André Gbodossou

Proposal of a risk-factor-based analytical approach for integrating occupational health and safety into project risk evaluation.

Excluding occupational health and safety (OHS) from project management is no longer acceptable. Numerous industrial accidents have exposed the ineffectiveness of conventional risk evaluation methods as well as negligence of risk factors having major impact on the health and safety of workers and nearby residents. Lack of reliable and complete evaluations from the beginning of a project generates bad decisions that could end up threatening the very existence of an organization. This article supports a systematic approach to the evaluation of OHS risks and proposes a new procedure based on the number of risk factors identified and their relative significance. A new concept called risk factor concentration along with weighting of risk factor categories as contributors to undesirable events are used in the analytical hierarchy process multi-criteria comparison model with Expert Choice(©) software. A case study is used to illustrate the various steps of the risk evaluation approach and the quick and simple integration of OHS at an early stage of a project. The approach allows continual reassessment of criteria over the course of the project or when new data are acquired. It was thus possible to differentiate the OHS risks from the risk of drop in quality in the case of the factory expansion project.

A MINING PROJECT IS A FIELD OF RISKS: A SYSTEMATIC AND PRELIMINARY PORTRAIT OF MINING RISKS

Due to the current economic situation and the growth in world demand, the mining industry is undergoing a period of spectacular development. The current need to increase production at mine sites coincides with the development of managerial capacities, the use of new industrial methods and equipment, and increased use of skilled workforce. Despite such developments, a number of researchers view the mining sector among the world’s most uncertain and hazardous industries. Although the sector utilizes risk management tools appropriately, several large-scale mining projects have failed as a result of neglect or underestimation of hazards. Total risk management of a new project remains a goal to be attained so as to enhance reliability of decisions and make mining organizations safer and more secure. The intent of this paper is to provide researchers and practitioners a preliminary portrait of the risks related to new mining projects. To attain this objective, the authors have primarily used results from research undertaken in the fi eld. They completed this portrait using the results of hazard identifi cation studies that they conducted in an open-pit mining project in Quebec. During this study, a number of data-gathering techniques were used, including documentation analysis, collaborative fi eld observations, and interviews with managers and workers. This work demonstrates the possibility of identifying a number of categories of known risks and uncertainties not recently taken into account in any systemic or systematic way in mining project risk management. In this paper, identifi ed risks are categorized hierarchically to show the impact and possibility of occurrence of each for every project phase. Despite having a number of limitations, this study enables construction of a risks portrait indispensable for completing a reliable and rapid assessment of mining project hazards.