Abstract
Tailings management ranks among the top risks of a mining operation; the success or failure of the operators' performance demonstrates commitment and good governance. However, following the devastating Brumadinho tailings failure event in 2019, World Mine Tailings Failure highlighted tailings dam failure trends – showing increasing rates of serious and very serious failures over time, an unfortunate trend that is projected to continue climbing. Armed with the awareness of high-consequence waste failure rates, there has been significant effort in industry to assess and address risks, to bolster waste-related risk governance, accountability, and management processes, and to become more transparent.
Most mining organizations operate several types and combinations of critical mine waste infrastructure at their operations. This presents a significant diversity in facilities to assess and manage, under all kinds of operating conditions, and currently, there is a lot of focus on improving active on-site and satellite monitoring systems to understand the health, and to react to performance insufficiencies, of such infrastructure. This practice is definitely encouraged, but also introduces a level of risk if an operator solely depends upon such monitoring to maintain safety - depending on how quickly instrumentation reveals poor performance, instabilities can advance very quickly to failure of a system.
There are several advantages to compiling a waste management systems’ knowledge base, including information regarding site conditions, design parameters, results of analyses supporting design and performance monitoring, construction, and the health of operations and governance systems. First, the information can more easily be accessed for repeated or iterative assessment regarding quality of work performed and health as conditions change or material changes to the facilities are made. It becomes much easier to identify key areas for improvements and to develop proactive risk reduction plans, assigned to responsible people, with timelines to complete. Tracking progress against those actions over time also enables transparent communications around risks, risk management strategies, reduction of risk over time, and reporting against industry standards, both internally and externally.
This presentation will highlight a structured system for knowledge base compilation, a process for portfolio risk evaluation, and ways the stored information can be utilized for proactive governance assurance for critical geo-structures and waste management systems.