The strategies for managing the residual and entropic risks associated with the physical environment are described in Table 5.4. As is the case
Physical environment 137 in the management of technological risks, the control of environmental risks begins in the planning and design stage. Poor design is a major contributor to fatalities and lost time injuries. For instance, in June 2000 at an underground gold mine in the northern goldfields of Western Australia, a fill barricade (barrier of rocks and material) at the base of a stope/cavity near the bottom of the mine gave way as a result of inadequate
Table 5.4 Strategies to manage the risks associated with the physical environment
Source of hazard Risk management strategy Residual risk
Site design • Pre-development evaluation of physical environment
shortcomings factors
• Evaluation of other or similar sites of the company, competitors and industries
• Monitoring of impact of physical environment on performance and safety
• Documentation of residual risks
Physical environment/ • Effective design and planning of work environment Technology • Pre-installation evaluation of risk factors and potential
interaction hazards
• Installation of technology in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions
• Safe work practices/operating procedures Physical environment/ • Modification of the physical environment to fit the Human resources needs of workers as far as practicable
interaction • Flexibility in work practices to keep the demands on the worker to an ‘acceptable’ level
• Safe work practices
• Monitoring of worker health, safety and vigilance
• Training in residual risk management
Physical environment/ • Evaluation of suitability of the process for the physical Process interaction environment
• Modification of existing processes in the short term
• Modification of physical environment (where possible) in the longer term
Entropic risk
Natural degradation • Regular monitoring of the condition of the physical of the physical environment
environment • Emergency response procedures and contingency plans
• Maintenance of natural environment and infrastructure Physical environment/ • Regular monitoring of condition of physical environment Operator interaction • Induction and training
• Good housekeeping practices
• Organizational culture which reinforces desired behaviors Physical environment/ • Regular monitoring of condition of physical environment Technology interaction • Proactive scheduled maintenance of the physical
environment
• Reactive maintenance
Physical environment/ • Regular monitoring of condition of physical environment Process interaction • Safe work practices/operating procedures
• Proactive scheduled maintenance of the physical environment
• Reactive maintenance
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drainage.16 This allowed approximately 18 000 m3 of fill to enter the lower levels of the mine and the decline. The incident resulted in the death of three mine workers. The construction of stoping systems is a planning and design issue in underground mining. The findings of this incident report also highlighted the need to take physical environmental factors outside the immediate stope environment into consideration when evaluating residual risk at the pre-operational stage. The report states that:
Even when fill is fully drained and consolidated, there exists the possibility of re-charge from unexpected groundwater inflows, flood or unexpected rainfall events. Systems need to be in place to quickly detect such recharge and to deal with it appropriately. Similarly, regular routine checks of the continued integrity of fill barricades and bulkheads (even in unfrequented areas of the mine) are required.16
Firms can adopt a number of strategies to address residual risks stemming from site design shortcoming. The first is to undertake a pre-development evaluation of the physical environment to identify factors that may affect safety and production output. Data may also be collected from other company sites to assist management in anticipating the residual risks inherent in the new site. Once operations have begun, the physical environment should be monitored, residual risks documented and action plans implemented to manage these hazards.
To control the risks inherent in the physical environment/technology interaction, effective design and planning is again important. The firm should carry out a pre-installation evaluation of risk factors and potential hazards. These hazards result from the imperfect fit between the technology and the environment. Technological improvements tend to make a unit of equipment safer, however, when it is introduced into the workplace and interacts with the physical environment, residual risks are not necessarily reduced. For instance, as a result of larger-scale mechanization instead of one person being affected by an incident, more injuries and damage are likely when an incident occurs.17 This indicates that specific safety standards and operating procedures need to be developed to manage the residual risks in each workplace. Concurrently, emergency procedures have to be established and practiced to minimize consequential damages from such events.
The environment has a significant effect on the safety and productivity of workers. It puts demands on the worker physically and psychologically.
For the firm to maximize its return on human capital investment these demands have to be minimized, so that the worker can focus on performing the task. Consequently, as far as is practicable, the workplace should be modified to fit the biological capacity of employees. Interventions can be developed to address the physical environment hazards that are detailed in Table 5.1. This includes, for example, temperature and humidity control in enclosed workplaces, protection from solar radiation when working outdoors, use of barriers and safety harnesses near elevations, safe work practices for confined spaces, protection against chemicals and noise and provision of adequate lighting.
Physical environment 139 The entropy model indicates that residual risks should be managed in the short term and compressed in the longer term. The inherent risk in the physical environment/human resources interaction should be managed using the hierarchy of controls. Accordingly, hazards need to be eliminated, substituted or isolated, controlled through engineering, or controlled through administrative/safe work procedures or by using personal protective equipment (PPE), with elimination being preferable over latter interventions. Where interaction cannot be avoided, for example, the employee has to work at a height, interventions have to prevent potential injury and damage. This involves anticipating possible failures, implementing safe work practices, supplying PPE and providing workers with training in these practices and the use of this equipment.
