Photo: Betty Seeney
High Reliability Organisations – from concept to reality
Susan Johnston, Program Leader Governance and Leadership in Mining, Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland
O
ver the past year many companies with operations in the Bowen Basin have been grappling with the question of how to use High Reliability Organisational (HRO) Principles to make their mines safer. This follows a recommendation in the Queensland Governmentcommissioned Review of All Fatal Accidents in Queensland Mines and Quarries that the industry 'adopt the principles of HRO theory in order to reduce the rate of serious accidents and fatalities'; and subsequent endorsement of the value of HRO thinking in the Queensland Coal Mining Industry Board of Inquiry into the Serious Accident at the Grosvenor mine. External encouragement and companies' own commitments to ongoing safety improvement have driven a deep, and timely, reconsideration of the factors that need to change if we are to avoid further serious injuries and deaths in the sector. HRO theory and principles are not new. For 30 years, researchers have endeavoured to distil what separates those organisations who, day after day, year after year, reliably keep their people safe in very hazardous circumstances - from the rest. The best of this research identified that HROs were organisations who 'thought differently', who had a 'collective mind', and a 'shared sense of commitment to reliability' across units and levels.
94
BBMC Yearbook 2021
