application of these to facilitate a safe and healthy workplace.

For a copy of the official Offshore Petroleum Safety Regulation Varanus Island Incident Investigation report, please visit the State Law Publishing website.

For a copy of the DMP response to report: ‘Offshore Petroleum Safety Regulation: Varanus Island Incident Investigation', please visit the Parliament website.