The fit between human resources and the physical environment is not static because the health and level of safety consciousness of an individual is variable. Illness can cause reduced concentration and productivity, thereby making the worker more vulnerable to workplace hazards. For this reason, it is important to allow some flexibility in work practices to keep the demands on the worker to an ‘acceptable’ level. In hazardous environmental conditions it is particularly important to monitor the health, safety and vigilance of workers. This is particularly evident in cases of exposure to extreme climatic conditions. The primary responsibility for monitoring the effect of these residual risks on employees lies with the supervisor. Workers also have a duty to report any condition that may be hazardous including circumstances where the physical environment causes them to be at risk. Employees develop the ability to determine what should be reported when they are provided with training that instils knowledge of residual and entropic risks, the sources of these risks and their potential consequences. They must also be willing to report such matters and this requires management to encourage employee involvement and to respond to legitimate worker concerns.
The final source of residual risk, shown in Table 5.4, is the physical environment/process interaction. Management of this risk begins with an evaluation of the suitability of the process for a particular site. This is an area addressed during feasibility studies and when obtaining government approval prior to the commencement of operations. Consent for a project to proceed indicates that regulators deem the fit between the process and the environment to be ‘acceptable’ provided that all reasonable measures are taken to manage risk factors.
After a company’s operations have commenced, the physical environment tends to change during its life. When substantial changes occur, processes have to be modified accordingly and legislation often requires regulators to be notified. In open-cut mines, for example, in the event of a landslide, which is more likely to occur as the pit gets deeper, processes have to be altered to manage subsequent hazards such as isolation of the unstable section and cessation of further mining in that area of the pit. In addition, according to the Mines Safety and Inspection Act 1994 (Western Australia), the mines inspector has to be notified of any extensive subsidence, settlement or fall of ground.18 In the short term, when environmental residual risks become detrimental to processes, business activities have to be adjusted. Many industries are aware of how these
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residual risks affect the safety of their operations. There are also a number of guidelines issued by government departments to address these types of risks. An example is Working Safely in Wet Weather – Construction Industry which states that:
Provided work is arranged to minimise hazards associated with wet weather, and safe systems of work are followed, work at construction workplaces can continue safely. Taking steps to control these hazards will protect the safety and health of employees, and will benefit companies and enterprises through:
• reduced injury and disease
• higher levels of job satisfaction and reduced absenteeism
• increased efficiency and productivity.19
The guideline identifies a number of strategies to manage this residual risk. These include:
• Working under sheltered structures or temporary shelters in wet weather;
• Working on tasks that are not made hazardous by wet weather;
• Making environmental changes such as ensuring good drainage;
• Using pumps to disperse flooding;
• Providing workers with warm dry shelter for dry clothing;
• Providing waterproof clothing, safety shoes and gum boots;
• Monitoring employees who have a medical condition that reduces their tolerance to cold or wet conditions.19
In the short term, such residual risks have to be managed and this often includes clearly defining the conditions under which it is acceptable to continue work and when work should be ceased. According to the four-fold strategy, residual risk should also be compressed in the longer-term. The channel indicates that this time frame depends on the resources available to the firm. As the internal environment changes over the life of the operation, it may need to be modified or adapted to better accommodate processes and to compress this risk. In addition, the forces in the business context are also evolving and there is a tendency for standards to become more stringent rather than looser. In effect, this means that ‘acceptable’
residual risk is set at lower and lower levels by regulators and therefore companies are forced to expend resources to comply or risk incurring penalties. For example, organizations are becoming increasing aware of the need to provide slip-resistant floors in reception and accessible areas to reduce their exposure to public liability. Two Australian standards were released in 1994 to reduce this hazard. They are AS 3661.1 Slip Resistance of Pedestrian Surfaces: Requirements and AS 3661.2 Slip Resistance of Pedestrian Surfaces: Guide for Reduction of Slip Hazards.20 The legislative framework, therefore, addresses physical environment residual risks in two ways. The first is that parameters are set that define the circumstances under which it is acceptable to operate in the presence of residual risks on the proviso that it is managed well, as was the case with the guidelines for working in wet conditions. The second is to define the standards for physical environment planning, design and construction
Physical environment 141 to minimize residual risks, as contained in the guide for reduction of slip hazards. The guidelines detail the types of modifications that can be undertaken to reduce this risk.
Table 5.4 explains that the physical environment poses both residual and entropic risks. The latter arise because the environment tends to degrade naturally, which reduces the fit between it and the firm’s other system factors. The key to preventing injury or damage is regular monitoring of its condition to allow timely corrective action. In cases of sudden degradation due to unforeseen circumstances, the firm needs to have contingency plans to contain consequential damages including emergency response procedures such as systems recovery, medical treatment, isolation of danger and notification of relevant authorities.
Failures in the physical environment can have very severe consequences, particularly when environmental conditions are altered by business activities. This was evident in the Aberfan disaster.21 The village of Aberfan is at the base of a hill below the Merthyr Vale colliery waste dump. On the morning of 21 October 1966, the structure started sliding down the hillside resulting in a wave of rock, coal slurry and water rumbling down which buried houses and the school. One hundred and forty-four men, women and children lost their lives with 116 of the victims being school children. The parents of a deceased child requested that the cause of fatality on the death certificate read, ‘buried alive by the National Coals Board’.
