| Description |
In the United States mining industry, fatality statistics from 2004 to 2015 have revealed that the reduction of mining fatalities has become stagnant. To improve safety beyond the levels obtained, safety and health risk management systems (SHRMSs) are being investigated by industry and academia. In the mining industry, there are different views and approaches on how to make an effective SHRMS. Because most peer-reviewed evidence is qualitative, and in many cases, anecdotal because of its multivariate nature, this thesis attempts to assess the impact of SHRMSs at United States operating mines. A project was developed using subject matter experts to asses the intervention effectiveness of an SHRMS through an online survey, follow-up interviews, and the simultaneous collection and analysis of private and public safety performance data. In an effort to isolate and understand the univariate and multivariate data, survey questions were developed to evaluate six core elements of an SHRMS: responsibility and accountability, risk management, communication, training, behavior modification, and leadership. A limitation of this study was recruiting a sufficiently large sample size of participating mines. Therefore, statistical power was diminished and any conclusions have limited value in extrapolating the broader industry. Factorial analyses and McDonald's omega coefficient were used to validate the use of the survey and to create an index value from the experts' responses. The SHRMS effectiveness index (SHRMS EI) and with its constituent element scores were correlated with injury and citation rates using Spearman's rho coefficient. Analysis of injury rates over time revealed that the injury performance index (PI) improved after SHRMS implementation in all but one of the participating mines. Inverse correlations were identified in the cohort as a whole between SHRMS EI and injury PI, supporting the hypotheses that the application of a mature, company-specific SHRMS correlates inversely to the total injury rate. When analyzing different demographics, negative correlations between injury PI and the SHRMS EI became stronger when underground mines and surface mines were analyzed separately. The evidence from this research indicates that the intervention effectiveness of mature SHRMSs reduces the number of safety incidents within the cohort. |