Incidents similar to the Aberfan disaster can also result from natural phenomena. The probability of occurrence increases drastically, however, when business activities also cause physical environment changes. The processes of the firm make the environment less stable than it would ordinarily be, for example, natural slopes tend to be vegetated and this reduces erosion and decreases water-logging. In contrast, man-made rock and soil structures are often not stabilized in this manner to the same extent and this makes them more hazardous. Man-made slopes tend to have a higher level of risk and can degrade more rapidly through processes such as adding a high content of fine material to the stockpile, not maintaining physical barricades and by directing water to the slope. In the mining and construction industries particularly, there are considerable hazards associated with fill materials. The combination of physical environment factors increases the severity of these hazards, for instance, as indicated earlier, stockpiles become increasingly dangerous as the fill becomes saturated. Drainage is therefore an important design consideration and barricades are usually erected to mitigate this risk. When workplace activities introduce entropic risks then these residual risks can be triggered into imminent danger, for example, flooding from a failed process such as pumping wastewater discharge close to the stockpile or leakage from a processing plant can saturate the fill causing a slide. The firm therefore has to anticipate the impact of its activities on inherent dangers and be aware that entropic risks can trigger residual risks into imminent threats.
In operations that are inherently high-risk, it is therefore, extremely important to prevent catalytic hazards and severe degradation.
Entropic risks of the physical environment also include the deterioration of infrastructure. To prevent this, buildings, fences and other fixtures have to be maintained. Poorly kept infrastructure is potentially dangerous,
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for instance, rotten timbers can eventually cause a structure to collapse.
When combined with residual risks, these hazards can lead to active threats. An example is when a 5-meter long section of roof guttering from a plant air compressor building fell to the ground during a period of high winds.22 The combination of residual and entropic risks in the physical environment greatly increases the probability of an undesirable event and the consequences of these hazards.
The interaction between the operator and the physical environment can also result in degradation. The worker can accelerate the deterioration of the physical environment by performing his duties in a suboptimal manner, for example, not cleaning up spills or deviating from designated roadways whilst operating machinery. The environment can also be damaged by intentional safety violations. The primary means of managing the potential entropic risk at the physical environment–human resources interface is induction and training which provides employees with an understanding of risks, with hazard identification and control skills and safety awareness. Training also enhances the competencies of operators so that safe work practices are adhered to and good habits, such as housekeeping, are developed. The organizational culture can be used to reinforce desired behaviors.
The key to preventing human behavior from inducing deterioration of the physical environment, therefore, is education. The standard of housekeeping in a workplace is the clearest indicator of how effectively this interaction is being managed. Training, however, is not a substitute for providing a workplace designed to fit the capacity of employees and the tasks that are undertaken. For example, in a maintenance workshop it would be inappropriate to expect workers to keep the facilities tidy if there are no systems for the storage of tools. The design of the physical environment must support business activities and allow for safe and efficient operations.
As described in the previous chapter, the interaction between technology and the environment causes degradation of both these system factors.
Rough road conditions increase the wear and tear on truck tires. Likewise, heavy machinery causes the roadway to deteriorate. Technology can also be a catalyst that causes entropic risk to rise rapidly or residual risks to result in imminent danger. A fatality resulting from a fallen tree branch is an example. In May 1995, an earthmoving company’s supervisor was killed when a branch fell from a dead tree. The 20-tonne excavator was digging test holes for soil structure evaluation on a rural property prior to the construction of a water catchment dam, when the boom of the excavator struck a nearby dead tree. A branch, 12 meters up, broke off and struck the supervisor. The contributing factors were that the hazard had not been identified and that the operator’s vision was restricted by the boom, window frame and hydraulic ram of the vehicle.23 Lack of risk assessment prior to the task being undertaken, together with lack of visibility, introduced entropy into the activity. As a result, the residual risk caused by the presence of a dead tree was released and resulted in the accident. The case highlights the need for hazard inspections prior to the commencement of work. Specifically, the following questions need to be asked in any such circumstances:
Physical environment 143 (1) What are the residual risks present in the area?
(2) Is the environment currently degraded, to what extent and what can be done to mitigate this degradation?
(3) How is the use of technology, the worker’s competency level and the process going to affect these risks?
In the above example, a significant residual risk was the lack of unrestricted space to undertake the work and that the tree was dead and therefore unstable. Had the tree been alive and strong the consequences of the impact would not have been as serious although the equipment may have been damaged. To mitigate this risk, the dead tree could have been felled safely prior to the work being undertaken. Clearly, the use of technology in the area with the resultant impact triggered these pre-existing residual risks into immediate danger.
In the above example, a significant residual risk was the lack of unrestricted space to undertake the work and that the tree was dead and therefore unstable. Had the tree been alive and strong the consequences of the impact would not have been as serious although the equipment may have been damaged. To mitigate this risk, the dead tree could have been felled safely prior to the work being undertaken. Clearly, the use of technology in the area with the resultant impact triggered these pre-existing residual risks into immediate danger.